Travels in Thailand

Officially, the Thai use the old Buddhist era calendar which contains 543 more years than the standard western calendar with a mere 2010. Their calendars typically show both years to mesh more with the rest of the world. I did not realize this until I got here, but so far it has not caused me any problems.

This was a full week - hence the lack of posts. The Thai students are very hard working, smart and motivated. Most of them like to stay late and work on their projects. It's not unusual for them to stay a couple of hours past the normal end of class at 6:00 PM.
There are 23 students so my days are very busy with the presentations and answering technical questions for the programming exercises.
The next 10 to 12 weekes will be challenging but interesting.

On the last day of Songkran Tuk drove Micah, Terry, and me to Ayutthaya (about 1 hour north of Bangkok) for some more water festival fun. We first went to Ray's family house near the city. We put two 55 gallon containers in the back of a pick up truck and filled them with water.

Our armament for the water fight included super soaker and regular squirt guns. But the most effective way for delivering water to a target is by using a bowl - sort of a shot gun approach but works pretty well. Fully armed we climbed into the back of the pick up truck and headed for Ayutthaya - looking for trouble.

 There were hundreds of other pickup trucks loaded with water and seasoned water fighters in the city. At first we got the worst of it but as the day wore on we started to hold our own. I got pretty good at timing and could deliver water to an oncoming truck or motorcycle and hit the target with the bulk of the water in my bowl for maximum dousing effect. But, by far, our favorite target was anyone riding on an elephant - we hit several of those.

We refilled our water containers twice and bought ice blocks to put in them. We used about 330 gallons of water. We were in the city throwing water for four hours but did take a couple breaks to eat and drink beer. We also bought a rice wheat flour paste that we could spread on people's faces (as a blessing) and they did the same to us.

I'm not proud of this, but there were some Buddhist monks who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Things got out of hand, mistakes were made, and the monks got wet. 
I hope the karmic payback is not too severe.

Songkran is a 3 day festival that occurs every year in April. It is the start of the Thai New Year. Historically, water would be sprinkled on someone as a blessing. But the holiday has evolved a bit.
You can expect to get wet in Bangkok during the festival. If you go to Khao San Road (which I did yesterday) prepare to get soaked. I was shot with water pistols, hoses, buckets of water were dumped on my head - sometimes it was warm other times ice cold. Also, they rub a wet talc powder on your face.
It was crazy fun.
I did not take my camera to keep it from getting wet but here are some pictures I downloaded off the net. They will give you a pretty good idea of what goes on.
Unfortunately, I did not see the elephant. 

 

On Monday our office was pretty much surrounded by a Red Shirt protest. The majority of them were concentrated on the west side of our office building.  Terry Collins took these pictures from the 14th floor - I watched from this vantage point as well.
In the pictures they are marching toward the Prime Minister's house which is about 3 blocks north of our building. There are actually riot police blocking their way and
they wore full riot gear and had shields. The police are a little hard to see, partly because of the shade, but they are  right in front of the protesters.
Fortunately, there was no violence and the protesters were gone by the end of the work day.

Take a look at the pictures below. You will see a sprayer hooked up to the toilet. This is in my apartment, but I have seen it in other bathrooms here in Bangkok. It looks exactly like the sprayer you would see in a kitchen sink back home.

There is no toilet brush so I assumed it is for cleaning the toilet. But, then I started to think. Could it actually be for personal hygiene (sort of like bidets in Europe)?  Or could it serve both purposes?
 
If it serves both purposes then it is kind of ingenious. I would think it cleans the toilet as well as a stiff toilet brush - and much more comfortable than the brush when used for personal hygiene.

Last night there was a serious riot about 3 miles to the west of my hotel. Apparently, the redshirts had guns and grenades and there was a running battle between them and the army and police. Unfortunately, about 18 people were killed, including soldiers and hundreds more were wounded.
The strange thing is I heard nothing last night and slept peacefully. I am worried though about my Thai friends in the office - some of them live near the fighting. I have had one Skype message from Weep and hope to hear from others today.
I feel safe where I am and plan to stay in the hotel today. Let's hope for a peaceful resolution very soon.

There has been some political unrest in Thailand and especially Bangkok over the last two or three weeks. This past Wednesday the government declared a state of emergency and essentially the military is now in charge.

Having said that, it has been a pretty calm "state of emergency" .  I have noticed an increasesed presence of military and police personnel, but I have not seen any confrontations at all. The government seems to be trying very hard to avoid and or prevent violence.

The protesters, called the "Red Shirts", seem to be only interested in political change here. I have actually seen a lot of "red shirts" now and it feels more like they are going to a soccer match than a protest. I walked down Sukhumvit road today and saw a caravan of them - honking horns and waving.

I feel safe and even went to get a Thai massage near my office - it was great!

I went to a house blessing on Sunday at Manote's house.  This was a buddhist ceremony and a real treat to see. Essentially, the monks chant (really a prayer) for about an hour or so and then take a break. After the break they resume chanting. There were offerings to Buddha - flowers, food, water - and at the end the eldest monk sprinkled water on everyone as a blessing. I probably needed some sort of blessing/cleansing  after spending time at Patpong the previous Friday (again let me emphasize - nothing happened there).

After the ceremony we were treated to a nine course meal. The food was great with a lot of variety - vegetables, pork, chicken, rice, etc. - I even ate the stems of lotus flowers. Desert was a sweet coconut juice with bread dough floating in it - delicious!

To get to Manote's house we first took the skytrain, then a water taxi, then we got into a sort of pick-up truck taxi and finally walked the rest of the way. It took about an hour and a half to get there. To get home we walked some more, caught a Tuk-Tuk and then back to the river, where we took the river taxi back to the sky train station. Tuk guided me the whole time - she is intrepid and always gets me to our destinations safely.

I feel really fortunate to have seen this part of Thai life.

Almost every day I see or eat something odd. Yesterday I was walking with Tuk in a more remote area of Bangkok. We passed a local farmer's market and I saw a big tray of noodles for sale.  I was a little suprised to see a fat pigeon sitting on top of the noodles - I assume just the noodles were for sale.
Today some of us from the office went to lunch to a nice restaurant about a 20 minute taxi ride away. As usual, the food was delicious, and as usual there was something rather strange to eat. This time it was small, but whole crabs that had been cooked. We ate the crabs whole - legs, claws, outer shell - the entire crab.
Really, it was pretty good, not as crunchy as I thought it might be.