We woke up late to a warm, sunny morning. Tamar stayed in bed while we went down for breakfast, and remained in bed for quite a while afterwards. Eventually It was decided that Lilach and Daniel would go to the nearby temple (Rajanaddaram Worawihan), where Tamar and I will join them shortly. Unfortunately, when we were ready to leave we couldn’t reach them on the phone, and when we arrived at the temple we couldn’t find them. At that point we couldn’t call them either, because they had the cellular hotspot with them and we had no connection. We admired the intense gardening works in front of the temple, where dozens of workers were hanging orchids and epiphytes on the trees, supported by spiraling sponges to hang on to. Then we briefly toured the temple grounds, and after seeing no sign of Lilach and Daniel, returned to the hotel and called them again. This time we got them, and we soon rejoined in the hotel. As it turned out, they actually saw us in the temple, from the top of some observation tower they climbed. But Lilach’s attempts to call us, hushed by Daniel’s concern that she was disturbing the quiet monks, didn’t reach our ears.
We all decided it was time for a light lunch, and headed to a recommended restaurant nearby, with the friendly name “The Family Restaurant”. Contrary to google and TripAdvisor, the sign on the front said it was closed, so we continued walking in the general direction of the river, in search of an open restaurant. We passed quite a few that didn’t look quite to our taste, before we found a little place with a large selection of local and imported beers and a menu that seemed varied enough for all of us. After the nice meal we took a boat down the river to the Chinatown area, and wandered the narrow allies, where motorcyclists rode in paths barely wide enough for two people to walk abreast. After passing the 20th motorcyclist or so, we decided that we got the idea, and took a tuk-tuk to Wat Pho – Temple of the Reclining Buddha. The huge golden statue was as impressive now as it was when I first saw it 30 years ago, and Daniel especially enjoyed comparing his size to various parts of the Buddha’s anatomy. The high-pitched tones apparently coming from the ceiling, which I attributed to unseen bats, turned out, upon circling the buddha, to be the sounds of coins falling into bronze bowls arranged along its back. We changed a 20 Baht note into a hundred or so coins, and the kids enjoyed dropping them into the bowls – a habit that may bring good luck, and definitely brings joy.
After the temple closed for the day, we made ourselves back to the Family Restaurant, to find out that it was fully booked for the night. So we walked a few hundred meters to a restaurant that looked rather fancy, with a lady singer and a live band, most patrons being men in dress shirts and women in evening dresses. We were led to a quiet corner where some Thais dressed in T-shirts were eating in a less formal atmosphere, and enjoyed a good meal and attentive service. The prices were also very reasonable. Our plan to visit the always-open flower market after dinner crashed against the brutal reality of our exhaustion, and we hurried back to the hotel and quickly fell asleep.
On Tuesday morning we all managed to get to breakfast on time, but only barely so. By the time we left the hotel it was already past 10:30, and the diligent, but rather lethargic, taxi driver couldn’t get us to the snake farm in Queen Sauvabha Memorial Institute on time for the 11am venom milking demonstration. But getting there at 11:15, we still saw them milking 3 of the 6 cobras brought on display that day. After the demonstration, we thoroughly examined all the venomous and non-venomous live snakes on display, as well as some of the audio-visual educational materials. The kids got a pretty good hit rate at answering the questions about the correct treatment of snake bite. We saw a video interview with one of the institute’s employees describing the cobra bite he got, and how he didn’t respond well to antivenom treatment, with the bite thus resulting in massive tissue damage that required plastic surgery to restore his hand to reasonable shape. Not a pretty sight.
We had time till the 14:30 snake handling demonstration, so we went to the nearby Lumphini Park. There, we saw the large water monitors (Varanus salvator), some water turtles, various herons and egrets, Mynas of several species, other unrecognized songbirds and large black crows. We paddled on the lake in swan-shaped boats and the kids bought bags of fish pellets to feed the fish. Feeding the pigeons was forbidden by many signs around he park, but the fish seemed exempt from such prohibition.
