Exploring old Bangkok (July 31)

This is my last day in Thailand, and I finally made it into old Bangkok! I took a skytrain to the river, and the switched to the Chao express boat for a ride up the Chao Praya river to the Grand Palace. The highlight of the ride was going by Wat Arun (temple of dawn), this is the temple that often occurs on the covers of guidebooks to Thailand. 

Wat Arun

The Grand Palace is the official residence of the Thai king, although he lives elsewhere now. The Grand Palace was very impressive, as was Wat Phra Kaew (wat = temple), a temple in the Grand Palace compound which houses the emerald Buddha image, the most sacred Buddha in Thailand. The temple had statues and paintings of many fantastical creatures, here are pictures of a couple of them:

Guarding the entrance to Wat Phra Kaew

With some of my favorite creatures that I met at Wat Phra Kaew

Wat Phra Kaew

View from the outside

 I spent a couple hours there, and then took a walk down the river, picking up some snacks for lunch on the way, to Wat Pho, which is another large Buddhist temple. Wat Pho is a large temple complex with many buildings, but it is most famous for the 46 m long and 15 m high reclining Buddha figure, which is covered in gold leaf. 

Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho

After the temples, I hopped back on the river boat, and rode down to Chinatown. I wandered around and looked at various shops selling all kinds of things. Chinatown is famous for having some of the best street food in Bangkok, but unfortunately there was some kind of event today, so many of the vendors weren’t there. I was getting pretty tired by this time, so I headed back to the hostel and got dinner nearby. Then time to pack up and get ready for my early morning departure from Thailand.

Looking back on the past five weeks, it has been a great trip. It was fun and relaxing going to the beach and seeing the sights in Bangkok, but I think that the time in Chaiyaphum was the highlight because of the great people I met there and the chance to really learn about the community and culture there. Hopefully I’ll be back soon sometime!

Bangkok malls and eating street food (July 30)

After an “American breakfast” at the hotel, which consisted of fried eggs, hot dogs, and wonder bread (fortunately I had some other snacks I had brought in my hotel room to fill up on), the van picked me up a bit after 9 and we started the drive back to Bangkok.  Due to the traffic, we got back into Bangkok around 12:30 or 1. After getting some lunch, I edited a physics paper for a while, and then I headed out to see the Siam center area. I had stopped by here briefly earlier in the trip to pick up some books. Siam center is the closest thing Bangkok has to a “center,” and it is filled with many shopping malls. Some of them, like the MBK mall, which I visited during my first day in Bangkok to get my cell phone, offer lots of small shops, fake goods, and low prices. The fanciest mall, the Siam Paragon, is filled with various international brands. Gap (surprise!) was having a sale (50% off) but I didn’t buy anything there, although I did get a new shirt at H & M. The square between the Siam Paragon mall and the Siam Discovery mall had a couple multi-story flatscreen TVs featuring advertisements, the atmosphere was similar to some of the busy shopping areas in Tokyo that I experienced. After exploring for awhile, I headed back to the hostel area for dinner and picked up food from my favorite street food stands since I only have a couple more nights to enjoy them—pad thai, grilled mushrooms with chile sauce, pearl milk tea, and fruit. The street food is one of my favorite things about Bangkok. In the area around the hostel, tons of stands set up in the evening (and some are there all day) to sell various foods, as well as a variety of other stands selling clothes, purses, etc. It can make the sidewalk crowded and hard to navigate at times, but there are so many tasty snacks to try! Some of my favorites are the fruit stands, which are open all day, so it is really easy to pick up fruit for a snack. A common thing is to get slices of a more sour, firm fruit in a bag with a stick, and then a second bag with chile-sugar mixture to dip the fruit in. I’m not sure what some of these fruits are, but they are tasty!

Suranaree University of Technology (July 29)

This morning I headed out to Khorat to visit Non, who was a student in ZX Shen’s group, and is now a professor there at the Suranaree University of Technology. Khorat, which is the nickname for Nakhon Ratchasima, is the capital of the province of the same name, which is the largest (by area) province in Thailand. It is about 3-4 hours (depending on traffic) northeast of Bangkok, so it is in the Isaan region like Chaiyaphum (which is about 1-2 hours away from Khorat). Since I was going to give a seminar, Non organized a van to pick me up in Bangkok and take me to the University. The van looked like it could hold about 10 people, but the driver and I were the only ones in it, so it was a very spacious experience, the opposite of the trip to the floating market. When we got to the university, I met Non and we went for coffee and chatted for a bit. Then he showed me to the seminar room and I set up my computer. I talked about my quantum Monte Carlo project on phase competition on strongly correlated systems, this is also what I presented at my thesis defense so I had lots of practice. I think the talk went well, and a few professors asked quite a few questions, I couldn’t quite tell if the students there were following or not.

After the talk, two of Non’s students took me to see a silk weaving shop. We picked up one of the student’s four year old son on the way, who is in a bilingual Thai/English kindergarten. I was impressed with his level of English already, he was much more advanced than the students in Chaiyaphum! Both of the students had studied through a master’s degree, worked as lecturers teaching at a university for about five years, and then started their Ph.D. The Thai silk was really beautiful; it is a handicraft that this region is famous for.

After the silk, we drove to a restaurant for dinner and met Non there, one of his sons, and Mike, who is also a professor at the university. He is Canadian and married to a Thai woman, and interestingly, my advisor Tom was on his thesis committee when he did his Ph.D in Toronto. It is a small world!

At the restaurant, the waitress seemed quite concerned that the food would be too spicy for me, although when I was in Chaiyaphum people did not seem to be concerned about this. The Isaan region has the spiciest food in Thailand, so Non, who is from Bangkok, says that he always has to request that they make it less spicy for him. We got a variety of dishes, including pla pao (the fish dish that I had in Chaiyaphum at my farewell party), sweet and sour veggies, tom yam soup, and som tam (spicy unripe papaya salad, which is one of the most famous Isaan dishes). I quite liked the less spicy version of som tam at the restaurant, when I had it before it Chaiyaphum my mouth always felt like it was catching on fire! 

Dinner in Khorat

After dinner, the students took me to see the statue of Thao Suranaree (also known as Yamo), who is the local heroine of the city and the university was named after her. We paid respects to the statue by purchasing some flowers to hang near her, and some little gold squares which we then stuck on the statue. This is also how you pay respect to a Buddha statue at a temple. After this, we stopped by a stand on the street for a snack of dried squid, and then they took me to the hotel.

With the statue of Yamo in the center of Khorat

Amphawa floating market (July 28)

The hostel was organizing a trip to the Amphawa floating market outside of Bangkok today, so I decided to join. There were about 25 travellers from the hostel who went, so it was quite popular! We walked to a minivan station near the Victory Monument and caught a van for the 1-1.5 hour ride. My van was slightly larger than a supershuttle, but there were 17 people in it (4 people per row)! It was not the best organized trip, so after we were dropped off at the bus station near the market, we had to wait for about an hour until the guide from the hostel came to meet us. Eventually, we walked to the market and had some time to explore and eat lunch. There were many stalls, the unique thing about the floating market being that the market bordered a canal, and some of the stalls pulled up on boats. At these stalls, they would cook food on the boat, and then either hand it ashore in a basket or have a guy who would wade out to get it. Their specialty was seafood. 

Floating market

More floating market

Lunch!

After lunch, we got onto a long tail boat and road down the canal out to a larger river. We spent a couple hours motoring down this river and stopping at three Buddhist temples on the way. In particular, we stopped at one that is one of the oldest in the region (older than any of the temples in Bangkok), it was a relatively small stone building, but it had many trees growing on/around it, so it looked like part of an enormous tree. 

Riverside house

Buddha statue in one of the temples

After we finished going to the temples, we had a bit more time at the market, and then we caught the van back to the hostel. While I would have liked a little more time seeing the market and a little less time waiting during the day, it was fun to meet travellers from many different countries on the trip.

Trip back to Bangkok and Chatuchak market (July 27)

Got up early to go for one more swim in the rooftop pool. I thought that I would eat breakfast at the tasty fruit salad/granola place, but it had not opened yet so I had leftover snacks from yesterday’s street market instead. It was lucky that I had bought way too much food! Then at 8:30 I caught a taxi to the Ko Samui airport. Upon landing in Bangkok, I took the airport train and skytrain back into the city, and returned to Hostelling International Mid-Bangkok, which is located in the Ratchathewi district, very near the Victory Monument. This monument was constructed in 1941 to celebrate the Thai victory in a brief fight with the French.

Ratchathewi road, the hostel is on a side street off of this

Victory monument, with very busy surrounding traffic circle

 This was my third time arriving in Bangkok during the past month, and this time I will actually be staying to explore it. The lady working at the hostel suggested that I go see the Chatuchak weekend market in the afternoon. To get there, I hopped back on the skytrain and rode to the last stop, Mor Chit, where I caught the bus to Chaiyaphum when I first arrived. The market started basically right next to the skytrain station, and it was enormous! I read that it is one of the largest markets in Asia. There was a largish path that went around in a circle, and it was surrounded by buildings housing an enormous number of stalls, with narrow paths leading between them. Some of the inner areas seemed quite stuffy, because not much fresh air could get in, so I tended to stay near the outer ones, or the areas that weren’t as packed. There were stalls selling basically everything one could think of, including clothes, soaps, food, statues of Buddhas and elephants, lamps, handbags, souvenirs, etc. I purchased a couple things, and also bought some coconut ice cream, which was served in a half coconut with peanuts, green sticky rice, and pumpkin as toppings. Arroy! (delicious!)

Coconut ice cream

Part way through my exploration of the market, a tropical downpour started and everyone ran to get under the roofs of the shops. It seemed to continue for the rest of the afternoon, with periods of downpour interspersed with times with no or light rain. Unfortunately, right when I was heading back to the skytrain station, the downpour started again, but since the street was so crowded no one could move very fast, and I was soaked by the time I got to the station. Luckily, since it is always warm out, getting soaked was not a big problem. When I got back to the hostel, I went to my favorite pad thai stand for dinner, which I found on my previous night here.

Second day in Bo Phut (July 26)

I found a very nice restaurant for breakfast (menu partially in French), and got a very tasty fruit salad with yogurt and granola, orange juice, and latte. After relaxing in the room for a bit and finding a place to stay in Bangkok for the weekend, I headed out on a run down the length of Bo Phut beach. Then I took a leisurely stroll back, taking a swim whenever I got to warm (which meant that I went for four swims). Once back at the hotel, I went for another swim at the rooftop pool. I then relaxed on my balcony and finished my mango and sticky rice from the night before, and headed out to get some lunch. I knew that there would be a night market in Bo Phut in the evening, so I decided that it was ok to eat just fruit and dessert for lunch. I got a mango smoothie at the smoothie stand, although it was not as good as the coconut one yesterday. I also got a “banana pancake.” There are a lot of guys around with mobile stands that say “banana pancake” on them, and I hadn’t tried one yet. The guy stretched a piece of dough very thin and started frying it in a wok. Then he added a sliced banana, coconut, and raisins in the middle, folded the dough around it, and added more oil to the pan and fried it until it was crispy on the outside. He then cut it into bite sized pieces and poured sweetened condensed milk over the top. It was very tasty, but probably not that healthy!

In the afternoon, I sat on my balcony and worked on editing a paper from Stanford that we are trying to get out soon. Then I went for one more rooftop swim before heading out to explore the night market. There are a huge number of stalls, and they had shut down the roads in Bo Phut to cars, in order to accommodate all of them. There were a mix of stalls selling food and other stuff like t-shirts and souvenirs. There were also a number of stalls playing loud music and selling mojitos and other drinks. Some of the bartenders would do sort of a dance while preparing the drinks, so they were fun to watch. Fortunately, after extensively exploring the market, I found that the best food area was right near my hotel, so I bought some fish cakes, kanom tien, and coconut/corn cakes wrapped in a leaf for dinner. I also saw a lady making a new dish that looked intriguing, so I bought one of those as well. She was making very thin omelettes, and then filling them with bean sprouts and a fried coconut/peanut mixture. It also came with a bag of pickled cucumbers and chiles. When I first bit into it, the coconut mixture tasted sweet, but then the spiciness hit me and I realized it also had a lot of chiles in it. In my experience the last few weeks, Thai chiles have a longer delay time than I am used to: when I first bite into a food, it doesn’t seem spicy, but after a couple seconds the chiles hit me and the spiciness lasts quite a long time before it subsides—and water doesn’t help! I think that milk is the best way to get rid of too much spiciness, but usually that is not available when I am having a meal.

Last day relaxing at the beach, tomorrow I head back to Bangkok!

Bo Phut (July 25)

It turned out that the hostel I had reserved in Bo Phut was not very nice, and also the location was not good (somewhat isolated and far from the beach), so after spending one night there, I decided to find a new place to stay for my last two nights on Ko Samui. I started walking down the road, and found a nice restaurant serving breakfast by the beach, so I stopped there to eat and use their wifi. The breakfast was very large and tasty, consisting of two poached eggs with toast, an enormous bowl of fresh fruits, yogurt, and granola, orange juice, and coffee. Then I caught a taxi into the main part of Bo Phut and walked around searching for a new hotel. I found a hotel called L’Hacienda, run by a French/Thai couple, which seemed like the perfect place to stay. They offered to drive me back to the hostel to pick up my bags, so I wouldn’t have to pay for a taxi, which was nice. The hotel is quite small, maybe 8-10 rooms, and my room has a balcony overlooking the ocean! Also, there is a swimming pool on the roof with a wonderful panoramic view of the beach and ocean to one side, and the town and jungle/coconut covered hills on the other side. I was very happy that I had switched to this new hotel. 

My room at L'Hacienda

View from my balcony! The island in the distance is Ko Phangan.

Rooftop pool, a great place to swim and enjoy the view

Elephants guarding the pool

By this time, I was getting hungry for lunch, so I walked down the main street in Bo Phut and bought a coconut smoothie from a roadside stand. The lady took a large knife and chopped it open, Chaiyaphum-style, and used the entire contents of the coconut for my smoothie. It was delicious! Bo Phut is also touristy, but in a much nicer way than Lamai was. It seems like Bo Phut is dominated by French tourists, and people often talk to me on the street in French. I think that visiting Ko Samui is a bit more like visiting Hawaii than visiting Thailand, because there are so many foreigners here. The main thing is enjoying the beach and the beautiful islands and views, rather than experiencing Thai culture. I am certainly enjoying my week here at the beach, but if I go to the beach in Thailand again sometime, I think I would choose a location further off the Western tourist track so it would feel more like I am in Thailand.

After lunch, I went down to the beach and read for a while and went for a swim. The views from Bo Phut beach are very stunning, because you can see Ko Phangan (the second biggest island in this region), and a variety of smaller islands off in the distance. When I got back to the hotel, I went for another swim in the hotel pool and enjoyed the view.

Then I went out to find dinner. I found a mango and coconut sticky rice stand, so I bought some of that for dessert. Mango and sticky rice is relatively expensive here right now, because mangos are out of season in Thailand (apparently June is the time to come if you want to eat mangos). As a result, the seller told me that they have to import mangos from Vietnam at Cambodia and this time of year, which increases the price. I didn’t know that the climate in Vietnam and Cambodia was so different from Thailand, but maybe they get their rainy season at a slightly different time? Anyway, this guy was very careful about making his mango and sticky rice, so he cut open about three mangos to find the perfect one. Actually, I think that I ended up with around 1.5 mangos in my dessert, and the mangos here are big! There must be a rule here limiting the roadside stands, because it seems like the only stands around sell desserts, smoothies, and fruit. While I certainly wouldn’t mind living on this, I figured it was better to eat something else for dinner, so I got an overpriced Indian meal at a touristy restaurant.