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Published: April 12th 2008
Last evening’s secret errand was eventually completed and I made it back to the hotel by midnight or so. I was so excited I could hardly sleep, though mom had been asleep for hours by then.
I slipped a note under mom’s door reminding her that breakfast was served starting at 7:30 and I would meet her promptly at that time. (I knew that by then we would both be more than ready for coffee, as our typical morning routine finds us both awake by 6:00 or 6:30.) I positioned her carefully at the breakfast table, and at the signal, I asked her to please close her eyes for a little birthday surprise. (She confessed later that she had been expecting maybe the hotel staff to sing her Happy Birthday, or some other cheesy “surprise.”) When all was in order, I told her she could open her eyes.
When she did, and she found herself staring at Jasmine, Dylan, and Steve across the table, there were at least two full seconds of utter blank confusion on her face. Then she registered who she was looking at, and was she ever surprised!
(The plan had been in the works
for months, though mom knew nothing about it. Originally, just Steve and Jaz were going to join us, and though I had invited Dylan, he only decided to come along a few weeks ago (which entailed all kinds of fun finagling the plane and train and hotel reservations - I love doing that stuff!) They were supposed to have arrived in Bangkok yesterday two hours after we did and I had planned on mom and me meeting them at the airport, but their plane was delayed until 10:30 pm. Thanks to email and internet connections, I learned early on that they would be delayed, so I could get mom and myself to the hotel in the afternoon and then arrange a van to bring me back to the airport to meet them at the airport and bring them to the hotel. By the time they arrived, it had been over 30 hours since they left home!)
Mom was flabbergasted, and thrilled to see them! Hugs and smiles, and then more hugs and more smiles, and exclamations of disbelief abounded. The look on my mom’s face was priceless, and we were all so thrilled to have pulled off the surprise.
The Recling Buddha at Wat Po
"Sometimes, Buddha just needs a little rest," I once heard it explained.(There were so many times I almost blew it in the last couple of weeks during our travels! I found myself starting to say things like, “Steve will love all this street food…if he ever comes here someday!”)
We all enjoyed a hearty breakfast at the hotel before setting off to see a bit of air-conditioned Bangkok. Actually, we started off at Wat Po, the site of the 150-foot-long Reclining Buddha, among other significant sights. Despite the jet lag, lack of sleep, and not yet being adjusted to the heat, Steve and the kids held up well for much of the day. Steve had to stop and admire every food stall we passed on the street, and Dylan and Jaz took it all in with appropriate admiration and interest.
While at Wat Po, one of the things you can do is get a little tin cup of coins, meant to be dropped one at a time in a long line of brass begging bowls as a way of “making merit.” While we certainly aren’t Buddhist, I’m all for partaking in local customs as long as it doesn’t offend anyone, so the kids and I made a donation and
Making merit at Wat Po
Perhaps our Thai TV debut...? took our tin cups of coins to drop in the bowls. (Any
Amazing Race fans might remember a season in which the participants had to complete this task, counting the bowls along the way. There are 112, I think.) Partway down the line, I noticed in my peripheral vision that someone with a large video camera was trailing alongside us. By the time we got to the end of the line , I could see more clearly that there were two cameramen with what looked like TV-type cameras. We had seen them earlier, interviewing a monk, probably related to the upcoming Thai New Year,
Songkran and the festivities that were planned in the coming days. Who knows, maybe Jaz and Dylan and I will end up on Thai TV news! Or the Travel Channel! (I certainly hope not, as I was in my usual site-seeing uniform of rolled-up pants, a T-shirt, and sweat-soaked hair that previously been tucked inside a baseball cap until I had to take it off to enter the Wat!)
The sweating continues: Bangkok is damn hot today, and still the heat doesn’t bother me as much as the perspiration. My clothes are drenched within an
hour of walking around, I drink liquids all day and never need a restroom, and by afternoon, my forehead stings with the accumulated salt of my sweat. Jaz and Dylan don’t seem to sweat nearly as much as I do, and Jaz, who never seems to drink anything anyway, is probably already tired of us nagging her to drink more.
The other interesting sight at Wat Po was what looked like a field trip of young monks. A large group of dozens of young boys, maybe 8 to 12 years old, all with recently shaved heads, tugging at and adjusting their robes, carrying identical textbooks, filed in three and four abreast to line up for entrance to see the Reclining Buddha.. I am a bit intrigued by every monk I see, wondering what their story is - and I have no idea what the story of this group of young boys might be. It reminds what an ignorant tourist I can be. Despite months of research about where I will go and where I will stay and what I might eat when I get there, I never learn enough about the customs and culture of the places I visit,
despite efforts to learn enough to be a respectful tourist.
