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Hello!

So I survived my first tour of buddhist temples in Bangkok. I walked with novices or monks-in-training while inside the Wat Phra Cheong or the temple of the Reclining Buddha. This Buddha is huge! About 46 meters long...it was trully a giant of a god figure set in gold! Before that I was in the temple of the Sitting Buddha where I offered a lotus flower, prayed with incense in hand and stuck gold leaves to the other buddhas in the temple. Quite charming.

Yup, my first day in the "City of Smiles" and I got to see temples. There are around 400 temples in Bangkok alone and in Thailand, there are roughly 3,000 or 30, 000...oh I forget what the tour guide said.

The traffic is not so bad...but then again it is a Saturday. The heat is not bad either. Between Manila and Bangkok, I'd say Bangkok leaves quite an endelible mark for its charm and elegance. And the Thais really respect their royal family. The King (the only king of Siam to ever be born outside of country...was born and educated in Boston, Massachusettes) celebrated his birthday last December and the country had a national holiday. His pictures are scattered everywhere. I mean these huge, larger than life posters are everywhere!

One thing I can definitely say about Bangkok...it its a lot cleaner and far more lustier than Manila. In my own hotel they "serve" massage girls and boys with handsome faces and hard bodies. The local Thailand Weekly journal so blatantly put in their ads escort services, Thai oil massages and everything else that falls under the pleasuring of the flesh... a true contradiction to the faith observed by 90 per cent of the Thais. They practice Buddhism here...strict codes are the order for the monks. No woman is to touch a monk.

Speaking of women...I must admit, the Thai women have the comeliest face in all of South East Asia. They are just gorgeous! And the tour guide I contracted here himself was very intrigued with what I want to do and see while in Bangkok. His name is Lucky. I kid you not. A nice young man in the 2nd cycle of his life (one cycle is 12 years so, he is 24) and a former novice to please his mother. He has a kind smile and already he showed me how to perform the most beautiful salutation in the world. It is that prayer-like gesture (palms together under the chin while head is bowed) which is accompanied by "Sawasdee kha" (khrap for men, kha for women).

So everyone: "Sawasdee Kha." It means good blessings.

More to come

I am Mary Grace, looking forward to sitting under an elephant...but that is for tomorrow's adventures...

Sawasdee kha!

So, second day in city of smiles and I found myself doing the tour guided thang. This time the guide was useless because all she did was heard us through the crowd, point out the toilettes and open the van door for us...still she did all these with a smile. I can't really be all that irritated with her.

The first item on the agenda was to get out of Bangkok and drive to a place where I can not pronounce the name but is reputed to be a true blue Thai original. We drove for about a couple of hours before stopping at a coconut handicraft place...nothing to hoot about. But I did buy a 200-baht ($5-worth) jade bangle...yes, crap, more crap I am putting into my bag. Ha ha ha Down the road, we hopped on a boat and was taken to the floating market (the true blue Thai original I was referring to!). There I got to see and bargain with vendors selling their wares on paddle boats. Noodle soups, fruits like Mangoes, Lychees, Young Coconuts, Pomelos, Rose Apples, Tamarind get hauled into small paddle boats and sold. Both vendors and customers are on the water desperately trying not to get wet as they transact business. It was fun...though a thought kept me up late last night...what happens if the soup vendor runs out of water? I dare not think that she'd scoop some up from the river! Thank God I did not have some soup. But I did try the Pomelo or grapefruit...it was sweet! And the yello-ripe mangoes were divine! Sweet as sweet could be! And the green ones were as awesome as the ripe ones.

After the obligatory shopping expedition we were herded to the Crocodile farm where I saw maybe a pond-full of crocs sunning themselves and elephants dancing to Ricky Martin's "Livin' la vida loca". I also watched them play soccer elephant style! Never thought elephants could be that fast! My real intention when I saw the elephants was to get some good luck by sitting under the belly of one. But I changed my mind. I instead settled for posing beside one. I was supposed to first sit on its front right leg, but when the elephant man (trainer) commanded that magnificent beast to sit for me and ready its leg, the elephant gave a rather loud, coming from its rear sound...oh gosh it farted! That was when I actually said, no thank you on sitting under it. I might have some worries on an elephant peeing on me while sitting under it, but when it farted my worries turned into fear of actually having elephant poo all over me. Bad enough I had to scrape pigeon turd off me while in Venice, elephant poo in Bangkok is something I can really consider bad luck!

