Our time in Bangkok
Stress and Relaxation
Following our time in Phuket, we were all happy to get back to Bangkok; Yuki and I for the food and familiarity, and Dad because he could more easily rest while getting over the cold he caught. Rest did not come for all of us; our first full day back in Bangkok was already booked as a day-trip out to Ayutthaya, the second capital of Siam and the largest city in the world during the 17th century.
Yuki’s family had organized for a three-row, 10-seater van to take us to Ayutthaya before Dad got sick as it is a very cost effective option for larger groups. This was the only day that her mom and Mallika could both come with us. Unfortunately, Dad was sick and Jack wasn’t feeling good either that morning so Mallika stayed behind to take care of Jack — which left only Yuki, her mother Jinda, her father Mr. Kishimoto, her second cousin P-Joy, and I in the oversized van. It was just the five of us in a 10-seater van.
Ayutthaya is about 1–2 hours Northwest of Bangkok. We’d been there on our previous trip 4 years ago to see some of the ruins, but we couldn’t remember which ruins we’d already seen so we relied on our driver to make recommendations.
Our first stop was a place we hadn’t been to, called the Bangpa-in Royal Palace. When we arrived, we found out that like the Grand Palace in Bangkok, formal attire is required. This includes long pants for men and long skirts for women. Having arrived in shorts and skirts we went across the street and bought some clothes from a business set up specifically for unknowing tourists like us.
The summer palace was predominantly built in the late 1800's and includes several royal palaces, throne rooms, and residences. The palace grounds are nice to walk around. It’s possible to rent a golf cart to drive around, but we had 5 people and the limit is 4. This wasn’t a problem because the grounds weren’t overly large, and we were able to walk easily between buildings. The only downside was that it was really hot and we were sweating buckets.
The first building we visited was called Wehart Chamrunt, or Heavenly Light, and had an artistic roof structure composed of many beams and short columns. It was very Chinese in design. Inside there were some magnificent wood carvings on the doors and a huge ship carved from camel bone that was over a meter long and just as high. Unfortunately, pictures are not allowed on the inside.
Nearby, there is a water tower combined with an observation tower. Apparently one of the former kings liked to look out over the grounds from the top. We went inside to take some photos but the more interesting picture was of the tower itself from the ground level.
Along one side of the property is a series of houses. King Rama V had many wives and he built a house for each one’s family. There is also a house for his grandmother and graves for some of his children that died in their youth. It’s possible to go into the first room of the houses and see old furniture. Because King Rama V was educated in Europe and brought back the foreign culture of the 1800's, almost all of the buildings at the palace were built in a European colonial style. The furniture inside is similarly European, which seems out of place in Asia.
After some popsicles for snack we visited the throne room, which was appropriately grand and ornate. Afterwards,we explored a museum building and the power went out. I found it interesting that even these European-style buildings had enough large windows that it was still bright enough inside to see the displays. Most buildings in Canada get very dark when the power goes out and one needs a flashlight to find the exit.
We had lunch on a river barge. The barge was floating on the Chao Phraya river, which flows through Bangkok. Then we went to visit some Wats (temples) and ruins. The first was Wat Phanan Choeng, which is a modern-day temple still in use, and the second was Wat Mahathat, a large ruin of a Buddhist monastery. We weren’t sure if we’d been here before because I didn’t remember the ruins nor the Buddha’s head encased in tree roots. Either way, I found walking around the ruins enjoyable despite the sweltering heat.
The last stop of the day was Wat Na Phra Meru, another modern day Wat. Apparently it is the only one from the Khmer empire that didn’t burn down, and it has a unique version of the Buddha inside that is more ornate and jewelled than usual. These Wats were interesting to see but weren’t very photogenic, so I didn’t take many photos.
When we arrived in Bangkok, I found out in that my computer would no longer start up. The computer occasionally switched to a black screen momentarily while in Phuket and Chiang Mai, but it was a rare occurrence and I didn’t think much of it at the time because I wasn’t using the computer much. In Bangkok I wanted to backup my photos and do some photo editing for the blog, but I could only boot to a black screen and in recovery mode I couldn’t find the start-up hard drive.
Yuki and her cousin helped me take it to an iCare store, an authorized repair shop, and they took it in to do some diagnostics. They said it would take up to 5 days, during which we visited with Yuki’s family and went to nearby malls. When iCare got back to us, they confirmed my suspicions that my hard drive was busted but also told me that one of my batteries was starting to bulge. I had figured the hard drive was gone in my own diagnostics, but it was good to get confirmation. This was frustrating, because it is a solid state hard drive with no moving parts and is no larger than a computer chip. The battery was an unexpected surprise and the nail in the coffin.
With less than a week before we left the country, we didn’t have a lot of options for fixing the computer. There wasn’t enough time to order a replacement hard drive and it was one third the cost of buying a new computer. The iCare shop recommended instead that we buy a third party hard drive ourselves and bring it back for them to install.
Thailand has a lot of malls and there are too many to count. We thought ourselves fortunate that across the street was an electronics mall, but half of the mall was empty and the other half that we visited didn’t have a compatible SSD. Apparently 4 years old is too old to be common. One of the shops looked up another mall downtown that sold a compatible hard drive, but it was over $400. Considering the battery was failing, I started to question whether I should repair the computer or not. It was starting to look like an old used car where maintenance fees would quickly outpace replacement value. I could easily imagine that the battery would get worse and the computer would fail again in the next 6 months.
