Francesca and Henk-Jan's Backpacking Trip!
Monday, January 11, 2010
Decorative Bangkok
Henk and I got up pretty early on the 9th of January, heading out of the hostel before 11:00 AM on our way to the Jim Thompson house, a decorative Thai-style house we could take a tour through. However, we got distracted and ended up taking a detour to the Bangkok Art & Culture Center that I had seen advertised on the SkyTrain earlier. There was supposed to be an awesome Japanese Modern Art exhibit entitled “Twist & Shout,” which explored artists concerned with “Japanese minds that are obsessed with anxiety stemming from uncertainty.” We entered the museum, and were awed by a giant robot directly in our path! The robot must have been more than 20 feet tall… and looked pretty cool! We made our way through the escaladers up to the Japanese exhibit on the 8th floor, taking our time to circle each floor and look at some of the other art on display.
An exhibit on Thai Folk Wisdom had some unique stories accompanying each art piece. The quote for this piece was: “Something in one’s hand is better than nothing.” This came from the short story: Uncle and Auntie had been sitting around doing nothing for several days, except sighing loudly. Yesterday, they argued until they were red in the face. Today things were calmer. Finally Auntie said “Well, we have no option do we? We’ll have to give in. Getting something will be better than nothing. Uncle was silent then mumbled as if to himself, “Well, getting a lump of shit is better than a fart I suppose.” I thought the story didn’t have much of a connection with the art piece it went with, but it was pretty humorous.
Next we found an exhibit on Burma, one on large wall paintings, and finally we made it to our goal: “Twist and Shout.” To be specific (according to the description) the Japanese artists here try to display two mindsets in their artwork – that of the introvert and that of the extrovert – as they relate to young Japanese culture. To explain what these means visually, you’ll have to take a look at a few of our pictures. The colors are bright and fun, yet much of the subject matter is serious or uncomfortable. One of the pieces even included the artist sitting behind a mask in the corner of his artwork – creepy yet captivating! Our exploration ended with a cool large art piece consisting of a room filled with bright blue LED numbers which symbolized “Massive Death,” or a worldwide apocalypse as they constantly “counted down.”
Shortly after 12:00 PM, Henk and I arrived at the Jim Thompson House, our original destination for the day. Since we felt a little pressed for time, we by-passed having lunch in the cool little café’ there, and signed up for the next available tour right away. We popped into the on-site museum on Astrology since we had 20 minutes or so to kill before the tour would begin. We learned: that “…Thailand’s astrological system was influenced by Hinduism and associated with a cosmology that focused on the study of the sky and stars. Thai astrology focuses on power and the relationship between governing bodies and those who are governed. [Furthermore,] from the Ayutthaya to early Bangkok period, the social hierarchy was divided into five categories: ruler, aristocrat, monk, commoners and slaves.” Interesting! I discovered that I am a “fire rabbit,” and Henk is a “wood ox” according to our astrological birthdates. We next moved on to trying samples of our personal “essential oils – mind was bergamot/jasmine and Henk’s was oil that included vertiver.
We checked the time – our tour was starting! We walked over to the meeting point and joined our group. Some background on him we learned from our tour: “Jim Thompson… was an American… [and] a practicing architect… he was sent to Bangkok… and fell in love with Thailand… decid[ing] to live in Thailand permanently... He gained further renown through the construction of his house which combined six teak buildings. On March 26th, 1967 [he] disappeared while on a visit to the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia. Not a single valid clue has turned up in the ensuing years as to what might have happened to him.”
Jim Thompson’s house was built in Thai-style, but larger. He actually took the normal layout of one Thai house and connected it together 6 times to make one large continuous floor plan. This included having “raised barriers” between doorways. I have always found these barriers to be slightly annoying (easy to stub your toe on them) but I knew that for some reason you weren’t supposed to step ON the barrier, but OVER it instead. Our guide explained to us that these barriers stop evil spirits from moving between rooms in the house, since Thai people believe spirits can only move across the floor.
In this picture, you can see the Thai-style windows, which are slightly “off,” not perfectly rectangular. This was because the house was built using a special peg system that ends up making the entire house look a bit off, and thus the windows are designed to make in an attempt to make things seem more symmetrical. As we moved through the house (where we weren’t allowed to take pictures anymore) we came across Jim Thompson’s bedroom where we were shown two unique bedpans. The man’s bedpan was in the shape of a cat, whose head comes off for… well, you know. The woman’s bedpan was in the shape of a frog, with a back that was “open for business.”
