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The Grand Palace and the Temple of the Reclining Buddha (Early May 2001)
On the first Saturday that we were in Bangkok we took Erika and the kids to the Grand Palace. This is actually the most important part of the palace grounds which used to cover quite an extensive area prior to the abolishment of the Absolute Monarchy in the 1930s. It includes the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, numerous stupas (or chedis, if you prefer) and walls covered in fabulous painting which depict the events described in the Ramakien (which is derived from the Ramayana). This story is about one of the many incarnations of Vishnu and is taken to be the defining work of Thai civilisation. Everyone here tends to know at least part of, if not most of the story. Thai drama tends to be heavily based on parts of the story to the extent that there is one form of dancing which has no other subject (and this is an art form to which people devote their lives). The King recently commissioned a cartoon format book describing one of the stories (from memory it was in order to press home a point about preserving the environment).
Anyway, the walls around the Temple of the Emerald Buddha have beautiful, highly detailed, exquisitely coloured depictions of the story, split into 178 "rooms", each of which is scene selected from the Ramakien. Kalle (and to a lesser extent Taltarni) was fascinated by it and Tim struggled in vain to explain what was going on. "Who is the green guy?" "Is he the Emerald Buddha?" "Are the green guys good guys or bad guys?" "Is the big monkey guy Hanuman?" "Why has this guy got two heads?" "What happened to this guy's head?" "Why don't the women have any tops on?" "What are those two people doing?"
Tim promised to get a book on the topic and was talking about it later with Dave (who lives downstairs with Surinya and is the Army Staff College person). Dave announced that he had a book that explained it all, with reproductions of each of the "rooms". He lent us the book, which is truly a beautiful piece of art. Because the kids seem to love putting their grubby mitts all over it, the book spent most of the time on top of the bookshelf, well out of reach. We recently found the book, more by accident than design, in the Chulalongkorn University Bookshop and purchased our own copy. Dave and Surinya now have their copy back, hopefully no worse for wear.
Back on the day that we visited the Grand Palace though, we had no real idea about what was going on in the story. We just wandered along admiring it. One of the main reasons we did this was because the paintings, while open to the atmosphere, are very well shaded and the day was stinking hot. Whenever you stepped out of the shade you began to melt immediately. The kids wilted visibly and had very little enthusiasm for wandering around the stupas (which are huge, brightly gilded and surrounded by impressive and equally brightly gilded statues of various Hindu-style angels).
As for the actual Temple of the Emerald Buddha, this was a little bit of a disappointment. When Tim had been there the previous September, he had been able to go into the temple and sit there (well, he was able to kneel there) and he got to have a good look around. On this stinking hot day in May the temple compound was jammed packed with people. Not only were the normal batch of tourists crowding the place (bloody tourists), there were also many more Thais there than usual. There also seemed to be more than the fair share tourists as well. The reason for this only became apparent a while later. As a hint, the reason had to do with the red carpet which had been laid out, replete with signs in various languages telling everyone to keep their filthy common feet off it.
Tim asked around when he was in the temple compound and was able to work out that there was a consecration of some sort going on. Oh, he thought, the Supreme Abbot (this term has been made up to protect the innocent) will be popping over later to get into some consecration action, hence the red carpet. (At this point Tim was even more ignorant of Buddhist ways than he is now.) It also explained the presence of hordes of Thais who were jostling each other to get as close as possible to the front doors of the temple so they could dip lotus buds in water and then shake the water on their heads. (Given the heat, this seemed a really good idea but we thought it would probably be disrespectful to push our way to the front of a crowd of believers and scoop up handfuls of the Buddhist equivalent of holy water to splash on our heads.)
Later on, Tim found out that the distinguished visitor was actually going to be the King. He was coming to visit because it was Coronation Day and, for that reason, the area had to be clear of the common muck (especially tourists) before 1pm. That in turn meant that all tours for the day were happening in the morning. Thais see the day as particularly auspicious which was the reason for their large numbers and the lotus bud on the head business.
All we knew at the time was that is was extremely crowded and that it was very hot and the combination detracted somewhat from the whole experience. We eventually wandered out of the temple area and past the old palace building. The present day King lives in Chitlada Palace but the old palace is maintained for ceremonial functions (and doesn't look that much like the building in "Anna and the King"). While we were in this part of the complex, Taltarni and Kalle were asked by some girls to be in a photo with them. At this time, Taltarni was quite impressed with the attention that she was receiving and went to stand with them more than willingly. Kalle was somewhat less outgoing. We had been able to get him to appear in a photo with a Palace Guard earlier, mainly (we think) because we had told him that he was old and mature enough to stand on the right-hand side of the guard, right next to the guard's rifle. Kalle spent most of the time looking at the weapon and it was only with great effort that we got him to look towards the camera!
