Images of Thailand: Photgraphy post 2 of 6
As promised, more Thailand pictures. From sacred matters:
To some not quite as sacred:
Chinatown market, Bangkok. I loved the clutter and the bustle and the colors of the market:
We saw many pushcart vendors on the streets, many of them selling flowers, just as we saw women sitting on the streets, selling flower bracelets:
Streetscapes:
The temple with the giant, 50m reclining Buddha:
Yet more pictures of the sleeping in the woods Wat U Mong, outside Chiang Mai (except for the monks, we were almost the only people there):
Boy monks feeding the pidgeons:
Bangkok from our window, at night:
The river boats at night:
Our hotel, as seen from the river:
City view:
All the fancy hotels on the Thonbury side of the river (where we were) use their own boats to get across to the 'main' city side, adding to the hustle and bustle of the river. The Peninsula's boat being by far the most elaborate.
If you are not in one of them, you just take the cheap-as-dirt ferry:
The Sunday market went on for what seemed like miles, and sold literally everything, including a whole row of stores selling nothing but puppies:
I fell in love with these, but alas at this point I could make room in my backpack (I don't travel with luggage) only by creating a time-space rift:
Wu Zun, benevolently presiding over the Sunday market. His pictures were everywhere (including a painting in oils!). It was basically him or the Holy Monks, or the Royal Family, pictures-on-street wise. I'll take the singer and not the saints, thanks!
Store for your inner ten-year-old (Sunday Market):
And you thought drama fashions were bad (Sunday Market):
I think this picture is my image of Bangkok, in many ways: LCD screens of holy monks, and a concert-arena-cum-KFC-shrine under it:
We went to the MBK mall, arguably the swankiest in Bangkok. Myself being me, I stopped by a bookstore, of course. Ahhh, it drives me crazy to see rows of books I cannot read!
Especially since some of them have such yummy covers:
MBK is presided over by, of course, a giant portrait of His Majesty:
The (in)famous Durian fruit. No, I didn't try any:
I told you I fell in love with Chaopraya:
A magazine stand on yet another street that turns into an informal-market. Almost every street would be crowded within an inch of usable space with vendors selling everything from amulets to fruit to shoes. And when those markets shut down for the evening, night markets, dedicated more to fun and luxury goods and less to everyday necessities, opened. Anyway, bonus points if you spot two Hanadan magazines:
Streetscapes:
See what I meant about streets as markets?
And yet more street scenes:
The National Museum used to be a series of Royal Residences. You can tell:
Wat Arun, the impossibly vertical temple:
It is also impossibly ornate, even as all the other Wats were. It's interesting because in Japan (I really must finish posting those pictures), temples were all different but in Thailand they are all similar in style.
Detail:
For some reason, there are plates embedded into the walls:
View from the top of Wat Arun. So worth the not-for-agoraphobics climb:
See? Steep!