Thompson surrounded his house with huge trees and sprawling plants in an attempt to make his environment have a ‘jungle’ feel to it. Outside in the garden of Thai houses, including Jim Thompson’s, is a small “dollhouse-sized” house. However, this house is not for games. It is thought to house all of the good spirits and ancestors that protect the family of the large house, and thus ever morning offerings are made to the little house and its spirits to insure the well-being of the family. As we left the tour, we were given two little origami gifts – a paper frog that hopped for Henk, and a paper swan that flapped for me. Cute!
We jumped in a cab heading all the way across town to the Vimanmek Dusit Palace; the largest golden teakwood mansion. Since the mansion was built after King Rama V’s return from a trip to Europe, the 120 meter + long house reflects a clearly Western influence. The brochure: “In 1897, King Rama V used his personal money to purchase orchards and paddy fields for the construction of a royal garden which he named ‘the Dusit Garden’… he then commanded in 1900 that a permanent residence be built in Dusit Garden. However, King Rama V only lived in Vimanmek for five years until another villa was complete. After Rama V, the Mansion was used by various consorts of the royal family, as the royal family themselves continued to live at the Grand Palace. Eventually, King Rama IX gave permission for the mansion to be renovated as a museum to commemorate King Rama V.” There was nothing too “Thai” about the mansion, since it was done in Western-style, so you’re not missing too much by only seeing a picture of the outside.
Next we made our way to the Throne Hall, which was built by King Rama V as a lavish reception hall. Since King Rama V seemed to really have a fetish for Western-style architecture after his trip, he had this building constructed in the Italian Renaissance and Neo Classic style. Here, again, we weren’t allowed to take pictures. This building was amazing to Henk and I! Really something unique: the building itself was huge with a dome that you’d expect to see Western murals on – Christian-themes, or Roman/Greek-themes – but instead, you are presented with a huge image of Buddha and Thai-themes on the ceiling above you. It was a bizarre contrast that for some reason seemed to work… I think it is the similar elaborateness in display that Thais and Westerners give to such buildings that made the contrasting East/West themes mesh well. That dome it something you have to see! Also inside were some fantastic gold pieces that were so detailed they start to hurt your eyes just looking at them. One notable piece I remember was a large green dragon-decorated chandelier – words can’t do that thing justice! It was elegant yet dark, refined and still there was something eerie about its presence on the ceiling. Incredible.
Exiting the Throne Hall, we found the grounds pretty packed with people. We had learned earlier that it was “Children’s Day,” and thus some of the exhibits were free to the public, so pretty much everyone was out for the afternoon. Henk and I flagged down a tuk-tuk and negotiated for the driver to take us to the SkyTrain stop. We were headed to JJ (JatuJak) Market! This market is the world’s biggest weekend market which makes it difficult to navigate since it’s so large, even with a map. By the time we got to the market it was 4:30 pm and we were starving! After searching a couple places, we sat down at one of the stalls for some delicious food. Done with our meal, we got up to start exploring. We were pretty awed by the extent of the market – it seemed never to end! There were snacks being prepared, pets on offer, even garden-ware! We ended up buying a new shirt for Henk and some cute little key-rings for my purse for a total of I think $3.00 or so. Everything was so cheap! We roamed around the market until sunset, when we returned to the SkyTrain to take us back to our hostel.
On the 10th of January our original plan was to take the Chinatown tram to explore the business district of Bangkok. However, when we got to the tram stop we learned that they had shut it down! Guess it wasn’t much of a money-maker. We revised our plan and decided to just walk to the Wat-Tri Mit Wit Thayaram instead… the temple that housed the largest solid gold Buddha. On our way to the temple, we were stopped by a man on the street who asked where we were going and told us the temple was closed because it was “a holiday.” He took our map and marked a different location with a pen, “You should go here instead.” Immediately, I pressed Henk to move on and not continue conversation with this guy – he was a scam artist! I had read both in the Lonely Planet and online about the many scams they have in Thailand for tourists.
Many of them follow the same storyline: On your way to the tourist attraction you planned to visit, a “friendly” local asks you if you need some help. Since most tourists are looking at their maps trying to find the attraction, it makes it easy for the local to interrupt. You ask them about the temple/palace/museum and they tell you that it is closed for the day for some reason. They then suggest you go to a different attraction, and even hire a tuk-tuk driver to take you around for a low price. The local claims the price is this low due to special government gas coupons (which is a complete lie) and then they proceed to take you to a temple or two and then bring you to a ton of jewelry stores and clothing stores as well in the hopes that you’ll buy some crazy overpriced item. Henk and I actually met a couple later in our trip who had this exact thing happen to them, but since they kept refusing to buy anything, the tuk-tuk driver moved onto his next customer.