When you enter the Grand Palace complex, you get passes to the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, to the Coin and Medal Pavilion and to Vimanmek Palace (the world's largest teak mansion) all for the one great price (200 baht for foreigners and free for Thais). Going into the Coin and Medal Pavilion, although it does not really sound all that exciting, is a great idea on a hot and sticky day. It is air-conditioned and while we were there we were able to cool down and, for a short while at least, we weren't sweaty and horrible. Well, we weren't sweaty anyway.
We were soon asked to hurry up and get out, at which time we found out the reason for all the crowding. We wrapped up the inspection of the coins and medals and left the Grand Palace area with dispatch.
The next thing on our schedule was to get to Vimanmek Palace which, although on the Grand Palace tour, is not actually in the same area as the Grand Palace. It is, in fact, a few kilometres away. We didn't know that at the time though, we thought it would be a very short trip and so we negotiated with a tuk-tuk driver to take us there. As Tim thought it would be a very short trip, he bargained very hard and got a good deal – basically this meant that we paid the same price as we normally pay, 50 baht (no matter what the distance is, tuk-tuk rides have tended to cost 50 baht – Tim thinks that it is because he has a generous looking face, obviously he is going to want to pay more than the average).
For the uninitiated, a tuk-tuk, which is Taltarni's favorite form of transportation by far, is a motorised tricycle with a motorbike engine which has a bench in little cabin area behind the driver. They go very fast, make a lot of noise and are the best way of experiencing the "flavour" of Bangkok (read as "pollution"). Being on three wheels, rather than two or four, they are inherently unstable when making sharp corners at high speed and tend to swerve violently from lane to lane (although it is unclear whether this is a design flaw or just an aspect of the tuk-tuk driver training programme (this is, of course, a joke – it is quite likely that tuk-tuk drivers have no actual training at all, but that goes for taxi drivers too so what can you do?)) As an aside, it is a little cramped with five people on a tuk-tuk's little bench.
So, we go ourselves a tuk-tuk, put our lives in the hands of the driver and off we went. We went on quite a journey, passing a number of interesting sites, before arriving in the Vimanmek Palace compound. By this time it was well past lunch o'clock so our first objective was the little coupon (or "khupong" as it is in Thai) restaurant outside the entrance to the Palace proper. We had a delicious, somewhat makeshift meal there (due to varied demands from wives and children, the cooks were very patient with Tim's halting Thai, it was rather rusty at best and describing various food items is not one of his strong points). Then, after a short stop to feed bread to the fishes, we went into the Palace area.
First we sat on the lawn (not actual grass per se, rather some sort of substitute plant that was springy and proved strong enough to hold one up off the mud that lay underneath) and watched some cultural shows – Thai dancing, Thai boxing, Northern Thai dancing and more Thai dancing (by some younger girls). At the end there was a chance to get your photograph taken with the dancers. Taltarni availed herself of this opportunity but Kalle was again too shy to go up.
Then we went inside the teak building and had a tour (fortunately in English, if you don't speak English, Japanese or Thai, you're out of luck). The Palace was the home of one of Thailand's most famous, most revered Kings, Chulalongkorn (the number one son of the King in "Anna and the King"). The building was abandoned as a residence after his death (a bit sad really because it took ages to build and he died not that many years after its completion) and became a sort of warehouse for royal artifacts. A number of years ago, the current Queen realised that a valuable historical building was going to waste and a project to restore it was undertaken.
The result is impressive. The building is really quite special and the rooms are set out to represent aspects of King Chulalongkorn's life and times. In addition, there are a few modern items installed there, so it retains part of its intervening function (that is as a storehouse for royal artifacts!) We were even allowed to go where no male over eight years of age, other than the King, was previously allowed to tread – the women's wing! Sadly, there are no longer droves of Royal Concubines. The keeping of numerous wives is a practice that was abandoned by Chulalongkorn's son. (That said, there are still men in Thailand who maintain more than the one legal wife as well as the apparently huge number who keep a mistress or two.)
