BANGKOK
Monday 5th January 2010
Bangkok First impressions....clean, regular roads, dual carriageways, lack of potholes, traffic lights, traffic stays in lanes, not dusty, no piles of rubble and rubbish, developed...concrete and glass buildings, multi-stories and flyovers...this immediatly feels like a different country.
'First' our rice barge guide picked us up. He was named First as he was the first born son! Very nice guy..transport was very posh air conditioned mini-bus with complimentary water....this was looking good. ...and it continued like this....it took around an hour and a half to reach Ayuthia and the boat...wow!...absolutely beautiful. Polished teak decks and railings, sleeping quarters downstairs, air conditioned..with beds and bunk beds..sheets and towels provided, shared toilet and shower room...we were very very pleasantly surprised and very excited about the trip. a sun deck with 4 ariondak-type reclining sun chairs....oh boy this is definitely a different country and we're going to love this trip. Which we did ..it was fantasic...we just loved every minute of it....but back to getting to the boat...en route we'd spotted at the roadside many stalls with bag of couloured 'stuff'..we asked what it was and First said .."local dessert..do you want to try?"..."YES."..we stopped at a roadside stall where it was being made..incredible...a bag of white sugar was turned in a few minutes to millions of strands of exactly like blond hair, which you then took a small clump of and wrapped it within a small rice pancake...a big bag of the stuff ( the smallest) was 30 bat ( 70p) including 14 pancakes. We watched it being made...so the process...one bag of white sugar...tip into a wok and bring to the boil....let it boil for about 5/7 mins, tip into big metal basin which is floating in big vat of cold water. Using a metal spatula ease the liquid sugar as it solidifies from the edge of the pan and fold it into the centre of the mixture, and gently stir and repeat until it becomes a mass of flexible toffee, which has been folded over and over on itself. The metal basin may have been slightly oiled. This is then poured onto a huge metal sheet which has been covered in a brown paste ( not exactly sure what this paste was ..they said rice flour.mixed to a paste with water....to us it looked like peanut butter ....the toffee mass was spread over this stuff out and folded over and over again on itself, Two small 'spurtle-type stick' implements were then stuck into the mixture, and using great force arms were pulled apart, splitting the mixture, stretching first one way, folding over then repeating. Before your eyes, the mixture began to 'strand'..after doing this for about 5 mins, which was very hard work...Bob had a go...there was a huge pile of 'sugar hair'..which smelled like candy floss. The guy immediatly rolled us a pancake with this mixture and gave it to us...de-licious....sweet, but not too sweet with pancake and crunchyish texture..yummy...need to try it at home...somehow I don't think we'll be successfull!.
Ayuthia, where we started the trip is a fairly substantial town, which is an island.about 20 km around. It used to be the capital city in ancient times, and has many very very old temple ruins...mostly 'pagodas' which are right back to their inner red-brick construction. Pagodas are kind of bell shaped - large...I think used for burrial chambers..but possible worship or both. In their day these would have been covered in stucco...plaster, then adorned with gold, mosaics and jewels. The town was ransacked by the burmese invasion, and the capital city then moved to Bangkok..The main river at Bangkok is the Chao Phraya. Our trip did alovely little loop from Ayuthia, up the river down another then on down another to finnish close to Bangkok.
the houses on the riverside...mostly quite posh, but also quite a few simple types. First said that houses on the riverside, even simple ones would cost $160,000. This wouldn't have been the case everywhere at the riverside, as we passed many simple, bamboo homes on stilts along the way which were obviously ordinary Thai family homes. These were often interspersed though with absoluty palatial, painted concrete small villa-on-stilts-type houses.
After gently chugging down the river...engine was a bit noisy, but still a very pleasant experience....for about two hours we stopped at the side of the river..no pier, just the river bank..A gangplank was put out and the staff held a handrail for us to help walk along.
This stop was at a school for orphans, run by monks. They catered for 1,800 pupils, 1200 of whom stayed there, with 800 from the local poor communities surrounding . Quite a massive facility. We arrived just as the children were finishing dinner.... The monkwho founded the place died 3 years ago ..and he was elbalmed and kept here lying in a glass case! Very odd for us to see this..just looked like he was sleeping.
