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Day 4 (February 16, 2001)
The next morning we got up. We had arranged for a car and personal, licensed tour guide, who spoke English, to take us around Chiang Mai. It cost us 2000 Baht (around $50 US) for the day. Actually it was not a bad deal because it was only a little more than renting a car. On top of that, you don't have to pay for any gas. Also, it would take some getting used to driving in Thailand. They drive on the right hand side of the streets and the steering wheel is on the right side of the car. The could cause a problem for us Americans. Even when in a vehicle as a passenger, I realized that I was looking the wrong way when the driver attempted to turn left or right onto a cross street. The same is true when crossing the street. Here you first look at the oncoming traffic coming from the left; in Thailand you first need to look to the right. You could easily get run over by a motor bike or car if you forget and look the wrong way. Even Lucia did not want to attempt to drive in Thailand. So hiring a car and tour guide seemed to be a good deal. You can sign up for group tours and they are much cheaper. But since I wanted to be able to take my time so I could take photographs, have a private tour guide really helped. On a group tour, you are usually rushing constantly and they really don't give you much time to take photographs. On a tour, you shoot and run. Since I take photographs using a medium format camera on a tripod, I need time to set up for taking a picture. I shoot slide film and, unlike print film, the exposure needs to be exact. Therefore, I have a spot meter that I use to figure out the exposure. That can take a few minutes itself. The personal tour guide was a good idea. You can also get a car and driver who speaks some English for a lot less.
Our tour guide was supposed to pick us up at 9:00. We went down to the lobby and he showed up promptly. His name was Chai. He was tall (for a Thai) and thin and he spoke English quite well. Lucia talked to him mostly in Thai but he talked to me in English. We discovered that he came from Bangkok and moved to Chiang Mai to work up there. He really knew a lot about the history and culture of Thailand. I ended up concentrating on taking pictures and wished I had spend more time learning about the Thai history. The tour was to include going to the Wat Doi Suthep temple in the hills just outside Chiang Mai, a visit to a hill tribe village, and a tour of the craft factories in Bo Sang and San Kamphaeng just east of Chiang Mai. Neither Lucia nor I really wanted to go to the hill tribe village and that was okay with Chai. Reading about the hill tribe people in the Lonely Planet tour guide, you get the feeling that the hill tribes is like going to see circus freaks. Many of the local hill tribes have been reduced to sitting around looking native for the tourists. The same is true of some of the American Indians that put on their headdresses and Indian costumes so they can put on a bastardized show for the tourists.
The first stop was at the Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, which is up in the hills outside (west, I think) Chiang Mai. On the way, we drove past the Chiang Mai University campus, where Lucia went to college. Doi Suthep is high up on the hills outside Chiang Mai. Close to the top of the mountain, you pay to get in. You then go up to a big parking lot where you can either take the stairs (300 of them) or pay to take the funicular. They had just replaced the old funicular with a new one and it was really nice. My only concern was that we went on it just after one of the cars on the Angel’s Flight funicular got loose, ran down the track, and crashed into another car. This one had been in operation for six months. The old one had been closed for several years following a fatal accident. One of the passengers died in the accident. But this one worked on a different principle and had separate tracks for the two cars, whereas the cars on Angel’s Flight share the same track.
When you enter Wat Doi Suthep, you get a flower (white, genus unknown), a candle, and incense for a small donation. At Doi Suthep, there is a large chedi which is like an inverted cone that is build over some Buddha relic (like a hair from Buddha). This 50 foot high chedi is gilded with gold like many in Thailand. I think that the size and how elaborate the chedi is reflects how holy the religious object under it is. So the chedi at Doi Suthep must hold a very, very holy object. At the chedi, you take off your shoes and then walk around it three times holding the flower, candle, and incense in your hands held in a wai position. I remember there were red carpet runners on the path around the chedi. The floor is make out of granite but I guess that either they don't want too much wear and tear caused by all the people walking around the chedi in their bare feet or they were afraid that those people wearing socks might slip and fall on the smooth granite. After walking around the chedi, you lay your flower on a small stand and light the candle from one of two large, burning candles. The candle is then placed in a holder that everyone uses to put their candle in. You then use your lit candle to light you incense. For some reason, they always give you three sticks to burn. I am sure there is some significance but I don't know what it is. You then place the sticks of incense in a pot containing sand and make a wish. Chai was really helpful in explaining it all. He is a Buddhist like about 96% of the Thais. While I am not a Buddhist, I wanted to experience it all so I was more than willing to do it. I wished blessings for Lucia and Kimberly and I really felt moved as I knelt there making my wish.