A week or so later, after Erika had left, we went back to the same general area to visit another couple of temples. Across the river from the Grand Palace is a famous temple called the Temple of the Dawn. This has particular significance to Thais, but we are not entirely sure why. In any event, it has some rather spectacular stupas which are adorned with broken bits of pottery which originated in China. Apparently Thai trading ships used to carry goods to China but tended to come back rather empty so they needed ballast. They used broken pottery to act as this ballast and it is said that this broken pottery was used to decorate the monuments of the Temple of the Dawn.
At first, once we got to the temple, we walked around the area devoted to Buddha statues. There are a couple of hundred statues placed around the walls of one of the buildings (which is really a walled courtyard), all of Buddha in the same pose. This is a common feature of Thai temples and has to be seen to be understood. Actually the reasoning behind it is a bit obscure even once you have seen it!
A short while after we left this area we were shown how to "tham boon" by one of the lay-women responsible for looking after the temple grounds. To "tham boon" means to make merit. It really seems to be a superstition derived from sources other than Buddhism, rather like the fortune telling methods apparent in Chinese-style temples. Fortune telling was not highly regarded by the founder of Buddhism and monks are not actually permitted to partake in it. Not that that stops some monks from developing quite a reputation for their prognosticational skills. Anyway, here's how "tham booning" goes.
There are eight standard Buddha images, each in a different pose with a different meaning. To "tham boon", you first pay your money and you get your bucket of small coins. Then you go to the Buddha that is associated with your day of birth (the day of the week that is). As an additional complication, if you are a Wednesday child, you have to know what time of the day you were born because you have two Buddha's to choose from . There might actually be nine Buddha's (because we have a vague recollection of their being one specifically for people who are too dim to remember what day of the week they were born on).
So, you are there with your coins in front of your particular Buddha. You make an obeisance (called a "wai") and put some coins in the bowl in front of your Buddha. But of course you don't just grab a handful of coins and chuck them in. The number of coins you put in each bowl depends on the Buddha and ranges from seven or so up to twenty-one, and you are supposed to put the coins in one by one. Once you have put coins in your Buddha's bowl you move up to the next day of the week, putting coins in all the bowls in turn according to the dictates of the relevant "Buddha of the Day" until you come to the Buddha before your birth day. That's it, you have now "tham booned" and your total merit has been increased, enhancing your chances of reincarnation into a better lifestyle.
(This leads nicely into the joke about what Buddhists say to Christians. "We understand that you do not believe in Buddhism. However, do not despair, not all is lost. If you live your life well enough, you could always be Buddhist next time."
As Tim likes to say, he doesn't believe in reincarnation. But that doesn't mean that he didn't believe in it during his previous lives.)
After visiting the Temple of the Dawn, we trooped back across the river to visit the Temple of the Reclining Buddha. While it had actually rained for a short while during the morning, the rain had a negligible effect on the heat. It was very hot. As a result, our visit to Wat Pho (as it is known in Thai) was very brief. We walked through the pavilion of the Reclining Buddha (which is massive), looked at some Buddhist artifacts in a blissfully air-conditioned area near-by and walked slowly around the temple compound to see the massage school and the Chinese style demon guardians. (Apparently in Hindu-Buddhist tradition, not all demons are evil, some can be quite nice, especially the ones who are aware of the Buddha's teachings. No matter how nice a demon is, however, they are expressly denied the right to become a Buddhist monk. Is the Catholic Church so strict as to ask all potential priests whether they are human or not?)
We will have to go back to Wat Pho at some stage but will probably wait until we have visitors who come when the weather is a little cooler!
Bang Saray – Elephants on the Streets (Late May 2001)
One of the benefits of living in the Embassy Compound is that you can stay in apartments on the coast of the Gulf of Thailand on a rotational basis, free of charge. There are four cottages just north of a fishing village called Bang Saray (which is south of Pattaya) and another two apartments in Hua Hin which is on the other side of the Gulf about 250km south of Bangkok.
Our first experience with these holiday residences was in a cottage in the Sun Sea Sand Resort at Bang Saray. Someone was kind enough to put us on the roster even before we arrived in Bangkok and so we had a cottage booked for the last weekend in May. All four of the cottages apparently have different pros and cons. The one we were in was closest to the beach and the pool, had a good size (although only two bedrooms) and had only one storey. Other cottages have two storeys (more suitable for bringing guests), one has a separate room for a maid and they are located in various spots, although all in the one resort.
