Bangkok, Thailand

We arrived in Bangkok late at night and maneuvered this massive airport, grabbing SIM cards and a taxi fairly easily - we should be decent at this by now, no? :) Our taxi dropped us at an apartment building and we waited for our Airbnb hosts to meet us... then we waited more. Finally, we called again to see what the hold up was - at this point we had been traveling for over 19 hours and were, well... spent. Upon getting our host on the phone, we realized that our taxi took us to the wrong building and our host was waiting as well. This complex has A,B,C & D buildings.  So we walked in the dark to the correct building, passing by a large pool with a slide and were surprised but excited to envision spending some time relaxing by the pool while here.

We settled into our accommodations, which were spacious yet smelled heavily of mothballs.  The bathrooms here are different in that in addition to a toilet there is a hose that some people use to spray their dirty areas and a drain hole in the floor that the water goes down - this is all right next to the toilet. We had experienced this in the airport where the bathroom stalls were all sprayed with water and the floors had an inch or so of standing water that one stands in to use the toilet. We are grateful that a toilet is still an option here as we know some places will be even more basic facilities, but the hose thing just weirds us out a bit!

Our accommodation complex

The next morning by the time we got going to explore the area, it was about noon.  We headed out and were shocked to see that the pool we passed was G.R.E.E.N. and there would be no swimming happening in it!  We laughed fairly hard at this difference between our night imaginations and daytime reality. 

GREEN pool by daylight

We grabbed some food at the local grocery store and explored some of their offerings, then we headed to figure out the public transportation system. We decided to figure out where the bus station was that we would be taking to Siem Reap at the end of our Bangkok visit.  The street traffic can get crazy congested and so we were thinking we would take the BTS city transportation system, which is a sky train sort of system.  This ended up being a blessing and adventure as we wandered around parks and were pointed many directions.  Eventually we found it, but decided that carrying our ginormous packs was probably more hassle than it was worth to just call a taxi on the day of our departure.

Dad navigating city transportation

We then headed towards the night market and had to transfer trains only to discover a premier shopping mall.  The boys were elated as they ran from car store to car store touching and examining high-end vehicles that they sold inside the mall of all places!

Trying his first hover board!

Aston Martin, sold in the mall

McClaren is a favorite

If the boys are having pictures with cars, so am I!

From there we took the train to a dock where we hopped on a boat shuttle to the Asiatique Night Market.  First stop was dinner at a Japanese tepanyaki restaurant.  We took our shoes off and climbed up on the benches thinking we would be sitting indian-style with the table at knee-level 18 inches or so off of the ground, but in actuality the floor around the table was sunken in, so it just appeared that the table was only slightly higher than the surrounding seat benches.  We were glad to have good food, although it wasn’t cooked in front of us like we had thought ‘tepanyaki’ meant.  We then wandered the market and came across cleaner fish who eat the dead skin off of feet and legs.  We decided this was a unique family event and all took a seat at an aquarium and submerged our feet.  It was severely ticklish at first, but once we became used to it, it almost felt a bit therapeutic.  We weren’t hopeful of the results, but were surprisingly pleased once we got home!

Night market

Wrapping up our first dinner in Bangkok

Family fish exfoliation

Fish lovin' our feet

The next day was a school day and we were able to get a decent amount accomplished.  Dad was visiting the hospital to have his feet looked at and this was taking longer than expected (that will be another post).  The kids and Mom ordered Domino’s Pizza and went to the gym and another pool we found in the complex, but after swimming a few minutes we felt this water was a bit questionable as well.

On Friday Dad was meeting with doctors again, so Mom and the kids set off to Kidzania, an activity center set up like a miniature city that is completely kid focused.  The kids received pretend money and tried out different professions and practiced earning and spending in simulated life situations.  While it took awhile to grasp the concept, the kids had a good time being professional soccer players (surprise!), race car drivers, photographers, doctors, policemen, beauty salon visitors, and more. 

SJ riding around in an ambulance going to "work"

Look who's a client at the beauty salon!

The boys working for "Cannon"

G doing some investigative work at the bank

The boys then went with Dad to watch the new Star Wars movie in IMAX 3D.  They really enjoyed it and came out talking as fast as they could about it!

Star Wars in 3D

Meanwhile Mom & SJ had their annual mother-daughter Christmas date and visited a nearby shopping area that had Anna and Elsa along with some other displays of Disney characters.  They had cupcakes, their traditional Starbucks hot chocolate, and painted their nails purple.

Girl time

Dad returned to the doctor and Mom and the kids returned to the Asiatique Market.  We shopped, wandered around, and eventually did some fun rides before meeting up with Dad for dinner.  We were craving pad thai and found some delicious food along with mango sticky rice with coconut cream for dessert – yum!

Asiatique Night Market

SJ riding a mini 4-wheeler 

Oldest boys riding hover boards

Mango sticky rice with coconut cream

Saturday was our last full day in Bangkok.  We have found getting around the city fairly easy and we’ve really enjoyed all of our experiences and wish we had more time here.  Unfortunately Dad was running a fever, achy all over, and coming down with a nasty chest cold (picked up at the hospital perhaps? - either way not the greatest few days for him). Mom did some laundry quick and then headed out with the kids to visit the Grand Palace, the place where Thailand's king once lived.  We didn’t realize that in addition to the city trains we needed to take a ferry, so we ended up arriving at the Palace with not much time to spare and felt a bit rushed trying to take it all in.  We wished that we would’ve visited the Palace earlier in the week as just taking the ferry there was educational and exposed us to so much of Bangkok that we didn’t get to experience.

  

The Grand Palace was stunning with gold and a kaleidoscope of jewels everywhere creating phenomenal mosaics.  Unfortunately we weren’t able to learn the history of much of it, but hurriedly rushed around marveling at the aesthetics.  We did enter the Royal Monastery of the Emerald Buddha, which the kids will forever remember as smelling of stinky feet as everyone took off their shoes to show respect.  We  learned later, after some research, that this particular Buddha was originally discovered in Chiang Rai and is actually made of jade and not emerald.  G found this fascinating and also learned that the Buddha has different outfits for the summer, rainy season, and winter.  We are curious who gets to go up and change the Buddha?

G in front of the Royal Monastery of the Emerald Buddha

The Emerald Buddha

Kids striking a pose

Beautiful mosaic covering the Phra Mondop (library of sacred scriptures inscribed on palm leaves).  Along the roof are palm leaf bells.

We also enjoyed a seriously speedy run through the Coin & Weapon Museum located on the palace grounds and were fascinated by some of the elaborate jewelry, weaponry, and displays of baby nurseries that ancient Thai's used.

While obviously built for a different purpose, being surrounded by so many gold and colorful buildings sparkling in the sunlight allowed us to use our imaginations as to what heaven will some day be like with its streets of gold and the light of Jesus brilliantly illuminating everything so beautifully.

The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, like clear glass.  The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel.  The first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth ones, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst.  Ant the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass.

And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.  And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.  

Revelation 21: 18-23

While we only had 4 days in Bangkok, we've been pleasantly surprised at our transition to SE Asian culture.  We've really enjoyed the Thai people we've interacted with and wish we had more time to explore Bangkok with Dad by our side.  However, we purchased bus tickets to Cambodia, so we are off again and will settle there for the holidays.