Our visit to the Temple of the Golden Buddha began with a climb up the stairs to the first museum on Chinese heritage in the area. We learned how Chinese traders came on by junk ships from their homeland to settle around the Thai Kingdom. However, by the end of King Rama III’s reign, junk-trade began to decline, losing out to Western-style steamships. After the introduction of the steamship, the Chinese community experienced rapid growth and an expansion of their presence in Bangkok’s business area on Yaowarat Road – primarily fueled by their dominance of the rice trade. Their expertise resulted in Thailand becoming the world’s No. 1 rice exporter! After learning about the history of Chinatown, we climbed another set of stairs to the museum on the Golden Buddha itself.
Here we learned that no one knows when or where the Golden Buddha image was built. But there are a few known facts about its creation: First a mold for the image was constructed and wax lines and wax molds were used to direct the flow of molten gold to create the image. The image is almost 400 cm high and weighs 5.5 tons. That’s a lot of gold! It is also known as (from the Guinness Book of World Records) “the sacred object with the highest intrinsic value.” This value is in excess of $50 million USD! (Wish we could grab just a finger or two!) The story of how it was found is quite similar to that of the Emerald Buddha: it was covered in plaster, dropped, and discovered to be made of something grander when the plaster cracked open. We marveled for a while, then left to walk around more of Chinatown.
After a few failed attempts to find the little Indian side-street we had read about, we jumped into a nice café’ named ‘Kafe Kafe’ near the SkyTrain station for a bite and some relaxation under the AC. Henk and I read some magazines while we enjoyed spaghetti (which was rather spicy!) for myself and a Thai soup for him. While reading through some of the gossip mags, we came across a few awesome pictures by a ‘foodscape’ photographer named Carl Warner. We googled him and found his website right away. You should do the same, his pictures are really fascinating!
Next we visited the Rajadamnern Boxing Stadium via taxi for a quick look at prices. We actually got invited to see inside the arena while an extremely lightweight (aka practically little kids!) match was going on. Since the tickets were quite pricey and there were only amateur fights that day we decided to see boxing another time. We took another cab back to the hostel to relax for the evening. Since we had been running around so much the last days, we planned to relax on the 11th and just stay in the hostel watching movies and series.
An exhibit on Thai Folk Wisdom had some unique stories accompanying each art piece. The quote for this piece was: “Something in one’s hand is better than nothing.” This came from the short story: Uncle and Auntie had been sitting around doing nothing for several days, except sighing loudly. Yesterday, they argued until they were red in the face. Today things were calmer. Finally Auntie said “Well, we have no option do we? We’ll have to give in. Getting something will be better than nothing. Uncle was silent then mumbled as if to himself, “Well, getting a lump of shit is better than a fart I suppose.” I thought the story didn’t have much of a connection with the art piece it went with, but it was pretty humorous.
Next we found an exhibit on Burma, one on large wall paintings, and finally we made it to our goal: “Twist and Shout.” To be specific (according to the description) the Japanese artists here try to display two mindsets in their artwork – that of the introvert and that of the extrovert – as they relate to young Japanese culture. To explain what these means visually, you’ll have to take a look at a few of our pictures. The colors are bright and fun, yet much of the subject matter is serious or uncomfortable. One of the pieces even included the artist sitting behind a mask in the corner of his artwork – creepy yet captivating! Our exploration ended with a cool large art piece consisting of a room filled with bright blue LED numbers which symbolized “Massive Death,” or a worldwide apocalypse as they constantly “counted down.”
Shortly after 12:00 PM, Henk and I arrived at the Jim Thompson House, our original destination for the day. Since we felt a little pressed for time, we by-passed having lunch in the cool little café’ there, and signed up for the next available tour right away. We popped into the on-site museum on Astrology since we had 20 minutes or so to kill before the tour would begin. We learned: that “…Thailand’s astrological system was influenced by Hinduism and associated with a cosmology that focused on the study of the sky and stars. Thai astrology focuses on power and the relationship between governing bodies and those who are governed. [Furthermore,] from the Ayutthaya to early Bangkok period, the social hierarchy was divided into five categories: ruler, aristocrat, monk, commoners and slaves.” Interesting! I discovered that I am a “fire rabbit,” and Henk is a “wood ox” according to our astrological birthdates. We next moved on to trying samples of our personal “essential oils – mind was bergamot/jasmine and Henk’s was oil that included vertiver.
