I woke up around 8:30 or 9:00 the next morning. Lucia had gotten up much earlier and already had gone down and gotten breakfast. I will never forget my first experience when I went to Japan 20 years ago. I got up after arriving and remember looking down from my room at the Otani Hotel in Tokyo. I saw a Japanese rock garden that was part of the hotel and there were deer calmly grazing in it. My first experience when we arrived in Bangkok was no less vivid. I looked out of the window of our room and remember seeing a huge green field with a narrow asphalt road running through the middle of it. There was and endless stream of bicycles, motor bikes, and a few taxis. The road terminated at what looked like a long manufacturing plant. A dirt path led from a small complex of houses to the asphalt road. At the corner, someone was selling food. It all reminded me of an army of ants marching in a single column. I looked at the same scene later that morning, and the ants were all gone.
The Asia Airport hotel is not that nice of a hotel. We decided to stay there because is was only overnight, it was close to the airport, and it was cheap (about $30 per night). They gave us a suite, but a dump is still a dump. The furniture was cheap and flimsy and there were no wash clothes or hand towels. I showered and afterwards I went down with Lucia so I could eat breakfast. I was a little uneasy because this was really my first experience (and meal) in Thailand. In the hotel restaurant, they had
All in all, the shopping mall seemed to be as big a dump as the hotel was. Finally we went back to our room so we could check out and take the hotel van to the Airport. We checked our bags at the Bangkok airport and had a short wait for our flight to Chiang Mai. Lucia saw a booth that run by a tour operator and asked about the tours that the operator had available in Chiang Mai. Lucia arranged for us to go to a Khantoke dinner show which was a traditional Thai dinner with a dance show featuring traditional Thai dancing and music. While we were there, we also arranged for a private tour guide to take on a tour around Chiang Mai. We could have taken a group tour for much cheaper but I wanted to be able to have time to take the photographs. They would provide a licensed tour guide who spoke English and a car. The cost for a day tour was 2000 Baht ($50 US).
We caught our flight to Chiang Mai. The flight to Chiang Mai only took an hour and was rather uneventful. The plane was a Boeing 737. It can carry a lot of passengers and the plane was packed. One old man was having a hard time breathing and the flight attendants had to give him oxygen. I thought he was going to croak right there on the plane but he seems better but rather woozy when the plane landed. When we got to Chiang Mai, there was no one from the hotel to pick us up. Most hotels that are not too far from an airport offer free shuttle service to and from the airport. In fact they ask for the time and flight number when you make the reservation over the Internet so they can arrange to pick you up when your plane lands. Lucia called the hotel and after a 20 minute wait, someone finally showed up to take us to the hotel. Since this was supposed to be a 5-star hotel, this did not bode well.
We checked into the Lotus Pang Suan Kaew Hotel in the late afternoon. We had found it on the Internet. It is listed as a 5-star hotel. What struck us was that the rates seemed incredibly low for a 5-star hotel. A superior room costs about $35 a night. We were a bit nervous because we didn't believe that we could get luxury accommodations for so little. However, immediately after we entered the lobby, we knew that this was absolutely a first class hotel. The hotel is something like 14 stories and the rooms are on the perimeter of an open air space that extends from the ground floor to the 14th floor. On the ground floor there are fountains and a small ‘creeks’ and ponds with fish. There is also a stage and they have entertainment throughout the day and night. During the day it is piano music and in the evening they have oldies rock music. In the area near the front desk there are huge 2-story teak columns. As we checked in, they offered us a small glass of juice. Don’t ask me what it was but it was very sweet and very refreshing. Our room was on the 9th floor. It was a sheer delight. It was not huge but it was spacious. It had a king-size bed. What really set it apart from an ordinary mill-of-the-run hotel room was the area close to the window. It was set apart from the rest of the room by a carved teak archway. The area had a tile floor and a teak ceiling. There was a love seat and a small table with two chairs. It was like having a separate room with a traditional Lanna Thai decor although it was part of the same room. There was even a 110-volt outlet in the bathroom. This was truly a magnificent hotel at Motel 6 room rates. The elevators were not enclosed and ran up the side of the lobby. The elevator car had glass so you could see the entire lobby as you rode up and down. I added to the grandeur of the hotel
Rooms Front Desk Hotel Lobby, top to bottom Lobby Floor
We got to our room and we settled in. We still had a few hours before someone was going to pick us up for the traditional Thai dinner and dance. Lucia asked if I wanted to do anything in the meantime. I said that I wanted to experience Thailand and not just see it. So I suggested that we walk around the neighborhood around the hotel. The walk felt good after spending so much time cooped up on airplanes. It was a great opportunity to see Thailand up close. In retrospect, I wish we had spent more time doing something like this. The sidewalks were narrow and uneven. What I immediately noticed was the tremendous number of motor bikes on the streets. They were mostly driven by students and young people. I had visions of Cal Worthington and his elephant Spot selling motor bikes in Thailand. There were tons of motorcycle dealers throughout Thailand. Suzuki seems to be a popular brand of motor bike.