The monks were with us on the boat back. Possibly that is why the boat finally started, after the engine dying repeatedly and someone having to dive into engine pit armed with a dirty rag and a desire to kick the hot piece of machinery for all their toes were worth:
That is what a lot of houses near the water look like (from back of boat from Wat Arun):
Dusit (Royal Residences) are rather European-looking:
Though I don't know if I'd see this in Buckingham Palace :)
Royal carriages:
We ended up having lunch in a way-out-the-way place on a pier somewhere, where the waiter was a Ladyboy (that's the Thai term), the menu consisted of fish with everything still on, including head (was delicious), and our fellow diners were a family party and two men who were splitting an entire brandy bottle between them. Also, an itinerant condiments seller (!!!), who didn't speak English nor we Thai, so I finally paid him some amount for delicious peanuts. I couldn't ask how much so I just gave some money in hope it was enough. Apparently it wasm as he went away quite happy. Oh, and the waiter was very insistent on my not ordering snakehead fish, so the point-smile-and-hope-it's-good method worked instead (it did) :) Anyway, that was a view from our table:
(shrine in front of restaurant)
And that was our yummy meal:
Part of the fun was getting to the restaurant on tiny tucked-away streets:
We really wanted to see the Royal Barge museum, but encountered a uniquely Bangkokian problem: a taxi driver who did not know his way around the city (a lot of drivers are former farmers who moved to the city to make a living). Even with the help of our trusty map and pointing, this driver dropped us on the opposite side of the river. Never fear! We trudged across the dusty bridge which, miracle of miracles, had a pedestrian path (somewhat of a rarity in Bangkok). Then, we were confronted with another obstacle. While the museum and the drive-way was there, the sign indicated that visitors must go another way, the way mapped out by signs and arrows. That way was undoubtedly designed by someone with a sense of humor (or at least the desire to make any farang foolhardy enough to continue to really work for it). That was was about fifteen-minutes worth of walking among narrow, twisted little alleyways (they couldn't really be dignified by the appelation 'streets'). We were basically walking past people's backyards and doors: old ladies eating dinner, men in their undershirts watching boxing on TV, women going into impossibly tucked-away tiny shops. To top it off, we passed groups of curiously staring children, which culminated in some little girls pointing at the weird farang lady (i.e. yours truly) and laughing. :P Heh.
We got there and they already shut down, but apparently taking pity on our crazed perseverance through miles of alleyways, they let us have a quick peek. And then a guard offered us a paid loan of someone-he-knew's-boat, "very good to see the river." So while the boats were undoubtedly awesome, getting to them was the really fun part and the part that I will remember the happiest and most.
One of little alleys:
The decorative prows of the royal barges at the Royal Barge museum:
Notice the cannon:
After that, we wandered past the Chinatown market, now setting itself for sleep, and redying for cleaners, the only company being people hurriedly closing up shops, elderly guard half-napping by an ATM machine, some hyper children, and a group of young men who were busy weaving a cargo net outside a little shop.
Readying for cleaners:
But never fear, when one market closes, another one opens! Night market!
With the traditional puppet theater:
To some not quite as sacred:
Chinatown market, Bangkok. I loved the clutter and the bustle and the colors of the market:
We saw many pushcart vendors on the streets, many of them selling flowers, just as we saw women sitting on the streets, selling flower bracelets:
Streetscapes:
The temple with the giant, 50m reclining Buddha:
Yet more pictures of the sleeping in the woods Wat U Mong, outside Chiang Mai (except for the monks, we were almost the only people there):
Boy monks feeding the pidgeons:
Bangkok from our window, at night:
The river boats at night:
Our hotel, as seen from the river:
City view:
All the fancy hotels on the Thonbury side of the river (where we were) use their own boats to get across to the 'main' city side, adding to the hustle and bustle of the river. The Peninsula's boat being by far the most elaborate.
If you are not in one of them, you just take the cheap-as-dirt ferry:
The Sunday market went on for what seemed like miles, and sold literally everything, including a whole row of stores selling nothing but puppies:
I fell in love with these, but alas at this point I could make room in my backpack (I don't travel with luggage) only by creating a time-space rift:
Wu Zun, benevolently presiding over the Sunday market. His pictures were everywhere (including a painting in oils!). It was basically him or the Holy Monks, or the Royal Family, pictures-on-street wise. I'll take the singer and not the saints, thanks!
Store for your inner ten-year-old (Sunday Market):
And you thought drama fashions were bad (Sunday Market):
I think this picture is my image of Bangkok, in many ways: LCD screens of holy monks, and a concert-arena-cum-KFC-shrine under it:
We went to the MBK mall, arguably the swankiest in Bangkok. Myself being me, I stopped by a bookstore, of course. Ahhh, it drives me crazy to see rows of books I cannot read!