We checked the time – our tour was starting! We walked over to the meeting point and joined our group. Some background on him we learned from our tour: “Jim Thompson… was an American… [and] a practicing architect… he was sent to Bangkok… and fell in love with Thailand… decid[ing] to live in Thailand permanently... He gained further renown through the construction of his house which combined six teak buildings. On March 26th, 1967 [he] disappeared while on a visit to the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia. Not a single valid clue has turned up in the ensuing years as to what might have happened to him.”
Jim Thompson’s house was built in Thai-style, but larger. He actually took the normal layout of one Thai house and connected it together 6 times to make one large continuous floor plan. This included having “raised barriers” between doorways. I have always found these barriers to be slightly annoying (easy to stub your toe on them) but I knew that for some reason you weren’t supposed to step ON the barrier, but OVER it instead. Our guide explained to us that these barriers stop evil spirits from moving between rooms in the house, since Thai people believe spirits can only move across the floor.
In this picture, you can see the Thai-style windows, which are slightly “off,” not perfectly rectangular. This was because the house was built using a special peg system that ends up making the entire house look a bit off, and thus the windows are designed to make in an attempt to make things seem more symmetrical. As we moved through the house (where we weren’t allowed to take pictures anymore) we came across Jim Thompson’s bedroom where we were shown two unique bedpans. The man’s bedpan was in the shape of a cat, whose head comes off for… well, you know. The woman’s bedpan was in the shape of a frog, with a back that was “open for business.”
Thompson surrounded his house with huge trees and sprawling plants in an attempt to make his environment have a ‘jungle’ feel to it. Outside in the garden of Thai houses, including Jim Thompson’s, is a small “dollhouse-sized” house. However, this house is not for games. It is thought to house all of the good spirits and ancestors that protect the family of the large house, and thus ever morning offerings are made to the little house and its spirits to insure the well-being of the family. As we left the tour, we were given two little origami gifts – a paper frog that hopped for Henk, and a paper swan that flapped for me. Cute!
We jumped in a cab heading all the way across town to the Vimanmek Dusit Palace; the largest golden teakwood mansion. Since the mansion was built after King Rama V’s return from a trip to Europe, the 120 meter + long house reflects a clearly Western influence. The brochure: “In 1897, King Rama V used his personal money to purchase orchards and paddy fields for the construction of a royal garden which he named ‘the Dusit Garden’… he then commanded in 1900 that a permanent residence be built in Dusit Garden. However, King Rama V only lived in Vimanmek for five years until another villa was complete. After Rama V, the Mansion was used by various consorts of the royal family, as the royal family themselves continued to live at the Grand Palace. Eventually, King Rama IX gave permission for the mansion to be renovated as a museum to commemorate King Rama V.” There was nothing too “Thai” about the mansion, since it was done in Western-style, so you’re not missing too much by only seeing a picture of the outside.
Next we made our way to the Throne Hall, which was built by King Rama V as a lavish reception hall. Since King Rama V seemed to really have a fetish for Western-style architecture after his trip, he had this building constructed in the Italian Renaissance and Neo Classic style. Here, again, we weren’t allowed to take pictures. This building was amazing to Henk and I! Really something unique: the building itself was huge with a dome that you’d expect to see Western murals on – Christian-themes, or Roman/Greek-themes – but instead, you are presented with a huge image of Buddha and Thai-themes on the ceiling above you. It was a bizarre contrast that for some reason seemed to work… I think it is the similar elaborateness in display that Thais and Westerners give to such buildings that made the contrasting East/West themes mesh well. That dome it something you have to see! Also inside were some fantastic gold pieces that were so detailed they start to hurt your eyes just looking at them. One notable piece I remember was a large green dragon-decorated chandelier – words can’t do that thing justice! It was elegant yet dark, refined and still there was something eerie about its presence on the ceiling. Incredible.