Lucia had suggested going to a traditional Thai dinner with a show featuring traditional Thai dancers while we were in Chiang Mai. I liked the idea so Lucia arranged to attend from a tour operator that had a booth at the Bangkok airport. We were scheduled to go that night. Someone was supposed to pick us up at 7:30 but no one showed up. Lucia checked at the front desk and they said that someone had showed up but they didn't know our names and we weren't right there, so they left. Bummer dude. So we decided to head in the hotel restaurant. It was pretty good meal and there was a band playing both Thai songs and American oldies music.
After dinner, we went to the night market. We took a songthaew, which is a mini pickup truck with a shell over the truck bed. Inside the back are two wooden bench seats running front to back. Lucia negotiated the fare to the night market. I think the driver wanted around 70 Baht (about $1.75) and Lucia tried to negotiate the fare down to 60 Baht, a difference of about 25 cents. When Lucia described her conversation with the driver, she kept saying Dollars instead of Baht. She did that throughout our trip. It did reveal one major difference in how we looked at the prices in Thailand. Lucia treated the 10 Baht like it was 10 Dollars. I immediately converted the 10 Baht into US currency (25 cents). Lucia kept telling be not to convert Thai prices into US dollars (or cents). But negotiating prices is part of the Thai culture and learned to keep my mouth shut and let Lucia (and others) negotiate a good and fair price. On the way to the night market we saw the moat that surrounds the original city. After about a 10 or 15 minute ride we got to the night market.
The night market is crowded with vendors selling their wares on both the sides of the street by the curb and on the sidewalks. It is my understanding that it is a true night market whose hours are roughly 6:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. They mostly sell thing for the farangs (foreign tourists). There are a lot of knock-offs of brand name clothing and souvenir T-shirts that are sold here. I ended up getting a T-shirt for Kimberly that had hand painted flowers on it. Lucia got Kimberly a beautiful silver hair comb. Lucia was looking for silk. We saw some silk pillows in the US that cost beaucoup $$$s and she was hoping to get the same thing for a lot less money in Thailand. We finally found a few stalls off the main street that sold silk but they were closing up so she didn't have a chance to find the pillows. We had gotten to the night market rather late so we didn't spend much time there. We talked about returning the next night.
We attempted to cross the street to get to the songthaews lined up waiting for passengers. Unfortunately there was so much traffic and no one was willing to stop to let any pedestrians cross. On our side of the street there were tuk-tuks. Tuk-tuks are 3-wheeled motor scooters. The driver sits in the front and the passengers sit on a padded bench seat on the back of the tuk-tuk. One tuk-tuk driver started talking to Lucia. I recall the driver wanting 50 Baht for the trip back to the hotel. Lucia tried to negotiate a lower fare but the driver pulled out his wallet to show that there was nothing in it. He was pleading poverty. I am sure he keeps the empty wallet to get a little sympathy in negotiating the fare. Since we could not get across the street to the songthaews, we decided to take the tuk-tuk instead. The driver took us on a ‘Mr. Toad’s Wild Adventure’ Disneyland style ride that went down a very dark and narrow street that was deserted. I had an uneasy feeling about going this route but apparently, it was a short cut and there was no traffic. The driver would have gotten us back to the hotel a lot quicker that it took us to get to the night market if the Queen of Thailand had not shown up. Along this deserted road, we passed an open storefront that had a bunch of computers and people who were obviously on the Internet. We also passed an establishment with several ‘hostesses’ dressed in the same color dresses sitting in front of an ‘establishment’.
The road ended at a major thoroughfare. The driver turned onto it and went down the road to get to the next U-turn. When we got there, the local police were stopping everyone from going through the U-turn. Since we were at the head of the line, the tuk-tuk driver turned off the engine and talked to one of the police officers. It turned out that the queen of Thailand was in Chiang Mai and here entourage was about to come down the thoroughfare. We waited for what seemed like 10 minutes. Finally, a fast moving cavalcade of cars lead by several police cars with flashing lights passed by. In the cavalcade, there was one white, stretched Cadillac limo followed by a whole slew of white Mercedes and black Suburbans. There must have been 50 cars in the cavalcade. I figure that they had to close off the roads because the Suburbans are much too wide to fit on the streets in Thailand. Finally the long line of cars passed and we were able to return to the hotel without further incident.
