My Thai--Bangkok I

I adore Bangkok!  It is the perfect mixture of Western and Eastern, modern and traditional, first world and third world, familiar and exotic.  We spent our first day in Southeast Asia touring Bangkok with our personal guide and driver.  Tod, our guide, was a delight.  He spoke excellent English and seemed devoted to helping us learn as much as possible.  He even carried an iPad with photos, maps, and historical information to help us better understand each site.

The first experience of the morning was a huge buffet breakfast at our hotel, with favorite dishes for travelers from around the globe--ham and eggs, baked beans and broiled tomatoes, cold meats and cheeses, Oriental fruits, and even noodle soup.  The lavish, global breakfast was one constant of our lovely hotels in Thailand, Cambodia, and Myanmar. 

We then visited Wat Po, Temple of the Reclining Buddha, where we had a massage at the temple-run massage school and fell in love with Thai temple architecture, including both buildings and sculptures.  We were fascinated by how Chinese some sculptures looked and how Indian others were.

We visited Wat Po on a Buddhist holiday for honoring ancestors.  Tod pointed out the families who had brought food to offer to their ancestors, and to share with the monks and family members.  One family group had some thirty members, like a Mormon family reunion.  That family had arranged for nine monks to chant for them.

The reclining Buddha was 150 feet long, covered with gold, with 10-foot long feet, inscribed with 108 auspicious signs of the Buddha.  After filing past the statue, pilgrims dropped coins into each of 108 pots for charity and good luck.

Tod led us through both food and flower markets, with their pungent colors and smells.  The largest section of the flower market was for temple offerings.  We had been strictly instructed to avoid street food, but we promptly broke that rule, and trusted that the eight tablets of Pepto-Bismol we took each day would protect us!  The fresh pineapple was amazingly sweet, the coconut custard rich and smooth.

Bangkok sits on the Chao Phraya River and, in addition, has many Venetian-style canals.  We rode one boat after another, as we traipsed from site to site.  Once we stopped to toss bread into the water and see the catfish fight over it!

The boats paused for a minute or less at each stop and never actually tied up, so Dave and I learned to leap with abandon.  We got great views of Thai life, from temples and elegant houses to thatch huts and boys swimming, as we roamed the canals.

Next stop was Wat Arun, Temple of Dawn, with Khmer (Cambodian) style pagodas, or prangs.  Cambodian temples have a heavy Indian influence, since Cambodia was Hindu for many hundreds of years.

Our next stop was the Grand Palace.  We saw Wat Phra Kaew, with its statue of the Emerald Buddha, surrounded by elaborate gold stupas and sculptures of demons and guardians. 

And we saw the palace itself, with design elements from both East and West.  Thailand was never a Europearn colony, as were all the countries around it.  However, during the mid-1800s, it tried very hard to Westernize.  The guard uniforms and changing-of-the-guard ceremony could fit nicely at Arlington Cemetery (except, maybe, the elephant statue brooding over it all).

We were game for one last stupa, Wat Saket, or Golden Mount, which was once the highest point in the city. We had to climb 318 steps, straight uphill, to get to it.  In addition to the golden pagoda and antique bells covered with bouganvillea, there was a stunning view over all of Bangkok. 

Powdered Wigs and the Guillotine

"If I can find some cheap white wigs online, we'll celebrate the French Revolution," I promised Camille's children, as they finished their history lessons before leaving for Europe.  The internet is a treasure trove of quirky things.  I not only ordered nine white wigs, but also two "sexy Marie Antoinette dresses," which cost only $10 apiece.  With the bodices turned backwards on Emilie and Annelise, the dresses were perfectly proper.  We hauled out silks, satins, and a few lace tablecloths for dresses, and we made an elegant French aristocracy for our February 22, 2012 dinner. 

 

Our meal was very French, from the vichyssoise through the poulet a creme, served with baguettes, to the chocolate raspberry mousse cake from La Gourmandise, SLC's French bakery.

Louis XVI graced our table.

The meal was tasty, the clothes fancy, the conversation festive and light.  The after dinner entertainment was a downer.  We watched a documentary on the real French Revolution, and we saw that all our characters went to the guillotine!

The Medicis Dine with Eric the Bucket

Camille and her children studied the Renaissance, as they prepared for their trip to Rome and Florence.  On February 15, 2012, we had a Renaissance feast, at which we all dressed up as the fabulously rich Medici family, bankers in Florence during the 1400s.  Some of our names were already Italian, such as Mia and Sophia, but the rest of us chose new names--Luigi, Lorenzo, Maria, Georgina, and Florenzia.  I had scoured the remnant tables at fabric stores for fancy red and turquoise velvet, black fake fur, green silk, sheer turquoise organza with shiny crystals imbedded in it, and sheer purple organza with tiny silver threads.  As Sophia wrapped the nearly transparent purple organza around herself, she asked, "Do I wear anything under this?"  We sat down to a 5-course dinner at a table festooned with bright red chargers, an elaborate appliqued cloth, red and gold ribbons, and bright green Venetian glass.

As Medici, we were elegant and refined.  We talked about "our dome", being built by Brunelleschi, and about the exciting art work of that new sculptor, Michaelangelo.

Our guest at dinner was Eric the Bucket, from Vinland.  Since the Medicis financed businesses all over Europe, Eric brought his new invention, named after himself (i.e. a bucket) and asked the Medicis to invest.  He wanted to beat his competition, coming from the Pail family.

We voted on the investment as Eric covered his eyes, and we decided unanimously to give him enough gold coins and jewels to get his factory going.  We then finished our opulent meal with lime pie (with limes from...um...southern Italy?)