We came back on time for the snake handling demonstration, and saw the brave handlers (led by our English-speaking acquaintance from the snakebite video) tease and catch the cobras, kraits, and king cobra with their bare hands, using no tools or aids. The last snake on display was a large and very tame albino Burmese Python, that everyone was invited to hold and be taken pictures with. I was happy to see both kids handling the snake with natural ease, unlike some who seemed genuinely mortified the moment the snake moved its head in their direction. We had late lunch in a nearby mall, where we saw Yuval Noah Harari’s latest book, translated to Thai, featuring on the “Top Ten” shelf of a local bookstore.
We took a taxi to the nearby Jim Thompson House museum, where the kids decided to stay in the yard and play, and we joined a tour in French describing the history of the interesting house and its owner. I kept trying to reconcile the highly efficient touristic enterprise currently in place with the charming but somewhat neglected house I visited 30 years ago… At the end of our tour, it started pouring. It was just the way one expects it to rain in the tropical wet season – sudden and drenching. Needless to say, we left our umbrellas in the hotel. I borrowed an umbrella from the museum and got us a taxi nearby. Back in the hotel we had a quick shower before heading out to dinner in the by-now-legendary Family Restaurant, where we made a reservation for a change.
The meal was very nice, and the many cats sprawling on every horizontal surface added to the quaint atmosphere. Furthermore, it turned out they run a laundry service, which proved very useful, since our hotel didn’t offer one.
Everyone else seemed quite tired, so after Lilach and the kids turned to bed I went out alone to explore the flower market – Pak Klong Talad. The quantities of orchids and other beautiful plants were astounding, and the huge bags full of individual petals used in floral art were totally bewildering. Many artisans could be seen weaving garlands and assembling elaborate floral arrangements. The most distinctive thing about this market, setting it apart from any other market I have ever visited, was the perfumed floral aroma hanging over it. I took advantage of the opportunity to buy some tropical fruit – Longan, Mangosteen and Rambutan, before heading back to the hotel.
Our plan for Wednesday, July 24 was mainly to visit the Bangkok Sea World exhibition, about which we got some warm recommendations. But before that we had to visit, all together this time, the local temple – and especially its observation tower – which Daniel insisted we must all visit, after his good experience there on the first day. The tower was indeed very nice, with many signs providing a lot of information about various meditation techniques, and the four stages of enlightenment: A Stream-enterer (Sotāpanna), the Once-returner (Sakadāgāmin), the Non-returner (Anāgāmi) and the Arahant. There was also a practical aspect to this learning process, as we had to practice meditation and mental control in the face of our disappearing children who went wondering in the labyrinthine corridors of the tower, and were brought back to us, one at a time, by clearly amused lady workers who were doing some renovations in the ground floor.
Sea World is located in the basement of a huge shopping center, and it took us some time to navigate to it through two adjacent (but disconnected) shopping centers, from where the tuk-tuk driver dropped us. When we did arrive at the destination, we found it crowded with groups of school kids, who created a noise level that could easily compete with a busy jet runway. Undeterred, we purchased the tickets, and the cashier informed us that they entitled us to a single entry. We asked about food options inside, as we figured we would become hungry within an hour or two, and planned a long visit. The cashier said there were only snack bars inside, so we decided to go eat something before we enter. Oh no, you cannot do that, the cashier explained. Once you purchased the tickets, you must enter. We entered the trap with our heads high up and our eyes wide open.
The displays were generally pretty nice, though the penguin enclosure seemed a bit dismal to me, with its low ceiling and no natural light. In addition to many types of fish and other sea creatures, there were also nice reptiles and amphibians on display, which kept everyone interested. The kids also enjoyed the large video games that were scattered here and there, in which they took the role of penguins or divers trying to catch as much food or swim fastest (by quickly operating something looking like a large manual pump). They also made up some games of their own involving the videos projected on the floor.
We left in the afternoon, spent and irritated by the noise and crowds. Good lunch in a nearby restaurant improved our mood quickly, and we returned to the hotel for showers and some rest, before closing the evening in a nice Indian-run vegeterian restaurant called Ethos, on the way to which we wandered through narrow and dark alleys and nearly entered someone’s house by mistake. But the restaurant was nice and we all went to sleep cheerful and satisfied, after arranging with some Taxi driver we met that he would pick us up to the airport at 6am.
Family Trips 