We had a great time there, after a very late start. Tim had the misfortune of having to play "night golf" earlier that day. To be fair to all, he only played the first nine holes and then bolted back to Mirrabook (the Embassy Compound) to pick up Kajsa and the kids in the hired car. As this was Tim's first experience with driving in Bangkok and his first time out to the golf course, it was a little hairy at times but he managed not to crash into anything or to get lost. At least not when on the way to or back from the golf course.
When it came to driving down to Bang Saray, it was another experience altogether. The first thing Tim did was to start driving off in the wrong direction. This was because he recalled that when he had been to Pattaya before, the mini-bus driver we had hired for the trip had driven down South Sathorn Road and then turned onto the toll-way from there. Tim tried to follow his example (rather than following the perfectly good directions available) and managed to turn off South Sathorn Road too early. This meant that he had to find a new way to get onto the toll-way. In reality, this was not too difficult because the toll-way is elevated and you can always see it as long as you stay close enough to it. Therefore navigating to the road itself was not terribly difficult. The bit that was difficult was knowing which section of the toll-way you are getting onto. Particularly if you are getting onto the toll-way at a point where there is an interchange.
At this particular interchange, there are two directions that you can take. One is towards Bang Na, which is where you want to go if you are heading towards Bang Saray. The other is towards the Rama IX bridge, which is where you want to go if you are heading towards Malaysia or Phuket. No prizes for guessing which bit Tim managed to get on. In his defence, the view from the bridge was worth looking at. Although probably not worth the more than a half hour that it took to get over the bridge, get off the toll-way, navigate around Thonburi to find a way to get back on the toll-way and get back on track.
After that, all went well until we got close to Pattaya at which point Tim made another little diversion and was happily heading off towards Cambodia. Actually, he wasn't that happy really. The road that he managed to get funneled onto, partly through a synthesis of the advice of many people, was a bit odd. It looked for all the world to be a dual carriage highway with two lanes on each carriage (two lanes going to Cambodia, two lanes going to Chonburi). The problem was that Tim managed to end up on the right hand side of the highway, feeling very much like he was barrelling down the wrong side of the road. This feeling was aided by the fact that, about half the time, we had trucks and cars barrelling towards us in our lane. Also, there was the occasional car on the left hand side of the highway (where Tim really really wanted to be) but there was no apparent way to get over there. It was encouraging to see that the cars that were over to the left did eventually come over to the side of the road where we were, but the on-coming traffic certainly seemed to think that it was fine for them to be in our lane. It was rather disconcerting.
Eventually, Tim came to a conclusion that there never was going to be a turn off from this highway to where we wanted to go and we had to go back and find our way again. Going back on the same stretch of road was no less "exciting" than before. We won't be driving there at 11 at night again in a hurry!
We eventually made it to the resort safe and sound and found that the cottage had been prepared for us. We collapsed thankfully into our beds.
For most of the weekend we just lazed around. That is what going to resorts is supposed to be about and we would have felt that we would have been wasting tax-payers' dollars if we didn't laze around. Still, there is only so much you can do for your country, so we did go out exploring a little.
We spent most of Saturday afternoon in the car driving around. First we visited Bang Saray proper, mostly so that we could locate a restaurant that we had been told was worth visiting. While there though, we also checked out a few temples (the extremely lazy way, by driving into their compounds and seeing what we could from the car before driving out again). Then we drove down to Sattahip, which is the location of the Thai Fleet. We saw some ships at a distance and noticed a few Navy bases but that was the sum total of our Naval experience. Most of our time in Sattahip was actually spent checking out the oxen and water buffalo in the Central Park. Far more interesting!
After that we drove back north towards Pattaya. The kids fell promptly asleep so, given that we were in a nicely air-conditioned car, we decided to just keep driving around and see what we could see. At some point Tim recalled having seen a sign to a floating market so we eventually headed off in that direction. Once we got onto the road towards the floating market, we started to see signs to "Elephant Village" which piqued our interest.
As, when we finally got to the "floating market" it appeared to be a complete tourist trap, not a real floating market at all, so we just kept on going towards "Elephant Village". When we got there we realised that we just had to stop and let the kids see it. As we drove into the village area, we saw about half a dozen elephants just standing near the road. There were no fences (the elephants were chained to keep them off the road) so it was pretty amazing, for us at least.