The next day, Lucia called the tour operator and arranged to attend the Khantoke dinner show on the next night. This time she made sure they had our names and room number. At the appointed pick up time, we went down to the front desk. A woman came looking for someone. She was dressed in a traditional Thai dress. She did not speak much English so she mostly talked to Lucia. She led us to a mini-van that took us to the theater where they had the dinner dance. It turns out that the woman was one of the MCs of the show and that was why she was dressed in a traditional Thai costume. Outside the theater, there were three elephants, each with a Hill Tribe handler. Our escort asked us if we wanted to feed the elephants. For 20 Baht (50 cents) you could buy a bunch of bananas to feed the elephants. I figured, why not so I agreed. As I was paying, I was standing facing the table holding the bananas and the elephants were behind me. The elephants reached around me under my arm pits with their trunks trying to get to the bananas. It was an eerie feeling. After paying, I took a single banana and gave it to one of the elephants. Our escort then showed me that I was supposed to break the bunch into thirds and give a small bunch to each elephant. They ate them peels and all. During the dance show the same elephants appear in several dance numbers and they are trained to do a bunch of neat elephant stunts. They could even dance!
The traditional Thai Khantoke dinner was wonderful. It comes on a wooden tray with a bunch of small bamboo bowls filled with all kinds of food. There was rice, sticky rice, and a very spicy pork dish. You served yourself out of these bowls. The bowls were small and didn't seem to have enough food for a meal. Not to worry though, because someone kept coming around to refill the empty bowls. You could keep eating until you told them that you didn't want any more. After eating, they put on the dance show. The dancers were all dressed in traditional Thai costumes. The costumes represented the three major areas of Thailand (northern, southern, and eastern) plus the Hill Tribes. The Hill Tribes are more primitive but they had very bright and colorful costumes. In most of the dances, they had 4 groups of 4 dancers and each group of 4 was dressed in costumes from these four areas of Thailand. They did the finger dance (the one with the long finger nails) that originated somewhere around Bangkok. Most of the dances are very slow and there is very little footwork. Most of the motion is in the hands and arms which move with a very fluid motion. In some ways, traditional Thai dances are the complete antithesis of the Riverdance. In the Riverdance, all the movement is in the feet with almost no movement with the upper body and the feet movement is very fast. In traditional Thai dancing, all the movement is in the upper body and it is a slow and fluid. The first dance was something that had a single step foot pattern. The music was live and came from a small band of about 7 musicians playing authentic Thai instruments.
I really enjoyed the music. Generally, the tempos are on the slow side. After hearing the music, I vowed to get some CDs with traditional Thai music to bring back to the US. That proved to be more difficult than I imagined. It seems that virtually all the record stores in Thailand only carry modern music. We checked in just about every music store that we came across and none of them carried any traditional Thai music. I found this rather frustrating because I would think that it would be easy to find traditional music in other countries, such as India. After Lucia saw my joy and enthusiasm for traditional Thai music, she started to appreciate it more. She admitted that even she was not familiar with it. She got even more enthusiastic after we went to the Folk Art Cultural Center near Ayutthaya. The Center contains different styles of traditional Thai houses from all over Thailand and you can see people working on traditional Thai crafts. We had lunch there. I think the food was from eastern Thailand and it was wonderful. While walking around, the PA system played traditional Thai music and Lucia found she really loved it. I liked it too. Some of it sounded a lot like American Bluegrass music. In Thailand, they have a musical instrument whose body resembles a mandolin but whose neck is about the length of a guitar. The combination of instruments and the music actually sounded a lot like Bluegrass music. Along the way, Lucia kept asking where we could get recordings of the traditional Thai music. Finally someone told her about a record store in Thailand that carried traditional Thai music.
Click on the buttons to the right to hear audio clips of classical Thai music. It is very simple music, but very soothing and enjoyable to listen to.
When we finally got to Bangkok, we went to the record store. It was in a 7-level shopping mall that had a big parking structure underneath and a hotel on top. The entire mall was built around an open area that extended from the ground level to the top of the mall. It was weird going up seven flights of escalators and seeing the whole mall below. The record store was on the top level. Actually, it wasn't a store; instead it was a small booth or stall. The girl running the booth was very accommodating and she let us listen to the CDs so we could decide which ones we wanted to buy. We told her we were mostly interested in instrumental music. She had to pull some out of a cabinet because they were not on display. We listened to many different CDs and purchased 6 CDs. I really wanted to get some music from the eastern part of Thailand but they only had it on cassette tape. Since I no longer have a cassette player, I decided not to get anything on tape. To bad because I really wanted to compare the music with some American Bluegrass music. It’s also a sad commentary that there does not seem to be much interest in traditional Thai music in a country that reveres and holds sacred the thousands (probably closer to ten thousand) of temples (wats) that have been build throughout the country. Some of them are nearly a thousand years old. Maybe it is not that bad because this record store is part of a small chain of about 7 stores spread throughout Bangkok. Also, the stores in Thailand are rather small. There are no record stores having the largess of a Tower Record store (sadly not longer in business), so they have separate stores that carry the specialty music. I suspect that classical music (Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, etc.) is also sold in specialty stores since I don’t remember seeing any classical music in any of the music stores.