Last full day in Bangkok

It's almost 9pm on Tuesday night here, which means Obama is some 3 hours away from inauguration. I do regret not being in the States on this day; I'd like to see it, and without going to an All-American bar in the middle of the night here (which really wouldn't be my scene) there's no way I can in real time. But I'll watch tape when I get back. Here's to a new era.

One Thai man on the street today, when he found out where I was from, said "Obama good! Bush bad!" and I agreed up until the moment he started to make shooting gestures. But mime in untrained hands is a clumsy tool, we all know that.

He was just one of several encounters today, not all great. Two separate guys tried to rip me off today in two different scams. People are quite friendly here and so it is not at all clear at first what is going on. But when I made it clear that I wasn't buying anything one of them did quite an about face from his friendly overtures and said "You stupid! Stupid like buffalo!" which rolled right off my back since I'm a big fan of the water buffalo.

Other than those two slippery guys, neither of whom did any real harm, I've had another good, full day. On my morning walk I passed the Queen's art gallery and so went in for a quick look at contemporary Thai painting. Then I climbed the Golden Mount, which is a temple atop an artificial hill made of collapsed brick from an older chedi right in the middle of the city. There are lots of large bells hanging along the staircases that you climb and apparently the tradition is to ring each bell as you pass, so I did. I spent a few hours touring the temple complex housing the Emerald Buddha and the grounds of the Grand Palace which are attached. I don't think I've ever seen so much gold in one place, and that includes Versailles. Truly remarkable. The exteriors of these temples are encrusted with gold-leaf tile and multicolored glass mosaic EVERYWHERE. It's pretty blinding, and incredibly colorful, and yet it works visually. Not as a steady diet for the eyes, but it seems to suit these most ceremonial of buildings.

The Emerald Buddha is actually jade, and about 2 feet high, and lives atop a 25' mountain of gold thrones and attendant Buddhas and lotus and so forth. He's got three different golden outfits--one for each of the three seasons: rainy, dry, winter--and the King himself actually changes the garments on the appropriate day. The King is a revered figure, and pictures of him are EVERYWHERE on the streets in large public cartouches and hanging on buildings 4 times life size and in stores and in peoples homes.

Since I was back in the neighborhood of the massage school, I popped in for a 45 minute foot massage and reflexology treatment. The woman who worked on me was great, and took my surgically repaired right ankle as a personal challenge. I can't say it all felt good at the time, but my feet aren't tired tonight after a full day of walking.

Then I decided to test out a few of Bangkok's special transit options. A major river loops through the city, and the water taxis are actually one of the fastest and cheapest ways around. They aren't just for tourists. So I took one from the old part of the city to a station near the commercial center, where I climbed stairs up to take the Skytrain, a monorail that has two lines. I rode the shorter line from one end to the other. Again, it's full of Thais, and schoolkids, and very much in use.

My last stop of the day was Jim Thompson's house. Jim Thompson was a Princeton trained architect and former OSS officer who moved to Thailand permanently after the war. He had an artist's and entrepreneur's eye, and played a major role in getting western fashion leaders interested in Thai silk. He made a fortune from the silk exporting company he founded and ran. He got quite famous after the movie of THE KING AND I, which featured his silks. He built himself a beautiful house and garden, filled with sculpture and porcelain, by taking 6 traditional Thai houses and connecting them. Walls and floors are teak, with traditional structures that are wider at the base than at the top. This includes all doorways and windows. Windows look out over a compact garden with orchids and greenery and curving brick walks. The living room opens out on one long side to a brick terrace that leads down to a boat landing on a canal, so there's a constant sound of water in the house. (The canals now are pretty filthy, but I imagine it wasn't so bad in 1959 when he built the house.) Thompson disappeared at the age of 61 while on holiday in Malaysia in 1967, so the whole story has a mysterious tinge to it.

I've wondered if my great aunt Cleome ever crossed paths with this character; it seems possible given the circles she moved in, though I think most of her time in Asia was quite a bit earlier, and she would have been older than he was. But she's been on my mind a bit since the flower Cleome is one of the most used in plantings here in street dividers and decorative parks.

I peeked in to one of the big department stores in the complex known as Siam Center long enough to buy myself a little alarm clock so I don't miss my early taxi to the airport in the morning, and to catch a bit of the upscale commercial scene, which is big here. There are fancy flyover walkways connecting all these stores, and indoor upscale restaurant corridors. The one with the longest line was the kind of sushi place where dishes pass by diners on a conveyor belt so that you can take what you want. Very hip here, I guess!

I am off to Phnom Penh tomorrow, for the second half of my trip.

Karen