We drove past the village and headed out of it a little and then woke Kalle and Taltarni up. We had stopped close to a couple of oxen and pretended that we had woken the kids to see them. It didn't take long before they noticed that there was a much bigger animal in view.
We went back to the village (which is actually a real village) and wandered in. We were lucky enough to have got there just in time to see the daily show. There was a moment of minor panic when we thought that we wouldn't have enough cash to get in to see this show. Eventually though we found the money we needed to pay the asking price, leaving us with something like 20 baht in small change left over (about 75c worth!)
Elephant Village is certainly a tourist trap, but a better tourist trap than most. The village started off with a small number of elephants that they used to help cultivate bananas and some other fruits. As the elephants can only work at night (due to overheating problems), the villagers started to let people come and see their elephants during the day as they could receive some extra income money that way. In time they changed their focus of operations from cultivation to elephant care, to the extent that many of the elephants now in the village are ex-timber workers or have been "rescued" from circuses. The village has become a little like a refuge because Thailand is now quite strict about preserving its forest resources. A side effect of this effort to save the environment is that a large number of elephants, who used to be looked after while working the forests, are now out of a job. Leaving them free to wander around the jungle sounds good but there are problems with poachers, angry farmers (who have had their crops or buildings destroyed by elephants who are not afraid of humans and hence don't avoid built up areas) and also land mines near the border with Burma. So, this village and others collect elephants. Elephant Village started off with about seven elephants and now have about three dozen or so.
Of course, if you have three dozen elephants you quickly run into a problem. Elephants are big animals (even the smaller Asiatic Elephant) and their appetites are correspondingly big. Apparently the villagers need to get a couple of truckloads of bananas and banana plants delivered every day. By Thai standards, this is a huge expense. So, in conclusion, while the village is a tourist trap, the villagers are not getting rich out of it (certainly not during the off-season) and the money seems to be going on a good cause.
The elephants certainly seemed to be well fed and cared for. They also seemed to enjoy taking part in the show which was very entertaining and informative. It was also a lot longer than we expected for what we paid. We expected that there would be a few little tricks performed by the elephants, some people showing you how they control them and that would be it. Not so. The whole show was about an hour and a half long and included opportunities to get a photo with your favorite elephant, to feed the elephants (which we couldn't do because the bananas cost 20 baht!), to take two rides on the elephants (one bare-back and one on a bench-type saddle arrangement) and to watch plenty of demonstrations of the elephants' skills and intelligence. They had a couple of baby elephants too which were very cute, one being a six-month old who was still sticking very close to mum.
Something that we had not realised before that we now know is that elephants are hairy! Not only are they hairy but the hair is very wiry! You don't really notice it until you are right up close.
After the show we took a trip through Pattaya proper, got out some money from the bank, had an ice-cream, popped past a club to visit a friend's sister-in-law, got lost in Jomtien and then headed home to get cleaned up before going out to dinner.
A few months earlier, when Tim had been talking to Kalle and Taltarni about living in Thailand, one thing that he had claimed was that we would get to see elephants on the streets. Part of the reason that he made this outlandish claim was that when he had been in Thailand the previous September, he had seen no less than five elephants on the streets in Bangkok. This was in two weeks. Given the fact that we had been in Bangkok for almost four weeks, and we had seen a sum total of zero elephants prior to seeing those at Elephant Village, Tim's claims seemed to be baseless.
That was until that afternoon when we were heading back to the resort. We had to stop on the way, on a four-lane dual carriage highway (on the correct side of the road this time!), because there was an elephant crossing the road. We saw three elephants on the road in the space of half a kilometre. You don't see that everyday in Australia!
The restaurant that was recommended to us was fabulous. Expensive in comparison to some other restaurants around but the location could not be beaten. It was at the end of a pier in Bang Saray, open to the air and had a beautiful view of the sea. The evening was perfect to sit outside and the menu had plenty of seafood for us to try. We know that the crabs we had were fresh because we saw them being taken out of the tank and they were certainly delicious (even if a little tricky to eat). We even got serenaded by a violin player for a while which entranced Kalle and Taltarni.
We headed home from the resort the following afternoon after sleeping in and lazing around the pool (just doing our bit). While we didn't get lost per se, we certainly didn't go back home anywhere close to the same way as we went down. We are reliably informed that there are people who have been living here for a year or more who have yet to come back from Bang Saray the same way twice. It is very easy to get lost so we were quite proud of the fact that we managed to get back to Bangkok in less than three hours!