After that we went into the main temple containing a statue of Buddha. This was the first time I had ever been in a Buddhist temple and it was a real experience. Actually there were several Buddha there. I told Chia that I didn't want to offend anybody or do anything that was not acceptable in taking pictures. I remember being in Japan and they would not let you set up a tripod to take pictures at the temples. I was actually surprised when Chai asked me if I wanted to take pictures in the temple. I was unsure at first but decided that I would go ahead. It was dark in the temple, so I needed my tripod to take photographs with my slow film. I took several pictures. A Buddhist monk came in, sat down, and started to offer blessings to everyone. After I finished taking my pictures, Chai directed us over to the monk and we kneeled down. He was old and dressed in the standard orange monk’s garb. The monk sprinkled holy water over us and then he tied a string on my wrist. Then he gave me a string in signaled that I was supposed to tie it on Lucia’s wrist. I remembered that the monk cannot touch women and vice versa. I tied the string onto Lucia’s wrist as the monk showed me. It was a wonderful experience and it felt as if we were getting married. Later in the trip, Lucia told me that in a traditional marriage ceremony, the bride and groom tie a string on each other’s wrist. I kidded her and asked her if it meant that we were now married.
We left the temple and I proceeded to take pictures of the large chedi that we had marched around three times. I wanted to take pictures of the detail on the chedi. I couldn't take a picture of the entire chedi because I don't have a wide-angle lens and the courtyard surrounding the chedi is not large. I started to figure out the exposure for the picture with my trusty spot meter. I pushed the button to get a reading and nothing! I depressed the button again and still nothing! I tried a bunch of times and still nothing. Disaster! I remembered to depress the battery check button and the meter did not move. It was really puzzling because the meter had worked just fine in the temple and the batteries could not have gone completely dead in a few minutes. Either the light meter had failed or the batteries had indeed expired. The best way to tell would be to put in the spare batteries I had brought along. Unfortunately, they were still packed in my suitcase in the hotel. I explained my problem to Lucia and Chai. I will never forget Lucia’s response. She told me that she knew I had come all this way to take pictures and we could go back to get the batteries and then return so I could take my pictures. It was a very loving and caring response. Chai volunteered to go back to the parking lot where there were stands selling film and the like to see if he could find some batteries there. I took one of the batteries out of the light meter and gave it to him, along with some money, and told him that I needed three of them. Lucia and I waited. We sat an looked at the things in the courtyard. My camera has auto exposure built in but it is an averaging meter. It only works well for slide film if there is uniform lighting over the entire picture. It took a few pictures while waiting for Chai. The we sat down an looked at everything. Chai took about a half an hour but he had to take the cable cars down to the parking lot and that takes a while. He came back with three replacement batteries. I plopped them in the light meter and the meter still did not work. Lucia said that maybe I had put the batteries in upside down. I couldn't remember which way they go so I tried it and the meter started working again. But as I started to take pictures again, the meter failed again. After a few minutes of despair, I tried the meter again and it started working again. I saved the old batteries and brought them back with me. I checked them and they were all still good so I conclude that the problem was with the light meter and not the batteries. The next time I take my camera, I either need to have it checked out thoroughly or I need to budget around $350 for a new one. The light meter worked faultlessly for the rest of the trip. But I was really grateful to both Lucia and Chai in dealing with my crisis.
I resumed taking pictures of the chedi and the human sized Buddha that lined the courtyard around the chedi and the temple. They were of different colors but it was neat seeing then lined up along the wall. The wall behind the Buddha had pictures painted on it. Chai had told me that when they build a Buddha temple, it was customary to draw pictures depicting the building of the temple. Many of the paintings are rather elaborate and detailed. They are like a Thai version of Michelangelo’s paintings on the Sistine Chapel. We then walked around the entire Wat complex. There were several walls that had racks where they hung bells that were at least 2 feet high. There is also a view point where you have a good view of Chiang Mai. That day it was so hazy that you really did not get a good view of Chiang Mai. It was past 1:00 in the afternoon and we hadn’t eaten lunch. We headed down to the parking lot via the cable cars and then rode back to Chiang Mai for lunch.