Next, we were driven to the Rose Garden which was the venue for some truly lovely cultural shows and more shopping. Watching the show made me see some shared cultural traits between the Pinoys and the Thais. Both cultures share the bamboo dance where if you have no rhytm at all you put yourself at risk of having broken ankles. For those who haven't seen the dance performed...two pairs of dancers are required to make it work. The first pair handle the two bamboo trunks (is that right?) Bamboos are not trees, they are actually the tallest grass in the world...so they couldn't have trunks...what then? Blades?...dunno...well, the useless trivia continues...Anyway, the first pair needs to tap and slap the bamboos together in a set rhythm of tap-tap, slap-slap. The second pair of dancers try to step and dance in synch with the tap tap slap slap of the bamboos. If the bamboos are tapping then the dancers should be stepping and when the bamboos are slapping their feet should be well outside the "danger zone". Got it? Wanna try it? I dare yah...ha ha ha.

The coconut dance is yet another shared dance. But the difference lies in the fact that the Thai women dance the coconut dance by slapping a pair of coconut shells together in a graceful and charming manner. The Pinoy version of this dance is preformed mostly by young boys where they tie coconut shells into their torso, upper back, hips, knees and head. The Pinoys perform this dance in forceful, frantic rhythm mindful of the fact that if they slap to hard and in the wrong place, then the dance becomes the last dance they'll ever perform. Hmmmm South East Asian dances are not good unless there is some sort of danger involved. Funny, huh?

With that my day tour ended. I enjoyed it, but not as much as the evening portion. This is the real Bangkok experience...no, I did not go to the red light district! Shame on you for thinking like that.

I had dinner under a bridge with my ex-farmer, ex-novice, tour guide Lucky and his friends Lee and Mr. something-korn. I ordered Pad Thai. Tastes the same as the ones I ate in SF. But the cold seafood appetizer, well that was something else! I ate it with rice...a veritable Faux pax (is this correct? Or should the spelling be pho pah which makes the expression an Asian one. I somehow think that it is French...oh the cultures I visited are getting meshed and mashed now...)

Anyway, dinner was very interesting indeed. I learned that Lucky is from north Thailand and the only son of a farmer. How he got named lucky...at age 5 he was one of 12 kids sent to the hospital because of a chicken pox epidemic in his village of 500 (can you imagine living in a really small village? wow!) He was the only one who survived because his mother refused the western medicine the other kids were given. He survived the others did not...lucky for him. So he adopted that name. He said that he was also specially blessed with the elephant power...okay. Ah-ha...I do believe that elephants here are very revered animals. The most amusing thing I saw during the day was an elephant in the highway and monks who really do walk in the early mornings with their begging bowls. According to Lucky, the monks only eat twice a day, breakfast and lunch which have to be consumed before noon. So Lucky, in his 3 year stint as a novice, was constantly hungry which made meditating very difficult to do. I think this guy deserves the last piece of brownie because he certainly has more authentic hunger pangs than Anna Scott of Nottinghill. Don't you think?

Oh yes, they drive on the left side of the road which made me think that Sir Anna Leonowens did more than just educate the King Mongut and his son Prince Chololongkorn in matters of science and ways of the west. I now believe she is to blame for having yet another country in the northern hemisphere driving on the wrong...ehem...left side of the road.

I too have been called sir. I don't know if it is my demeanor and clothing... backpack securely fastened to my back, jeans and black shirt that caused the bell hop to call me Sir. My hair isn't that long, but I think I am pretty lady like still---for heaven's sake the Mary Kay facial still left my skin soft, supple and oh so hydrated!

See yah all soon folks!

I am Mary Grace, carrying a silver key chain courtesy of Lucky
April 2000