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Published: March 11th 2009
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If you see a purple taxi, you must be in Bangkok. No-where in the world have I seen a variety of colorful taxis like in Bangkok, the capital of Thailand. Mostly Toyota’s Corolla, the color varies from bright orange to red, dark pink and dusty pink, dark blue or light blue, green-and-yellow or any combination thereof. There must be thousands of them, like in most big cities we visited, but in Bangkok they color the town in bright, gay colors. And Bangkok is big. Seemingly bigger than Cairo for instance where supposedly 18 to 20 million people live. The traffic is hectic, even if many overhead highways link the various parts of the town directly.
We arrived at the outskirts via the highway from the south coast and immediately found it impossible to find a spot where we could park the car for the night. There seem te be no parking area’s at shopping centers, big public buildings or public parks. The roads were congested and while it was getting darker the situation did not get better. Because of the lack of English street names, Ann found it difficult to keep track of our where-abouts and finally,
we turned into a guarded entrance which gave access to the university. We found an agreeable parking spot and bedded down for the night after a very primitive instant noodle dinner. The next morning we were woken up by the scurrility staff who informed us we were occupying the parking spot of the dean. Trust us to find the best spot available! A no-no situation though which we rectified as soon as we could.
There is a lot to write about Bangkok. I once took a taxi from our hotel in the old part of town, mainly occupied by tourists and restaurateurs it seems sometimes, to the commercial centre of town with huge shopping malls and a net of overhead skyways for pedestrians, linking the various malls very efficiently. But what I was hoping to find wasn’t there. The Lonely Planet had promised us that in those commercial centers you could find anything you might be interested in, for a bargain price. But that wasn’t the case I was looking for a selection of affordable camera’s and hoped to see shops like in Hong Kong with their incredible selections of merchandise, but in Bangkok I found 3, maybe 4 camera
shops with less to show than in any department store in Malaysia. Maybe I was in the wrong place, it’s possible.
We had found, thanks to Ann’s contact with travelers on the internet, a place in the old town where we could leave the car and book into a not-so-cheap hotel nearby. Even after 4 years of living in a confined area, or maybe thanks to that, we still enjoy a spot of luxury now and again and in order to see the sights we had decided to move out of our camper for a couple of days.
It did not start well because Ann strained her ankle soon after we had booked in and was virtually immobilized for a day or two. When things had improved again, we visited the royal palace, amongst others. I won’t try to tell you all there is to see, but little details and some pictures hopefully will give you an impression of the incredible effort and dedication that went into the construction and decoration of the various buildings. What impressed me most was the decoration: literally millions of small square pieces of colored glass (1x1cm) have been pressed, in a repeated pattern and
touching each other, in glue or cement over hundreds, maybe thousands of square meters of walling, exterior and interior. The work that’s gone into that alone must have taken years to complete. And the richness of design and decoration, the golden surfaces and incredible use of detailed animals and figurines in the realization of this group of buildings and temples that comprise the royal palace is beyond comprehension.
Before coming here, we spent a few days in a small sea-side town North of Bangkok after the first try to find a parking place in the capital ended without success. We stayed next to the sea on a very big boulevard which, later that first night, became a battle ground between two providers of entertaining “music”. One, an amplifier with boom-boxes built in the rear of a pick-up that made the camper resonate as a sort of responding boom box eventually made Ann get up and move the car to a quieter place.
Going back a long way from there, we spent a day to find a camping place South of Bangkok along the cost, but found this muddy and smelling strongly of seafood, fresh or fried and before that we
came through lovely, very busy touristy places like Kravi and Phuket, the latter being a island with a number of very busy beaches and lots of souvenir shops. Here we stayed a few days at a lovely, quiet beach, also muddy and seemingly endless running into the sea at low tide, but not so smelly.
From Malaysia, once we were in Thailand, we noticed that this is not only the land of sun, sea and sex, as immediately noticed in Songkhla, Ho hin beach and especially in Ao nang, where we camped on a building site behind a few shops near the road to the beach, where numerous European males of various, but mainly later ages were escorting lithe little Tai girls to their various destinations. A lot less romantic but just interesting is the number of pick-up bakkies on the road here, estimated at a rate of 8 out of ten if not higher.
It’s also hot and humid here, there are no parking restrictions and the rate of criminality seems to be very, very low.
Back to the spot where we camped just before we went back into Bangkok. On our way there we had passed a large
Buddhist Temple by the side of the road and a sign directing us to an ancient Siamese city. We had decided to stop at both places on our way back to Bangkok and in both places we entered a world of wonder. It must be said that the Buddhist religion, although not recognizing a god as such, has incredible beautiful temples and places of worship, mostly not just little affairs but huge buildings, magnificently decorated and kept clean. Almost every house has its own altar, colorful and artistically decorated. Many imaginary beasts and smaller animals have a place in this religion and are prominently on view, both on religious sites as in specialist shops.
Especially the ancient Siamese city proved to be an amazing conglomeration of old buildings, temples and Artefacts, connected by road and reachable by golf cart we rented. Once again your eyes were feasting on the splendid bridges, boats on display and temples, musea and old community buildings, all mainly made from wood and beautifully preserved. Nothing is left to rot here, or considered not worth looking after. It’s a feast for the visitor, with much more to see than was expected.
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