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| Kate and Reg at the Grand Palace |
We stayed at the Centre Point, Pratunam in the central business district -- it's a modern high rise hotel with most of the services one would want. Some notably lacking -- we'll get to that in a bit. We had a large room with a balcony and a view of the green space around the Indonesian Embassy. We especially liked the breakfast buffet with the introduction to many Thai foods at the pool level of the hotel.
It's a long flight over the pole to get to Hong Kong and from there a relatively short hop to Bangkok but at the end of the travels you're twelve hours out your time zone and have had a very, very long day without sleep. We had arranged with a private tour company to meet us at the airport and to show us around the city the next day as we were on a very short stay over (and would of course be somewhat jag lagged by it all). At the end of the day we're glad we had arranged a guide and driver for Bangkok -- we could not have figured things out without their help and navigating the city is difficult even with a driver. Although it was rather rushed, we saw about all we needed to. Or at least when it comes to the many Temples and Buddhas.
Our original intention had been to fly back home through Bangkok after the Mekong river tour and to visit the city and sights then but events with Kate's work in Australia changed our plans so we only had only this brief visit to the city at the beginning of our adventures.
Bangkok is a huge and crowded city. Modern but with lots of history to explore. We had a tour guide and driver for a day and visited some of the landmarks -- the Grand Palace with all the gilting and the small Emerald Buddha (it's jade not emerald) where the last king Rama IX is on view (the nation is mourning his death back in October of 2016), a long boat tour of the canals, Wat Arun (the Temple of Dawn) with the much larger Golden Buddha (there's some restoration work at that temple), Wat Pho with the stunningly huge Reclining Buddha gilt in gold, and finally the Jim Thompson silk house where we packed it in and asked to be taken home. We had the driver and guide for the day but needed to rest.
The death of the King was and is a significant event for all of Thailand. At the time of his death he was the longest reigning monarch in the world having served for over 70 years. In spite of the many titles he was most often referred to simply as "our beloved king". Clearly he was well loved, if not revered, and many Thai showed their respect by dressing in black to mourn his passing. Many, like our guide, were committed to wearing black for a year! Not any easy thing to do in a country where it's very warm with a relentless sun.
There were long lineups to view the king's body which was resting in state at the Grand Palace when we visited. Our siste- in-law El (she's a native Thai from Bangkok) told us that she had stood in line at least twice to view the body and pay her respects. We did not stand in line but were told that on at least some days people were in the queue for 8 hours or more! We asked why the long period of resting in state and were told that everyone in Thailand should have a chance to pay their respects. As a technical issue, a crematorium for the king will have to be built (he cannot be cremated in any ordinary crematorium) -- but were they not prepared that the king would die? Further, the new king (his son) would not have a formal coronation until after the king was cremated. That might take a year or so! While everyone loved the king who had died there were reservations expressed about the new king. He's young and has big shoes to fill.
Jet lag, and the heat of the day, had caught up to us at the Jim Thompson silk house by 3:00pm so we cut our explorations short having seen perhaps one too many Buddha's -- little did we know what would await us in the rest of South East Asia. Like the Catholic churches in Italy, Buddhist temples in South East Asia are found on every corner and in every community no matter how small. Not to complain, as religions go, it's pretty a good one -- no one ever went to war over the Buddha. Our guide told us that while most people profess to be Buddhists, few actually practice the religion and follow the various tenets -- most importantly the ban on intoxicants. He had recently vowed to be a better Buddhist and had forsaken alcohol. Not us though!
After our day out in the hot sun with our driver and guide we returned thirstily to our hotel at around 3:00pm and asked the concierge at the front desk where we might buy some alcohol with lunch or where we might find some to take back to our room. They kindly pointed us to a mall across the street that had a couple of restaurants (sadly none of them served alcohol) and a lot of technology shops -- if you're looking for smart phones that would have been the place to shop. We asked for help at an information desk in the technology mall and they pointed us to another mall across the street where there was a small market in the basement which sold a bit of wine and some chilled beers. A very limited selection but when in Rome.... I had picked out some cold beer and Kate wanted to ask the clerk about the limited wines that were available behind the counter. We approached the clerk who had a limited command of our language (we of course know nothing of the Thai language) but he managed to communicate clearly "No sale! No Sale!". We didn't understand what was up and he handed us a laminated card in English, Thai, perhaps Chinese and more which basically said that they respect the law of the land and don't sell alcohol outside the designated hours 11:00am to 2:00pm and 5:00pm until midnight. So, at 3:00pm, we were out of luck. There was a similar issue that cropped up when we were with Paul and El later in our trip -- one of the days was the Buddha's birthday and you couldn't get any drink then either.
As for Bangkok we figured: Ok, we can handle this. We'll go back to our hotel and either go to the the restaurant, or the bar, or order a bottle to our room. Sadly our hotel informed us that there was no alcohol at the restaurant, no bar in the hotel, and no alcohol of any sort to be delivered to our room or to be found in the hotel. I felt like we were caught in a Mormon hell of some sort -- was this Salt Lake City, Utah all those many years ago?
We ended up in bed early that night after a room service meal without any drinks. The next day we were off to visit Paul and El flying out around noon.
