Djurdjevic - Personal Photos - Around the World Trip

23 Jan 2011

June 2006

'Round the World, Again

Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Germany...

In Bangkok, "life's also a river," as I found out in the afternoon of this fascinating day. After our walk through the open air market, Tu proposed and I accepted the idea that we continue our tour by hiring a private barge. Tu called his friend Pop, our driver, and told us where to meet us at the end of our boat ride.

No, our little barge was nothing like this big boat that docked while we were waiting. Ours is barely visible up river, just to the left of that yellow royal flag. I took this photo of the landing dock mostly to show you how big and wide the river Mae is. "This is where one of the episodes of the James Bond 007 movies was filmed," Tu proudly announced. I suspect that I probably disappointed him for not remembering that.

This being the rainy season, there is a lot of debris floating in the river from the jungle storms. This, as the next dozen or so photos, were all taken from our little boat.

As soon as we turned into one of the canals that run off and parallel to the river, we began to see what the real "life's a river" life looks like. People live in these little wooden huts on stilts. Wood being wood, it rots. So after a while, some neighborhoods look like the waterfront versions of the Bronx brownstone tenement houses.

Minus, the violence, of course. And with pride (look at the flags and the kings picture on these poor little homes). Even the poorest people accept their station in life with grace and smiles.

The best example of that was this little lady in a purple shirt who approached our barge with her little row boat. Ever seen a floating store? That's what her boat is. She sells souvenirs and fresh fruit to the tourists.

I did not understand a word she said, but I could tell she had a warm and kind heart. The woman kept talking and smiling and demonstrating her wares as she docked near our barge.

I really did not need anything, but I was touched by her kindness and felt sympathetic to her plight and poverty, so I bought a ladies fan/hat from her. And Tu was there to seal the deal with a picture. By the way, the lady is holding some sort of a fruit, whose name I have forgotten, that the Thais love but whose scent I, as most westerners, cannot stand. It reminds me of rotten cheese. Thankfully, this fruit was not cut (the fruit doesn't smell unless it is cut open).

On our ride along the river we saw other Buddha statues, such as this one whose back is turned to the waterfront. "Oh, that's just a common temple," Tu said dismissively.

We stopped in front of another temple to feed the fish - catfish in this case. There are so many of them, and some of them are so well fed that are up to three feet in length, that the river is teeming with them as they fight each other ferociously for pieces of bread thrown in from the boats.

"Would they eat fruit?" I asked Tu, pointing to the bag which still contained some fruit left over from our healthy lunch.

"Let's see..." I said, splitting one of the passion fruit-look alike shells and throwing the juicy core into the river. Sure enough, the catfish fought over it like mad.

The farther from the city center we got, the better the riverside homes looked. This one, for example, though obscured by the trees, looked downright palatial. Guess you'll just have to take my word for it.

Tu and I kept chatting as other boats passed by. "One day, my dream is to have a home on the river," Tu said. "The air is so clean here and the fragrance of nature so sweet."

I could not agree with him more. "It's the ozone," I said, a substance that's sorely missing from urbanized and polluted cities.

Tu agreed. As if on cue, these big trees that seem to grow right out of the concrete appeared in our view, a testimony of riverside life's resilience.

At first, I thought I had misheard him. Something about water. "A what?" I asked.

"No, they eat rats and frogs. So they are quite useful in keeping the balance of nature."

I wondered what had made him think of such creatures. Then something splashed in the water on the port side of the boat. I pointed over Tu's head to a large reptile, about six feet-plus in length, heading for th beautifully spotted monitor lizard

e river bank.

"Yes," Tu struggled to get enough air to push this single vowel out of his mouth. "I am so scared," he added.

"Scared? What's the matter? I thought you said they were not dangerous to people."

"I am still scared. It comes from my mother. When I was a little boy, she used to frighten me with stories of water monitors and snakes."

"That seconds after we started our conversation about the water monitor your Ram (God) decided to educate me by a live demonstration. He must have been eavesdropping."

Tu was now smiling broadly. The crisis was over. "You're right," he said. "It is amazing."

Soon we were approaching our final destination and the last temple visit of the day, a tour of the Temple of the Dawn, located across the river directly opposite the Grand Palace...

An original Cambodian pagoda shaped like the one above, but much smaller, had existed on this site for at least 500 years, Tu explained. Then Rama II came along. This king was a great sponsor of the arts, building and repairing many monasteries throughout Bangkok. One day, he arrived at this site at dawn and became mesmerized by the Cambodian temple. So he had a new much larger temple built over and around it, while maintaining the architectural spirit of the original design.

Rama II also restored many of the customs of the Ayutthaya court, including dance troupes. He also helped write a Thai interpretation of the classic Indian Ramayana poem. In foreign relations, the King allowed the Portuguese to establish an embassy, although large scale trade with the West did not develop during his reign (1809-1824).

They say that this Thai king, a great lover of the arts, carved the doors of Wat Suthat with his own chisels, throwing them away when he was done, so that his work could never be duplicated. But it was Wat Arun (which I also mentioned in my Day 1 travelogue because of its long name), or the Temple of the Dawn, that became Rama II's most enduring legacy.

No chisel, just grit... to climb all those steep stairs in 100% humidity and scorching heat.

...and a close up of the close up. As Tu pointed out, you can see clearly that Rama II's builders must have broken porcelain dishes and then cemented the pieces into the wall, creating a beautiful artistic facade in combination with other porcelain tiles.

These two mean looking demons, who are standing guard at the Temple of the Dawn, are the original ones from which the other two were copied that you saw at the Grand Palace, according to Tu.

This is where I also saw probably the longest word I ever saw in my entire life - the name of this temple (above), which the local abbreviate to just War Arun (the Temple of the Dawn),

By this stage, the skies were looking rather ominous. It looked like it might rain any minute. I remembered what Tu had said about this being the rainy season, even though I had not personally experienced any rain.

Well, I did not have to wait long. The skies opened up and we were drenched in just a few steps we had to take to get into our car, which Pop had conveniently parked at a nearby parking lot.

Once back at the hotel, I invited both of them for a coffee at Starbucks. They were overjoyed, as that's considered a treat in Bangkok, since Starbucks prices are very high for the locals. I also bought a Starbucks mocha for their boss, the owner of the travel agency for which they work, who was hovering around the lobby making sure his American customer was happy with today's tour.

I told him the proof was in the pudding. His two guys were so good that I had already not only booked them for our Sunday trip to Ayutthaya, but paid for the whole thing in advance. He was smiling appreciatively.