Bob gave one of the kids the LED 'star of India' I gave him for Christmas...she and her Mum very delighted with lots of hands together and bowing.
We travelled on for an another hour or so and watched the swallows swooping to catch the bugs at dusk. We tied up at a temple for the night, which we did both nights...so Bob couldn't fish. On the way here First had told us that there are lots of fish in the river and its fished ..but outside the temples are sacred and people are not allowed to fish...it was so funny as we approached our first temple on the river earlier today after First had told us this.....as it was teeming with fish...all swimming on the surface and jumping around...it was as if the fish knew they were safe in this place...very amuzing. We only found out later that the monks and local people feed the fish..
Day 2 we got up at 6.30 to go to feed the monks The cook had prepared a tray of food....about 8 different poly bags of currys and sweet balls in syrup..and a huge pot of rice. The food they collected from the village in the morning was their food for the day.....so obviously they ate it luke warmish in the morning and cold at lunchtime. The going round collecting food from villagers wouldn't happen in Glasgow" Bob said ..." they'd be given s***e peeces' !
off into the village on the bicycles. around the food market...prety amazing things...fruit and veg we'd not seen before, live fish, bar b q'd rat, live toads...for food, we tried a couple of things...little rice pancake things cooked on a griddle with indentations, making the little cakes...heated over a gas burner..had coconut in them, another thing lovely little banan leaf parcel, square with leafs coing together in a peak in the centre and joined with a wee bit of bamboo. This cost 3 bat I think. Inside was sticky sweet rice with a brown seet powdery stuff in the middle ..no idea what I ate but it tasted good. Also bought brown furry lumpy fruit,...apantly a type of tamarind...quite like a date but not as sweet, with huge black hard shiny stones.
visited a nursery school (photos.....no restrictions here!).
Back on the river saw...black and white and some brilliant blue kingfishers swooping and diving accross the river, occasionally getting lucky and catching a wee fish.
Visited the bat temple...outtside the temple.big sculpture of a bat..didn't really know the reason..just thought that perhaps different temples adopted different animals to worship/respect or whatever. Then behind the bat sculpture there were a group of lovely big trees...and hanging from them and flying around ..huge bats....just in this one place...they had lived here for years and this was the only place within this area that they lived. They were big..about 3ft wing span....fruit bats...with lots of fruit bat s*** below..which stuck in our shoes for days! This was a really amazing site ..we were really close to them and could see a lot of detail, though it was quite difficult to get a good shot with our, sorry Bobby's , camera.
Also on the trip we visited a craft village a pottery and another market..cycling some of the time from the boat to these places.

Craft village set up by the government who decided to give this village work and gave them a choice of crafts to make ..so they make miniture painted thai dolls to export and sell to tourists...very intricate work eg sticking on 20 mitroscopic bits of painted wooden fruits in a pile at either end of a wee boat...like the floating market. Not our cup of tea but could appreciate the effort.

A bit more cruising down the river with a cup of tea, lounging on the cushions and looking out at the peaceful river, with the big barges lumbering by, and packs of starlings darting,dancing in unison accross the sky.

The pottery - kilns here were wood burning brick huge things. One had been cooling for a couple of days so we went inside...but still very hot...heard a snapping sound and something touching my cheek...thought a bit of the ceiling had fallen....but it was the mono-filament nylon holding one of my lenses in my glasses ..it had snapped with the heat! My only pair of glasses. The lens stayed in place so superglued it later.
The trip ended with a massive downpour...it was spectaculer..my goodness it rained ..real tropical ...so much so that we had to put down the plastic sides on the boat as everything was getting soaked. It lasted for more than an hour ...so I had to don my waterproof poncho which I had brought with me, Bob had his tiny pertex top..which did the business for him....with soaked trousers
A brillant trip.