From Wat Po, we got back on the river ferry and headed for the station that would connect us with the SkyTrain, a Disney-esque monorail that connects some of the more commercial/retail sights . Most importantly, we knew that both the SkyTrain and the many malls that dotted its route would be air-conditioned.
Apparently, there are people who come to Bangkok from all over the world for nothing but shopping, and having now seen a couple of the many malls, it must be true. These are high-end, upscale, multi-story malls with every designer you can imagine represented. Dylan was curious enough to walk into one shop and look at prices of watches, just to get an idea of what exactly we were looking at in the display windows - Rolex watch: $21,000. (Of course the price was listed in
baht, but Dylan and Jaz both have an impressive ability to convert that to US dollars in their head at lightning speed.) We bought nothing, as you might have guessed, but we did discover that they had an amazing food court with a special celebration of Thai food going
on, so for not much more than pocket change, we sampled unidentified spicy delights in a setting that looked a little less dicey than eating from the street vendor stalls. Dylan chose his selection by asking for some of whatever had the most chilies floating on top - some kind of shredded fish and rice that was so hot that even Steve started to sweat when he sampled it - WOW! It was HOT! Steve got a chicken curry dish that he enjoyed a great deal. Jaz, who has decided to eat meat indiscriminately on this trip (rather than free-range only, as at home), had some kind of pork satay on a skewer. Nothing like meat-on-a-stick - yum! My mom found something mild enough to suit her tastes, and I scored a bite of everybody’s food, enjoying it all.
We decided to make the adventurous foray from the Paragon Mall to the CenterWorld Mall a couple of blocks away. Along the way, we ran into a “helpful” Thai man wearing a “Maytag” inscription on his polo shirt, who was happy to direct us in the right direction as we hit an intersection. He was friendly and chatted us up
a bit, asking the usual “Where are you from? How long have you been in Bangkok? Welcome to my country!” When we told him we were headed to CenterWorld Mall, he happily pointed us in the right direction, but then pointed out, “But it is a Buddhist holiday today, so it does not open until 2:00 this afternoon. You’ll have to come later. But if you would like to take a boat ride, I can arrange this for you. What are you doing this afternoon?” We assured him that we had plans for the afternoon (which we did; more on that soon) and moved on. I was amused that we had now witnessed one of the most famous tourist scams in Bangkok - though people usually run into this at the major temples or the Palace. It was the old “The ______ is closed today/opening late today. I would be happy to take you on a boat tour/city tour/to an excellent jewelry shop.” I read so often about this scam that I would have been disappointed not to have experienced it at some point.
After some time wandering the air-conditioned CenterWorld Mall (amazingly open for business before 2:00!), we
eventually headed back to the hotel via SkyTrain and river ferry. The heat and jet lag were catching up to the recent arrivals, and a little down time was in order. The afternoon plan included some travelers catching up on email (computers available in the hotel reception and dining area), and all travelers getting one-hour massage in the garden pavilion at the hotel. Thai massage is often described as “passive yoga” because of the amount of stretching and twisting that is done to the victim - er, subject - rather than the more relaxing “oil massage” that most of us are familiar with.
Everyone enjoyed their massage, though most of us were willing to admit later that at least some parts of it bordered on painful. After the massages, we each were served hot ginger tea and had our faces, necks, and arms wiped down with cold wet towels. I certainly felt limber and relaxed after all of this torture/pampering.
Jaz’s lack of sleep caught up with her early this evening and she went to take a nap while some of us were still getting massages. When I tried to wake her up in time to have birthday
cake, there was no rousing her at all - in fact, I had to get the hotel staff to let me in her room because no amount of knocking could wake her. So she still sleeps as I am getting ready for bed, and I can only hope she sleeps all night rather than waking up ready to go at 2:00 am.
The rest of us had cake and wine and chatted a bit before heading off to bed ourselves. The alarm will be going off early in the morning so we will be ready to leave at 6:00 for our flight to Chiang Mai.
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Sara Denny
non-member comment
Happy Birthday, Meda!
Very cool, Jess. Since your skillful and manipulative foreshadowing of the surprise I have been impatiently checking for your blog. Are you sure you don't have Billy in a box somewhere ready to jump out? Great fun. Thanks for the treat: I get to feel like I'm there without the sweat.