Especially since some of them have such yummy covers:
MBK is presided over by, of course, a giant portrait of His Majesty:
The (in)famous Durian fruit. No, I didn't try any:
I told you I fell in love with Chaopraya:
A magazine stand on yet another street that turns into an informal-market. Almost every street would be crowded within an inch of usable space with vendors selling everything from amulets to fruit to shoes. And when those markets shut down for the evening, night markets, dedicated more to fun and luxury goods and less to everyday necessities, opened. Anyway, bonus points if you spot two Hanadan magazines:
Streetscapes:
See what I meant about streets as markets?
And yet more street scenes:
The National Museum used to be a series of Royal Residences. You can tell:
Wat Arun, the impossibly vertical temple:
It is also impossibly ornate, even as all the other Wats were. It's interesting because in Japan (I really must finish posting those pictures), temples were all different but in Thailand they are all similar in style.
Detail:
For some reason, there are plates embedded into the walls:
View from the top of Wat Arun. So worth the not-for-agoraphobics climb:
See? Steep!
The monks were with us on the boat back. Possibly that is why the boat finally started, after the engine dying repeatedly and someone having to dive into engine pit armed with a dirty rag and a desire to kick the hot piece of machinery for all their toes were worth:
That is what a lot of houses near the water look like (from back of boat from Wat Arun):
Dusit (Royal Residences) are rather European-looking:
Though I don't know if I'd see this in Buckingham Palace :)
Royal carriages:
We ended up having lunch in a way-out-the-way place on a pier somewhere, where the waiter was a Ladyboy (that's the Thai term), the menu consisted of fish with everything still on, including head (was delicious), and our fellow diners were a family party and two men who were splitting an entire brandy bottle between them. Also, an itinerant condiments seller (!!!), who didn't speak English nor we Thai, so I finally paid him some amount for delicious peanuts. I couldn't ask how much so I just gave some money in hope it was enough. Apparently it wasm as he went away quite happy. Oh, and the waiter was very insistent on my not ordering snakehead fish, so the point-smile-and-hope-it's-good method worked instead (it did) :) Anyway, that was a view from our table:
(shrine in front of restaurant)
And that was our yummy meal:
Part of the fun was getting to the restaurant on tiny tucked-away streets:
We really wanted to see the Royal Barge museum, but encountered a uniquely Bangkokian problem: a taxi driver who did not know his way around the city (a lot of drivers are former farmers who moved to the city to make a living). Even with the help of our trusty map and pointing, this driver dropped us on the opposite side of the river. Never fear! We trudged across the dusty bridge which, miracle of miracles, had a pedestrian path (somewhat of a rarity in Bangkok). Then, we were confronted with another obstacle. While the museum and the drive-way was there, the sign indicated that visitors must go another way, the way mapped out by signs and arrows. That way was undoubtedly designed by someone with a sense of humor (or at least the desire to make any farang foolhardy enough to continue to really work for it). That was was about fifteen-minutes worth of walking among narrow, twisted little alleyways (they couldn't really be dignified by the appelation 'streets'). We were basically walking past people's backyards and doors: old ladies eating dinner, men in their undershirts watching boxing on TV, women going into impossibly tucked-away tiny shops. To top it off, we passed groups of curiously staring children, which culminated in some little girls pointing at the weird farang lady (i.e. yours truly) and laughing. :P Heh.
We got there and they already shut down, but apparently taking pity on our crazed perseverance through miles of alleyways, they let us have a quick peek. And then a guard offered us a paid loan of someone-he-knew's-boat, "very good to see the river." So while the boats were undoubtedly awesome, getting to them was the really fun part and the part that I will remember the happiest and most.
One of little alleys:
The decorative prows of the royal barges at the Royal Barge museum:
Notice the cannon:
After that, we wandered past the Chinatown market, now setting itself for sleep, and redying for cleaners, the only company being people hurriedly closing up shops, elderly guard half-napping by an ATM machine, some hyper children, and a group of young men who were busy weaving a cargo net outside a little shop.
Readying for cleaners:
But never fear, when one market closes, another one opens! Night market!
With the traditional puppet theater: