Thailand: Jim Thompson House and Our Hotel

The next day, we decided to check out the Jim Thompson house in Bangkok. Jim Thompson is an American architect who served in the US Army during WWII. When he visited Thailand, he immediately fell in love with it and moved there permanently. He was interested in silk and worked in that industry for the rest of his life.

His house is spectacular. He combined six teak buildings that he thought represented traditional Thai architecture in order to make his large home. The whole thing, like traditional Thai homes, is on stilts to avoid any floods. He moved into his new house in 1959. His house is right on the canal and directly across the water is the village where the silk fabrics were made, some still are. Then, in 1967, Jim Thompson visited the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia (where we are going the day after Christmas) and disappeared while on a hike. He has never been found and there are no clues to what happened to him.

His nephew inherited his house and turned it into a museum. The only way to see it is through a guided tour that lasts about 30 minutes. The girls made it almost all the way through the tour. Wyatt did not last very long though. Most of the pictures are from the garden.

A really cool demonstration was happening at the entrance. They had silk in its different forms and you could touch it, shake it, and so on.

There was a man who was boiling the silk cocoons and then using a wooden tool to get the silk into a long string of silk yarn. Pretty cool to watch, mesmerizing. 

Here are some pictures from the lovely garden.

There is actually a fish in this big pot. He and Zoe are checking each other out.

One of the men who work here showed the kids how to stick their hand in the top of the pot and wiggle and splash it a little in order to get the fish's attention. 

These little wats can be found at houses everywhere in Bangkok. They are meant for the spirits and are placed in the Northeast corner (I think that's right) of the property so that shadows never fall on them.

Here is the whole family sitting on the steps to the living room.

 After we finished the tour, we rode a tuk-tuk back to the main street where we walked a block or two to visit the MBK shopping mall. Ted had read in our guide book that the international food court at this mall was supposed to be exceptional. We decided to give it a shot, even thought that meant we had to pass up a lot of excellent smelling street food.

Inside the mall it was at least very cool. The food court was incredibly disappointing. Not only were there many, many, many cockroaches crawling around the floor, even some of the counters, it was sort of pricey for mall food. And not very good. And I still can't believe we decided to eat it instead of walking away. We thought it was weird that a mall food court was recommended, so we really should have known better. Ah well, next meal will be better. And cheaper.

The rest of the pictures are from our hotel, the Presidential Park in the Sukhumvit area of Bangkok. It was very nice. The rooms were not brand new, modern, and sleek but they were nice, well-equipped, and very clean. Oh, and they upgraded us so our room was huge. We had a large separate master bedroom, a very big bathroom with separate shower and bath (and view), a dining room, living room with sofa bed and cot, and a kitchen. We also had an enormous balcony with a pretty view. 

And bathrobes and slippers!

We also enjoyed a free breakfast buffet every morning. Love it.

The hotel is attached to some serviced apartment towers so we had a couple of pools, a playground, and some sitting areas to enjoy on the 6th floor. You could not hear any of the city sounds here.

Dance party on the balcony!

Everywhere in Bangkok, the Thai people were so friendly to our children. The kids loved going to the lobby because they would get so much attention. It was very sweet.

We don't have a bathtub at our apartment in Singapore so we loved having one at our hotel in Bangkok.

We had to wash the city of us so we could get back out the next day to see where the king lives.

Thailand: Longboat Ride

Once we left the second temple, we were ready for more exploration but of a more passive variety. That's a nice way of saying we were all hot and the kids were very tired. We weren't ready to call it day though, so we jumped on a longboat tour starting in the Chao Phraya River and heading back through a lock into the canals of the different neighborhoods of Bangkok.

We turned pretty quickly off the big river into a smaller canal where we pulled up to the lock. Being the untrusting sort, this is the face I made as we approached it. I did not realize there would be locks and I assumed this was the part where they took all of our money and electronics and kicked us off the boat. Yeah, that didn't happen. We were the second boat there and waited on another ten or so to queue up before passing through. While we waited, we convinced the children that there was a fire-breathing dragon on the other side.

Ted gave me the thumbs-up sign, so I knew everything was going to be fine.

This tour definitely gave us a glimpse at a part of Bangkok we would not have otherwise seen. Our hotel was in the fancier part of town that was mostly all hotels and shopping centers, and most of our exploration was in the older more historical district. The canals were passing through where the people actually live, a lot of them anyway. I expected homes along a canal to be like the grand estates of Venice or something, but that is not the case. Sure, there was some opulence, but literally right next door would be a concrete block tiny dwelling, lots of them. 

Here are some kids going for a mid-day swim. This looks sweet, and really it was I guess, but I couldn't get past how polluted the water was that they were swimming in. Maybe I should just leave that part out so that the story is a bit sweeter? Sorry.

There really were tons of people sitting out by the water. The kids were so excited it was as if we were in a parade. They were waving at everyone. And without fail, every single person smiled and waved back. There were tons of boats like ours on the water. These folks must get sick of all the noise and water traffic, but they still were kind enough to wave to children. This was true for almost everyone, everywhere we went. People always wanted to interact with the children and ooh and ahh over them. Most of the time we couldn't communicate beyond hi and thank you and showing fingers for how old each of them was, but it was very sweet. This goes double for cab drivers who loved our kids--for the first 30 minutes of every ride. Oh, and every ride lasted at least 60 minutes. Yikes. Anyway, back to the water.

Our boat pulled into a floating market, where we had asked to go. This was a huge market with all kinds of stalls: food of all kinds, drinks, souvenirs, and so on. Mostly on platforms on the water. On one side, there was a little play set.

We only had 20 minutes here so we quickly grabbed some snacks for the kids and some food to feed the waiting fish. And one really large, really cold, really delicious beer for the boat ride back.

Here are the kids feeding the fish.

And then we set back off.

The women preparing food here were actually doing it while sitting in boats and then handing the food up to the platforms where the servers would take it to customers waiting at tables. They have all their materials within reach: produce, seafood, rice cooker, hibachi grills. I wonder how long they sit like that?

The snack we picked out for the kids? Bread that was actually being sold as fish food. Ted asked the stall worker if it was fresh bread, okay to eat for people and she thought so. Ted tried it first. Hey, they wanted bread, we found them some.

We left the floating market area and headed back into the city.

When we left there, we decided to hit the amulet market on the way to catch a cab. Probably the most impressive thing to me about Bangkok was the use of space. Every section of sidewalk, underpass, overpass, roads with few vehicles was utilized to sell something, anything. Mostly it's food stalls but there are stalls for all kinds of souvenirs, trinkets, lottery tickets, all kinds of stuff. I'm sorry to say we didn't take nearly enough pictures of this. I guess it was difficult with so many crowds of people coming in every direction and all the sidewalk space taken up by make-shift shops. If I could go back, I would spend all my time taking pictures of these set-ups. 

The area we visited was a long block with several alleys off to the sides with table after table selling little amulets or cases for them. The prices ranged from around 50 cents to 50 dollars. Mixed in these stalls, were of course plenty of food stalls, too.

We grabbed some fried corn fritter type things and jumped in a cab for a very long ride back to the hotel. For naps.