On the way down the mountain, I had asked Chai how they picked the location of the temples and the answer was that there was some sign that the temple should be build there. In the case of Doi Suthep, there was an elephant that was felt had some mystical powers. They decided that the elephant would tell them where to build the new temple. They released the elephant. It ran up the hills, and kept going. After a few days it got to a spot on the hills above Chiang Mai and promptly fell over dead. They assumed that this was the sign they were looking for and the spot where the elephant keeled over is where they build the Doi Suthep Wat. My comment was that if I ran up the mountain to where Doi Suthep was, I would drop dead too! Also, I had a hard time imagining an elephant charging up the mountain. We continued down the mountain and then made a quick detour through the campus of Chiang Mai University where Lucia went to college. It was great seeing her dorm and where she went to class. It is a large campus that has a open space.
Months before we left for Thailand, Lucia kept talking about the noodle dishes that she ate when she was a student in Chiang Mai. She really wanted to eat them again and this was her golden opportunity to eat Thai noodles for the first time in years. The food in northern Thailand has a Burmese influence because the Burmese had frequently invaded Thailand and take over that part of the country. The Burmese seem to be rather warlike and aggressive about acquiring real estate unlike the Thais. Chai dropped us off at a restaurant. It had concrete floors, a high roof but was otherwise open. We sat at a small table. Lucia had warned me that the restaurants in Thailand were not as squeaky clean as they were here in the US. But this one was not too bad. I had seen enough of Thailand to know that many were a lot worse. This one did not give me much cause for concern. Besides, I had spent $108 for a Hepatitis A shot before I left. The only concern I had was the water. From the Lonely Planet tour guide, I read that you should only drink bottled water and stay away from the ice. It turns out that all the restaurants we ate at either provided bottled water or said that they used filtered water. I avoided ice for a few days but after that I really didn't worry about it. There were so many fresh fruit drinks in Thailand and they were always served with crushed ice. I just decided risking a case of near fatal diarrhea was worth the risk since the fruit drinks tasted so wonderful. I work with a guy from India and he told me that when he goes back, he dives into the food knowing full well he is going to be trotting to the toilet a lot for the next few days. Once he is over it, he says he is fine for the rest of his stay and doesn’t have to worry about what he eats.
Next to our table, there was a group of people. This was the first and only time I saw the ubiquitous roll of toilet paper that is to be used as napkins. I read about this in the Lonely Planet tour guide and Lucia had mentioned it. But apparently that is passé now and now the use precut and folded sheets instead. (Read more about this under Quaint Thai Customs.)
I was a little nervous about eating lunch at the restaurant because it was the first one I ate at that wasn’t in a hotel. I really don't remember what I ate but it was good. I was starting to realize that there is a huge variety of food in Thailand and you really only get to experience about a tenth of it at a typical Thai restaurant in Thailand.
We had invited Chai to join us for lunch but he declined. He parked the car and then sat at the other end of the restaurant where he ate by himself. After lunch we headed to the Bo Sang umbrella village, which is world famous for its colorful umbrellas, and the craft factories around the town San Kamphaeng east of Chiang Mai. There are many craft factories in the area that make and sell northern Thai crafts. I read that the factories are really only for show and that most of the stuff is made elsewhere in the region. But it is really great to see how the stuff is made. Since it was in the middle of the afternoon, we told Chai that there were certain shops that we were really interested in any we wanted to see first. Lucia wanted to check out a Thai silk shop and that is where we went first. She wanted to buy some silk pillow covers.
You enter the factory first and they show how they make silk fabric. They had a tray of silk worms that were greedily munching on the mulberry leaves. A lady asked if I wanted to pick one up. I really don't like to hold squirmy things but I decided to risk life and limb to hold one. I picked one up and it tightly grasped my finger. I turned around to show the other people and the woman right behind me really freaked out. Lucia kind of shied away from the silk work too. You could see it on her face. I returned my squirming friend to the tray. They showed us a silk cocoon. It was a lot larger than I had ever imagined. It looked like a small egg and was about 1 ½ inches high and about an inch wide. They come in two colors; white and a pale yellow. The way they make silk thread is to take a bunch of the cocoons and put them in a small vat of water. The silk worm actually makes the thread and uses something to glue it together. They take the strands from about 10 cocoons floating on the water and feed them into a primitive machine that pulls the strands and twists them together onto a spool. They take the spools and then die them. Then they make the silk cloth on a loom. In the factory they used some quaint wood looms. I had read that one way to be sure that something is made out of real silk is to look closely at the threads. In real silk the threads going one way have a different color than the ones running perpendicular to them. I saw that this was the case when they were making the silk cloth here. But I am also certain that most of the silk in the shop was made on machines in a factory elsewhere in the region. One lady was making a fabric that had an elaborate pattern in it. I’ll bet that took a long time to make.