Unable to fix the computer, we decided to scrap it and leave it behind. I’d brought the computer for photo editing and to complete an MArch application this fall. I didn’t realize how dependant I was on the computer until it was gone.
We decided to take Yuki’s computer on our travels but it’s even older, twice as heavy and more fragile. I didn’t realize it until we left that while I could backup photos to Dropbox, it doesn’t have the software to do photo editing for the blog or SketchUp work. As well, it’s too old to have the software for stitching panoramic photos together, so the remainder of the photos on the blog aren’t going to be what they should be. We’re going to be limping through the trip as best as we can until we get back home at Christmas, when I have to make a difficult decision on whether to buy a new computer or not. I’m not crazy about the cost of a new computer or the missing features on the latest computers, so I’m not sure what I’m going to do yet.
During the computer debacle, Yuki’s mom graciously put us up in a luxurious hotel downtown for a weekend so that we could more easily explore downtown as their house in the suburbs is over an hour’s drive. Like her gift to the Monkey Tree cruise on our previous trip, her mom’s generosity is unbounded.
We thought we’d be exploring the big malls on our own, but Yuki’s mom and cousin joined us for the day at Chatuchak weekend market and then dropped us off at the Chatrium hotel. The hotel gave us a free room upgrade and a view of the river. It was late and the pool was closing in half an hour, but we still decided to go for a swim. The water was cool and it was raining, but the swim was still enjoyable and fun because the pool is quite large, there are three of them, and there was barely anybody around.
The next day, the family came down again to see the hotel room and then take us out of Bangkok on a day trip to Amphawa Floating Market. Dad wanted to see a floating market, and apparently the most well-known tourist market has started to die off while this one has picked up. I didn’t expect much based on our previous visit but it turned out to be better this time, possibly because it was a weekend and more lively.
The market is on the shore with the only floating part being boats that cook seafood for restaurants. The shops are all along each side of the canal and the streets leading in. Yuki and Dad wrote some postcards and Jinda bought me a leather wallet that I’d been eyeing since Chatuchak but turned out to be cheaper here.
At the end, we decided to take a boat cruise. Most people use the boats to ferry them to five nearby temples, but you can also get a cruise around the island. We did the latter and it was well worth it. Our cruise stopped along the way to point out how enormously expensive some hotels were, the locals fishing for prawns, and other points of interest.
As we were coming back to the market, Mallika noticed that we were close to the parking lot so we asked to pull in early. She’d told me that there was a train market nearby earlier, and I said I wanted to go. Mallika is one of the most resourceful people I’ve ever met. She called the train station to find out where the market was and when the train was leaving. Then she drove us as close as she could and told us to hop out while she found parking.
We arrived at the Maeklong station moments before the announcement that the train would leave in 1 minute. We scrambled along the train tracks and market stalls to find a suitable vantage point. The 30 second warning went off and the vendors started bringing in their goods. Just like a video I’d seen on YouTube, the vendors pulled in their goods from the train tracks and took down the awnings. In 30 seconds, the train came through the market and 30 seconds later the vendors were putting their awnings back out.
Yuki got a video of the whole affair. Some annoying person stepped right in front of her while she was filming, which you can see in the iPhone video. We were not impressed by the rudeness and it blocked both our views, so neither of us had a very good view of the train and the train passed before I really got to see it. I was so busy trying to find a vantage point without getting hit by the train that I almost missed it. It was over way too quickly!
You can see in the video that the train passed within a foot of us and over top of the goods sold in the market.
I noticed on our way out that a lot of the goods sold in this market are actually food and not touristy things. I would have thought this would be a big tourist attraction, but most of the market is actually for locals.
Still, I was very happy that we got to see this because I’d seen it on YouTube but didn’t realize it was in Thailand or that it was so close to Bangkok. I think there are actually a few markets like this in Thailand. When we met up with Mallika again she said she’d parked at a Wat and then raced over to the tracks to see it in time as well.
After the train market, we headed back towards Asiatique, which is just up the road from our hotel accommodations. Asiatique was formerly a warehouse on the Chao Phraya river that turned into a market-like mall. It’s upper scale and quite trendy. It seemed like everyone picked up some souvenirs and we also ate a fancy Japanese dinner. We spent a long time looking for a store selling Coca Cola clocks because Dad had seen one at the Chiang Mai market that he wanted. We didn’t find the shop until we were on our way out and Mallika’s boyfriend helped haggle, but it wasn’t the same clock and the price was still high so we walked away.
Though we visited all of the major malls in Bangkok, I didn’t buy anything. I couldn’t find the right kind of clothing and I’m not too interested in souvenirs. Yuki, on the other hand, found plushies of We Bare Bears (our newfound obsession) and bought the stack of three.
The day before we left Bangkok, Yuki showed her mom her travel journal. Her mom then showed her cousin, who got really excited about the idea of creative journaling and owning a Traveler’s Notebook. Mallika had me look up prices in America for the travel journal and an Instax printer. The next day, we went downtown to buy a journal and she ordered the printer online.
It’s unfortunate that we only found out that Mallika likes crafting and journaling at the end of our trip. Had we known sooner, Yuki and Mallika could have spent some time crafting together. During our time in Sydney, Australia, Mallika would send us photos of her journal as she fills pages with photos and drawings — but more on that in the next blog post.