Exiting the Throne Hall, we found the grounds pretty packed with people. We had learned earlier that it was “Children’s Day,” and thus some of the exhibits were free to the public, so pretty much everyone was out for the afternoon. Henk and I flagged down a tuk-tuk and negotiated for the driver to take us to the SkyTrain stop. We were headed to JJ (JatuJak) Market! This market is the world’s biggest weekend market which makes it difficult to navigate since it’s so large, even with a map. By the time we got to the market it was 4:30 pm and we were starving! After searching a couple places, we sat down at one of the stalls for some delicious food. Done with our meal, we got up to start exploring. We were pretty awed by the extent of the market – it seemed never to end! There were snacks being prepared, pets on offer, even garden-ware! We ended up buying a new shirt for Henk and some cute little key-rings for my purse for a total of I think $3.00 or so. Everything was so cheap! We roamed around the market until sunset, when we returned to the SkyTrain to take us back to our hostel.
On the 10th of January our original plan was to take the Chinatown tram to explore the business district of Bangkok. However, when we got to the tram stop we learned that they had shut it down! Guess it wasn’t much of a money-maker. We revised our plan and decided to just walk to the Wat-Tri Mit Wit Thayaram instead… the temple that housed the largest solid gold Buddha. On our way to the temple, we were stopped by a man on the street who asked where we were going and told us the temple was closed because it was “a holiday.” He took our map and marked a different location with a pen, “You should go here instead.” Immediately, I pressed Henk to move on and not continue conversation with this guy – he was a scam artist! I had read both in the Lonely Planet and online about the many scams they have in Thailand for tourists.
Many of them follow the same storyline: On your way to the tourist attraction you planned to visit, a “friendly” local asks you if you need some help. Since most tourists are looking at their maps trying to find the attraction, it makes it easy for the local to interrupt. You ask them about the temple/palace/museum and they tell you that it is closed for the day for some reason. They then suggest you go to a different attraction, and even hire a tuk-tuk driver to take you around for a low price. The local claims the price is this low due to special government gas coupons (which is a complete lie) and then they proceed to take you to a temple or two and then bring you to a ton of jewelry stores and clothing stores as well in the hopes that you’ll buy some crazy overpriced item. Henk and I actually met a couple later in our trip who had this exact thing happen to them, but since they kept refusing to buy anything, the tuk-tuk driver moved onto his next customer.
Our visit to the Temple of the Golden Buddha began with a climb up the stairs to the first museum on Chinese heritage in the area. We learned how Chinese traders came on by junk ships from their homeland to settle around the Thai Kingdom. However, by the end of King Rama III’s reign, junk-trade began to decline, losing out to Western-style steamships. After the introduction of the steamship, the Chinese community experienced rapid growth and an expansion of their presence in Bangkok’s business area on Yaowarat Road – primarily fueled by their dominance of the rice trade. Their expertise resulted in Thailand becoming the world’s No. 1 rice exporter! After learning about the history of Chinatown, we climbed another set of stairs to the museum on the Golden Buddha itself.
Here we learned that no one knows when or where the Golden Buddha image was built. But there are a few known facts about its creation: First a mold for the image was constructed and wax lines and wax molds were used to direct the flow of molten gold to create the image. The image is almost 400 cm high and weighs 5.5 tons. That’s a lot of gold! It is also known as (from the Guinness Book of World Records) “the sacred object with the highest intrinsic value.” This value is in excess of $50 million USD! (Wish we could grab just a finger or two!) The story of how it was found is quite similar to that of the Emerald Buddha: it was covered in plaster, dropped, and discovered to be made of something grander when the plaster cracked open. We marveled for a while, then left to walk around more of Chinatown.
After a few failed attempts to find the little Indian side-street we had read about, we jumped into a nice café’ named ‘Kafe Kafe’ near the SkyTrain station for a bite and some relaxation under the AC. Henk and I read some magazines while we enjoyed spaghetti (which was rather spicy!) for myself and a Thai soup for him. While reading through some of the gossip mags, we came across a few awesome pictures by a ‘foodscape’ photographer named Carl Warner. We googled him and found his website right away. You should do the same, his pictures are really fascinating!
Next we visited the Rajadamnern Boxing Stadium via taxi for a quick look at prices. We actually got invited to see inside the arena while an extremely lightweight (aka practically little kids!) match was going on. Since the tickets were quite pricey and there were only amateur fights that day we decided to see boxing another time. We took another cab back to the hostel to relax for the evening. Since we had been running around so much the last days, we planned to relax on the 11th and just stay in the hostel watching movies and series.
1 Comments:
wat een verschillende prachtige foto's, het gaat bij mij van oeh?? aah?? wow, wat mooi en indrukwekkend. En nogmaals wat een mooi stelletje, de foto bij de ladyboy, fran in het rose jurkje (wow looking good girl) en jij hj zo slank en hip!
xxxx
mams
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