My weekend in Bangkok with Sharon turned out to be action-packed with activities. On Friday morning we met in the Silom area and had a brief look at the Patpong district in daylight. This is the heart of Bangkok's world (in)famous nightlife, and both Soi Patpong 1 and Patpong 2 are normally packed with tourists and vendors in the huge night bazaar. Without the neon lights, however--and in the unforgiving late morning sun--the neighborhood appears even seedier in the daytime than it is at night.
We then set out for Siam Square, an old haunt from my youth, on Bangkok's BTS Skytrain, and I was quite confused by all the changes in the neighborhood since my last visit about 20 years ago. The Mah Boon Krong mall is still there, but now it's rebranded as MBK. I was gratified to see that the old Lido and Scala movie houses are still in the same place.
The Siam Square mall itself remains basically unchanged, albeit spiffed up, but there are many new buildings surrounding it, and these are all rather tall-- 20 stories or more in some cases.
From this point, roughly about halfway between Silom and the Chao Phraya River, we picked up a local city bus for the long trip out to the Banglamphu area which is the location of all the big Bangkok tourist attractions such as the Grand Palace, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, Khao San Road, Sanam Luang, Thammasat University, and the National Museum, our ultimate destination.
Although the 200 baht admission fee is a little bit on the high side for a Thai museum ticket, the entire compound is huge with a very thorough and informative historical exhibit hall to kick things off before one enters the numerous buildings with their display galleries. We spent about three hours on the site but I doubt if we covered even a third of it.
The next day Sharon and I met on Sukhumwit Soi 61 to watch the latest installment of the Thai historical film series King Naresuan 5. King Naresuan was a hero in 16th century Thailand because he fought the hated Burmese and sought vengeance for the latter's sacking of the old Siamese capital city Ayutthaya . As part of the current Thai army junta's program to "Bring Happiness Back to the Thai People", the military government promoted a nationwide ticket giveaway earlier in June so Thais could see the film for free.
Although we paid for our tickets, we thoroughly enjoyed the movie since we were planning to visit the ruins of Ayutthaya with Sharon's husband Michael on the following day, and the historical subject matter of the film piqued our interest in the Ayutthaya story.
Unfortunately, Michael was called back to work on Sunday, so Sharon and I rebooted the idea and made the trip on Monday morning with a hired car and driver, Uncle U.
It's difficult to describe the sheer scope of the ancient ruined city which is full of temples, numerous Buddha images (some of them gigantic including a famous reclining Buddha), many large jedi (stupas), and more.
We started out with a list of about 10 sites and we probably visited 6-7 of them over a six hour period.
On Monday night Sharon helped organize a jam session at Finnegan's Pub on Soi Nana and there was a pretty good turnout of expat players (bodhran, banjo, guitar, mandolin, and fiddle) and Thai/expat listeners.
Sharon did an excellent job helping to clear the cobwebs from my memory of American and Irish fiddle tunes, and at one point the host of the session asked me to play something from Thailand.
Of course I played Khang Khao Kin Kluay (Bats Eating Bananas). By the time I hit the third time around the form, this excellent pickup band of the aged, the middle-aged, and the young, was backing me up so solidly it attracted the attention of the Thai waitstaff and barkeeps.
It also caught the attention of Father Joe Maier, a Bangkok icon of many years for his work in the Khlong Toei slums, who just happened to be in the audience that night.
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