Inside the shop, there were all kinds of silk on sale. Mostly they were selling clothing. Lucia checked out the clothing but she thought it was too expensive. We both looked at the pillow covers but neither of us liked the colors they had available. I did notice that by the pillow covers they had shelves with small and cheap souvenirs. It looked like the people were mostly buying the cheap souvenirs and not any of the really good stuff. I saw a silk robe there that I really liked. The blue one caught my attention but a sales lady asked if I wanted to try one on and she grabbed an emerald green one. I really liked it but was not certain if I wanted to buy it. It cost around 3900 Baht which is just under a $100 US. I really wasn’t certain if I would ever wear it. But I like to get some really nice memento of places I travel to. But since it was our first real day of sightseeing, I didn't want to blow the money on something only to see something I liked better later in the trip. In the end, I decided to buy it. It was a good decision because I really didn't see anything else that I liked better (or could afford) during the remainder of the trip. I volunteered to buy Lucia something nice too but she declined. Finally she decided on silk scarf that I purchased for her.
I wanted to go to the Bo Sang umbrella factory. The umbrellas are world famous. They are made out of paper that is made from mulberry trees (the same tree that the silk worms like to munch on). They showed how they make the paper and then make the umbrella. The umbrella support is made out of bamboo and the covering is painted, mostly with a floral pattern. They also make umbrellas using silk and cotton. Non of the umbrellas are made for use in the rain. They are mostly decorative or to be used in the sun. I wanted to get an umbrella for Kimberly. They are very colorful. I wanted to get her a pink one (her favorite color) but couldn't find one that I liked. I settled for a purple one (her second favorite color) with fringe on it. It was a little smaller but would fit in my suitcase. She really liked it when I gave it to her.
After the umbrella factory, I wanted to see some Thai carved wood. Chai drove us to a place that had a lot of wood. In the factory part they made mostly furniture with some beautiful patterns carved in the wood. In the store, they had a huge variety of carved wood objects. Lucia had pointed out a piece of carved wood that had cranes and was hung on a wall at the Asia Airport hotel. I really wanted to find something like it but this store didn't have anything that I liked. They did have some gorgeous, large carvings that were completely out of my league in price. We also saw some magnificent dining room table and chairs but, at around $5000 delivered to the US, it too was out of my league. I saw a small teak desk that I also liked. The craftsmanship was as exquisite as that on the $5000 dining room set but the desk only cost $1000 delivered to the US. While I really liked it, I really didn't want to purchase it. Lucia volunteered to buy it for me next year. I told her about the Amish desks that I had seen in Pennsylvania about 10 years ago. The last time I checked, they cost about $1800 and the craftsmanship is equally exquisite. If I were to buy a desk, I would take the Amish desk because it comes in walnut or cherry and I prefer these to teak.
After the wood store, we agreed to let Chai take us to some other ‘factories’ in the area. I suspect that he got a small commission for bringing people in but I can’t fault is selection of shops and factories. He took us to a jewelry store. The place was huge. I have never seen a jewelry store that big. As with all the factories in the area, you first go through an area where jewelers are actually making the jewelry. We looked around. A sales lady saw the heart pendants that I had gotten Lucia for Valentines day and volunteered to sell us a matching set of earrings. The first ones she showed us were far too expensive for my blood. I told her so and then she took us to another counter and showed us a pair of nice earrings that matched the color of the stones in the pendants I got her for Valentine’s day. I liked them. The price was 10000 Baht ($250 US) which was still a little expensive but the price was not that bad. I asked Lucia if she liked them and she said yes. I volunteered to buy them for here birthday but she said they were too expensive. I suggested that Lucia walk around the store while I continued to look at the earrings. I checked out other things in the store and ended up buying the earrings. I am sure Lucia knows I got them but she still wants it to be a surprise.
When we were leaving the jewelry store/factory, Lucia asked what I wished for when we visited Doi Suthep that morning. I said that I prayed for blessings for her and Kimberly. I asked her what she wished for and she told me to guess. I remembered her mentioning wedding rings when we were in the store and it dawned on me that she was praying for us to get married! I broke out with a happy smile and laugh when I realized what she prayed for. I think she misinterpreted my laugh and didn't realize that is was a laugh of joy and glee.
