wat tat tong & charoen krung

It's Sunday, so the end of our delicious holiday is near. No more waking up at 7:30 and singing "holi-holi-holi-holiday" in bed and no more agonizing over whether to have a snack and then go shopping or go shopping and then have a snack. Although, come to think of it, the snacking will probably remain a constant. I have now entered the hungry-all-the-time stage of pregnancy. Yesterday I came home from the weekend market and told Phet I was stuffed because I had killed myself on a bowl of crazy-spicy rice noodles and coconut broth and had had to down half a litre of water as a result. I don't usually drink that much with meals, so my belly felt like it was hosting quintuplets for awhile. Then, about 11 minutes after I said this to Phet, he came into the dining room and I was eating a pancake and a bowl of peaches. "I thought you were stuffed," he said, wonderingly. "I was," I replied, "but now I'm not." Ah, the joys of pregnancy.

In other news, I 've been meaning to mention that last week we went to a fair at our local temple, Wat Tat Tong. There's a gorgeous complex behind our apartment that belongs to the Wat and is made up of several temples and scads of buildings for the monks and visitors. The Wat also hosts alot of funerals, so it's quite a busy and bustling place. After we'd lived here for about two weeks, I got Phet to go and check out the Wat with me, but we were kind of disappointed. We happened to stop by on a day when there wasn't a single funeral or service of any kind. All the temples were shut up, and the only place to pray was a very small shrine area right off of Sukhumvit road. We went up to the big, curlicued metal gates of the Wat and looked in like street urchins. No entry. Bummer. Well, last week we finally got in to see the Wat itself. Turns out the trick is to wait for new years and then they throw the doors open.

Outside the Wat there was a small fair, maybe about 30 stalls selling snackfood and hawaiian shorts [a short aside: strangely, Bangkok folks have got some kind of obsession with 'hawaiian' style shorts and t-shirts for Songkran. Every employee at our local grocery store was sporting a hawaiian shirt for the week leading up to new years. Why is that? In Laos, the popular new years sartorial splendour was any outfit topped off with a giant handmade basket-like sombrero. Do the Hawaiians and Mexicans go around toting gear to sell to South-East Asian partygoers? What's the deal?], t-shirts, and opportunities to win big. Phet and Ji tried their luck at the throw-darts-at-balloons game and Phet won a key chain, a pair of nail clippers, and a big "chocolate" wafer bar. Put all that together and you've got yourself a party! Ji was a terror with the darts, but the stall owners let him play despite the fact that one dart he launched ended up in the stall keeper's hair. Each time he threw all the onlookers ducked. He was mad with power. Phet and Ji also enjoyed the world's longest ferris wheel ride. They paid their 20 baht, got into their rocking cart thingy, and away they went. After the wheel had turned about 10 times, they started to look a bit bored. Then it turned another 10 times and they looked anxious. Then the wheel-manager lit a cigarette and walked away for awhile. The three other occupants peered out of their car-cages like sad monkeys at a poorly-run zoo. The wheel turned at least another 20 times and then finally Phet motioned to the guy to let them out, which he did. It's a fine line with amusement parks, eh? Like, if you get not quite enough you'll go back and buy more tickets, and if you get too much you start to feel like you're being tortured. Slowly. Ever try to eat an entire funnel cake at Canada's Wonderland all by yourself? I rest my case.

After the never ending ferris wheel ride we checked out a great game. It was a catch-your-own-fish place where they had filled a kiddie pool with various types of goldfish and then you had to use a scooper to catch yourself a fish. But here's the trick: the 'net' of the scooper was made of paper that would dissolve within about 2 minutes. So, if you were an expert fish-scooper like the owner, you could amass a school of at least 6 fish within the 2 minute time span. But if you were hopelessly inept like Ji, you'd get 2 minutes of fun and a disintegrated net. Good game!

Before we left, we went to pay our regards at the Wat. We bought our incense and candles and lotus from some white-robed lady monks who seemed to imply that it was very unlucky that we only bought one bottle of perfumed water to pour on the Buddha statue. They certainly weren't trying to make more money since the payment was all in the form of donations (and, duh, they're monks) but let me tell you, it feels weird to have a monk look askance at you regarding the amount of scented water you're buying. With our paltry supply of scented water, we then went to pray at the outside shrine, and afterwards went right up into the Wat itself. Wat Tat Tong turns out to be gorgeous. Deep red ceilings with delicate gold patterns painted across them, plush red carpet on the floor, massive gold Buddha statue, and lovely painted walls. In the other Wats I've been in, the wall paintings usually depict scenes from the life of the Buddha, but Wat Tat Tong was really cool: the paintings were just of a natural landscape that one could imagine would have surrounded the Buddha while he was praying. Blue skies, lotuses blossoming in tranquil ponds, bodhi trees. It was a very pleasant and calming scene, and with the serene Buddha statue at the altar presiding over all, it seemed like we'd just stepped into his own private grotto.

Later this week, Ji and I had another cool adventure exploring Charoen Krung avenue. We took the subway to the end of the line (Ji's idea) and got off at Saphan Thaksin and then walked for almost two and a half hours up Charoen Krung avenue towards Chinatown. This was pretty epic because last year I had tried a similar route with Ji and he hadn't even been able to walk a quarter of the distance without being carried. Man, four year olds are great. The lower end of Charoen Krung is extra busy and teeming with people. There are scores of food and fruit stalls and the air is filled with incense and trundling-bus smoke. Further on, near the poshest hotels in Bangkok - the Oriental, for example - there are elegantly decorated shops selling objets d'art and Thai silk. If you keep on past that area you are in gem central, where there is nary a 7-11, just jewellery shops as far as the eye can see. However, since they're not Thai gold shops, they're not particularly busy. They seem to do sparse trade, made up mainly of wholesalers and suckered-in tourists. Ji and I also passed the main post office, the cathedral, and the Catholic college before we decided we were done in and needed food and drinks. Luckily, we were right nearby a shopping complex I'd wanted to check out for a long time, the Riverside mall. Turns out it's a very dark place full of very expensive shops selling high-end items to high-rolling tourists. Ji and I went and had a snack and a drink at the Riverview restaurant, where we had a superb air-conditioned view over the Chao Praya river and where we watched the barges go by while we ate some satay. Afterwards, we noticed that there was kite-painting for kids being offered in the atrium of the mall, so Ji went and got a kite and painted it for 20 baht (50 cents! Bargoon!). Here's his wicked kite:

Kite in hand, Ji then tore around the pier entertaining many folks heading towards the ferries. After a good long race, we then went back to Charoen Krung and continued on our hike. We passed by some great industrial shops that fascinated Ji - selling oxygen tanks, super long plastic plumbing tubes, big wheels of chains, motors of all sizes, and much much more. Better than a science centre any day. We crossed over a canal bridge and were just heading into Chinatown when we decided our energy was kaput and hailed a taxi while Ji himself was being hailed by a bunch of dudes hanging out on the street corner, calling out to him "Hum noi! Hum noi!" or "Little penis! Little penis!", which is an enderaring - if somewhat saucy - Thai nickname for little boys.

When we finally got to the UN building (which had been our final destination all along) we were exhausted. We checked out Phet's office with its cold grey walls and cute pictures of Ji and then went down to happy hour, which Ji had specially worn his semi-dressy shirt for. He whooped it up with wild Auntie Helen, who did crazy gymnastics tricks with him and flung him around the garden while I yawned blearily over my soda water. Then it was finally home again, home again, jiggity jig, and Ji and I both crashed before 8:30 pm. Whew, it's hard work being on holidays!

[Bangkok-23-April-2006]