Bangkok Holiday

Wow, my day here was a much needed break from visa stress! Bangkok is a pretty cool city, but it’s HUGE. Way bigger than Chiang Mai. They have a proper bus system and a subway and skytrain!

Stephen and Allison have a suite, so they have a really nice bathroom with a rainspout shower. It was the best shower I’ve ever had in Thailand! The shower in most places in Chiang Mai is a little electrical heater that heats the water a little at a time, so this was a nice luxury.

Since they are staying at the Marriott, they get free breakfast, so it was quite the spread. Egg and waffle bar, fresh fruit, pastries, plus local cuisine. I got to meet the executive producers and we chatted for a bit about what I was doing up in Chiang Mai. They are also Christians and the movie is another faith-based film, so it was nice that they knew a little about The Garden of Hope already and I didn’t have to explain it. Laurie invited me to come to her daughters’ birthday party that afternoon. Allison was happy about that because they had rented out a room at a bowling alley, so she didn’t want me to feel like I was crashing the party. Laurie said the more, the merrier, so we were all set. She wanted to hear more about what I was doing in Thailand as well, so we decided to talk later.

Stephen has been working like a crazy person on the movie for two months, so he finally got a day off and we decided to visit the Grand Palace and the Reclining Buddha. We took a taxi there and walked around for the morning. The Palace is beautiful and very ornate. It’s all very shiny and there are Buddhas EVERYWHERE. Everything is very large too. I took a bunch of pictures and a couple with myself in them. We went into the large temple where everyone had to take off their shoes. 

The most impressive thing to me was the elaborate wall murals and paintings. One little temple area had what looked like Buddha wallpaper, but upon closer inspection it was all handpainted! The moustaches were all a bit different, and the eyes too. Stephen joked about the guy who drew the first one. “He was probably like, ‘OK, Bob, Joe, Frank, do it like this, only ALL over.’” Haha. Of course, insert Thai names there!

After we were palaced out, we tried to figure out how to get to the Reclining Buddha. We wandered around for a bit, looked at the map and finally figured out which Wat it was in. This is also the place where Thai massage was born, and there is still a Thai massage school there.

So, the Reclining Buddha is HUGE but the building that protects it is not very well made. I mean, it’s fancy and all, but there are these huge pillars that block large parts of the Buddha. You can’t really get a good view of how large it is. It’s like they built the Buddha, then built the building JUST big enough to fit around it. The tip of Buddha’s hat is actually touching the ceiling. If they had made the building larger, they could have put the pillars further away and taken publicity photos to show what it looks like, but now, there’s no place to view the entire sculpture. 

There were a bunch of other buildings in that little compound and, most incongruously, a huge basketball hoop. Stephen was like “Can you just picture a monk in a tunic flying through the air to slam the ball? He’d be like ‘I OWNED you! Sa wat dee krup.’” Plus, there was a weird beeping sound coming form inside a tree next to the bball hoop. I was like, “Uh, did someone throw an alarm clock in there or something?” Apparently it’s actually a bird. That must be one tired bird. The beeping is pretty consistent and fast. It kind of sounds like a car alarm.

After the Reclining Buddha, we called Allison and planned to meet up with her and the kids at the food court at one of the malls. There are 4 places called “Central” something in the center of town. Highly original. This place is simply called “Central” which is different from “Central Plaza,” “The Center” and something else that I forgot. It’s one big building of a department store and it’s 7 stories tall. The top floor is a ginormous food court area. You get a cardboard ticket with a barcode on it and you get food from whichever stand you want and they scan it. Then when you leave, you pay for it all together. Pretty smart. I just wanted fruit juice and Allison and Stephen got smoothies.

The kids who were there are the twin daughters of the producers, Whitney, a college girl who is a family friend of the producers and the twins and MJ who is the son of the Laurie’s best friend. The twins were turning 15, so after we ate, they went back to the hotel while we bought them birthday presents. (By we I mean everyone other than me. I did help pick out some coloring books though.)

We jumped on the SkyTrain to the huge mall that has a whole floor devoted to high end cars, Maseratis, Lambourghinis, Mercedes. I have no idea how they get them up to the 4^th floor, but, more importantly, if you want to buy one how would you get it DOWN? 

They also have an IMAX and a full bowling alley and karaoke rooms. This place is amazing. The bowling alley has 24 lanes, plus 2 platinum suites. They had rented out one of the platinum suites for the party. This has 4 bowling lanes, couches, an eating area and a karaoke room all together. It was booked for 2 hours. We had a lot of fun. I only played 2 games because my arm was hurting, but they had snacks and drinks and three types of birthday cake. When it was time to sing, we sang to each girl individually, which I thought was a nice touch. They alternate years as to who gets sung to first and they are in charge of keeping track of whose year it is. Too cute. They turned 15 this year and I asked if this is the coolest place they have ever spent their birthday, they enthusiastically said “YES.” Although, they did live in Macedonia for 6 years of their life, so I would imagine that was pretty cool too. Their younger sister was also there and was much more interested in belting out karaoke than bowling. For some reason she was into singing all the Abba songs. haha  

While I was at the party, I also met another of Laurie’s friends, Rose, who knows about The Garden of Hope/Taw Saeng. She was actually supposed to meet with Rob and Judy when she was in Chiang Mai the week before I came, but it didn’t work out. She’s very excited that we’ve now met so she has a contact with the organization. She runs a company that employs girls at a decent wage to make free trade products like pajamas, purses and other textiles. They have a factory in Chiang Mai, which is why she was up there. She will be back on October, so I will probably see her then as well when she comes to visit the TS center. I need to get the website info from her so you can purchase some free trade clothes if you are interested. Stay tuned for that information.

Post-party, we headed down to the market, got some food for dinner (a nice American meal of spaghetti and bruscetta) and went back to the hotel. While Stephen went for a run, I tried without success to purchase a plane ticket from Singapore to Chiang Mai. Using my debit card here is proving to be quite the challenge!  I don’t know why, since it can also be used as a credit card and I’ve used it all over the world, but for some reason, I can’t seem to use it anywhere in Thailand except ATMS. Anyway, I ended up just having Rob and Judy get my ticket and I’ll pay them back next week. Thank goodness for good friends! I also got directions on how to get to the airport in the morning via SkyTrain. It was much cheaper than the taxi would have been. The taxi from the airport to the hotel at 11pm was 265 baht, and that was the closer airport. The SkyTrain was 65 baht to the new airport! 200 baht cheaper! That’s only about $6.50, but still.