After that, we went to a factory that made and sold Celadon ceramics. The pottery has cracked glazed finish. The Celadon ceramics are quite solid and attractive. I saw some small bowls that were very well decorated. I would have bought one if it weren’t for the fact that I was worried about having space in my suitcase and being concerned about getting it back to the US in one piece. If or when I return to Thailand, I plan to buy some nice Celedon pottery and bring it back with me. As it was, I purchased a few small, green, oriental tea cups (no handles). Lucia saw some figures of pigs. She was feeling guilty about not getting me any present for Valentines Day. She got me a really nice card but no present. I know that she really struggled with it because, being oriental, she never really celebrated it. She had asked about what to get me and I suggested that she look in the ads in the newspapers and told her the sort of things that people give each other for Valentine’s day. I remember a Chinese lady I work with asking me how I celebrated Valentines Day. This was when I was married. I told her that I had gotten my wife some jewelry and planned to take her out for dinner. This lady sighed wistfully and said that her husband didn't do anything to celebrate Valentines Day. I knew that she wished he would do something romantic to celebrate it. Oriental men don't seem to do much of anything romantic for their girlfriends (unless she is his mistress) or their wives. I remember the first time I went out to dinner with Lucia. We talked about eating Chinese food. I told Lucia that I loved Chinese food but that Chinese restaurants were never very romantic. Indeed, any restaurant serving any oriental cuisine is usually very unromantic unless it is an Americanized oriental restaurant. So we ended up eating Italian food. I wouldn’t say the atmosphere of the restaurant that we ate at was particularly romantic but it was far better than a Chinese restaurant. Lucia talked about getting me a ceramic pig but she felt that it might not be nice enough for a Valentines present. I told her that price wasn’t the issue. It was how I felt by receiving it and that if she bought me the pig I would cherish it. So she did and I do. It now sits in the kitchen so I can see it every time I sit down at the kitchen table.
The last stop of the day was at a silver factory. They showed us the plug of silver that they start with. Then they squish it down to the size of a sauce and eventually form it into the shape of a small bowl. Then the artisans stamp a pattern from the inside of the bowl to produce an attractive pattern on the outside of the bowl. This is the style of most of the silver I saw in Thailand. The store had a lot of silver bowls and jewelry. While I like silver, there was there was nothing that really struck my eye, so we left without buying anything.
It was getting late, so we headed back the Chiang Mai. On the way we mentioned to Chai that we (actually me more than Lucia) wanted to go to the Doi Inthanon National Park. It turns out that Doi Suthep is not too far from the Suan Bua resort where we were going to stay the next two nights. Chai made the suggestion that we check out of the Lotus Pang Suan Kaew hotel the next morning and that the tour company would provide a van and guide who would take us to Doi Inthanon and provide a box lunch. We could load our luggage in the van and the van would then drop up off at the Suan Bua resort on the way back. It was a really good plan so we told him to set it up. I asked Chai if he would be the tour guide and he said that he wasn’t certain. He said that if it wasn’t him, it would be someone ‘of equal quality’. We really enjoyed having Chai as our tour guide. He had been extremely helpful all day and volunteered to help carry my camera equipment. So I really was hoping he would be back the next day as our tour guide. We got back to the hotel and I paid him for the next days trip. Lucia & I had talked about how much to tip him and we settled on 400 Baht ($10 US) which was a very good tip. I figured that a good tip might bribe him so he would return the next day.
That morning, Lucia called the tour company to find out why no on had picked us up for the Khantoke dinner that she had arranged for us to attend the night before. She then arranged for us to go this 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 between the elephants and the table holding the bananas. They reached around me from behind 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 hot 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.
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 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.
At the end of the dinner show, we had the option of going back to the night market, which was near the dance theater, or go back to the hotel. Since we had a very full day, we decided to go back to the hotel. The lobby of the hotel is open to the roof fourteen floors above. There is a stage where they have live entertainment every night. We decided to stop and have a few drinks and listen to the music. There was a small band playing mostly oldies but goodies pop music. They weren’t bad but they weren’t that good either. One of the musicians was dressed like Elvis. His costume and hair were stereotype Elvis. He even sounded a bit like Elvis but in order to sound like him, he had to keep is voice a bit on the quiet side. It worked with some of the Elvis Presley standard but not on songs like It’s Now or Never. Elvis really belted out the It’s Now or Never but this guy couldn't do it and still sound like Elvis. Therefore, he sang the song in a monotone voice.
The atmosphere in the lobby was wonderful though. There were small fish ponds and streams build into the ground. Because the roof was something like 14 floors above, it was like sitting outdoors. You could hear the water; it was like sitting next to a brook. A big tour group came and sat down. I think they might have been French. They yakked a lot and seemed to ignore the band but eventually some of them got up to dance to the music. Once the Elvis impersonator started singing, they stopped yakking and everyone paid attention to the fake Elvis and those dancing. Even if the music wasn't great, the atmosphere was.