Going to the well

Posted on 26 November 2007 by christao408

One of the most fundamental aspects of the human experience, one that unites us with all the other mammals, is the search for safe drinking water. When I arrived in Khrungthep it was with the warning from some legitimate sources (as well as the conventional world-traveler-going-to-a-developing-country wisdom) not to drink the tap water.

Actually, the water from Khrungthep’s Metropolitan Waterworks Authority is very clean and exceeds the standards set out by international agencies. There is an English language page on their website that includes actual quality performance metrics – the most recently available ones are from August and September – as well as this interesting investigatory article from the Bangkok Post. Generally, it is agreed, any problem with water quality is due to the pipes in the delivery system, not the water quality from the treatment plant itself.

When I first moved here we purchased our water in 5-litre plastic bottles from the supermarket and would carry them home, going through four or five bottles a week. This was a chore and, not realizing until afterwards that there actually is some plastic recycling going on here, I actually cut the bottles in half nesting the halves together, filling a suitcase with them for my trip back to the United States for the Christmas holidays, two months after I moved here. Needless to say, customs was a bit surprised but impressed with my dedication to recycling.

Right: Out of water again using the home delivery system of water!

(As a side note, yes there is plastic recycling here but it isn’t curbside. Instead, the building maintenance team roots through the trash to find plastic bottles, stomps on them, and then bags them to sell to a recycling company.)

After a few months of doing this, we finally found suppliers for home delivered water. There are two in the greater Khrungthep area, Sprinkle being the larger of the two. They pride themselves in their English and Japanese language service although I ultimately had Tawn set up the account because of miscommunication I was having with the operator.

So for the past twenty months we’ve had three 19-litre sturdy plastic bottles in our storage room and when a bottle runs empty, we put it outside our door the following Saturday morning with a coupon (buy those in advance in books of 24, at about 95 baht a bottle – 5 baht a litre) underneath it. By late Saturday afternoon a new bottle had replaced it. A happy system that is pretty environmentally friendly and cost effective.

Left: Carrying an empty container to the water vending machine downstairs. Those village women have nothing on me.

As we prepared for our move into the new condo, one of the things I wanted to explore was the possibility of installing a water filtration system so we could stop the delivery of water bottles. This was primarily because the new condo doesn’t have a storage room so space will be at a premium.

Also, I have read more articles at places like ThaiVisa.com of long term expats who used filtration systems in their homes and found the water to be perfectly drinkable. Tawn’s parents have a large filtration system as do most locals, only the poorest of whom actually drink water straight from the tap without some additional treatment.

Right: The water vending machine near the juristic office.

At the same time that we were exploring our options, around mid-October, we ran out of coupons for the home delivery system. Not wanting to buy another booklet of coupons and then have to deal with getting a refund for unused ones or transferring the service to the condo, we decided to try an alternative.

The juristic office here at Asoke Place had just allowed a company called Good Drinks to install a water filtration and vending machine in the stairwell outside the juristic office. There, for just 1.5 baht per litre, we could fill up our bottles with triple-filtered, reverse osmosis processed, and ozone-treated water whenever we wanted, day or night.

So now, like a villager going to the well, we carry our empty 19-litre bottles from Sprinkle (which we’ll need to return to them soon to get our deposit back) down from the 25th floor to the 10th, refill them, and carry them back up to the apartment.

Left: Using up our supply of coins to buy water.

The water tastes a little flat – reverse osmosis removes a lot of the minerals that give water its flavor – but it is clean and cheap. Plus the vending machine is a great way to use up our supply of one-baht coins.

In another few days, the trek to the well should no longer be an issue as we’ll be in the condo. But the plumber tells us he is having problems installing the water filter, so maybe we’ll go full circle and be back to buying the 5-litre bottles from the store and carting them home until the installation is complete.

Such is life by the watering hole.

Loi Khrathong 2007

Posted on 25 November 2007 by christao408

Above: Thousands of khrathong float in the lake at Benjasiri Park.

Saturday was Loi Khrathong, an annual festival in Thailand that ostensibly has its roots in the animist past, where all things have a soul or spirit and those spirits deserve our respect. Water is central to Thai life and Thai mythology, and the “mother water” (the literal translation of the word mae nam – river) is venerated in the Loi Khrathong festival.

You also see examples of animism in many old, large trees that will have colorful ribbons and strips of fabric tied around the trunk. Often there are small offerings left there, too. The spirit houses you see on almost every property are another example of this. Because the construction of the buildings has disturbed the spirit of the land, a house is built where the spirit can live. Food, drink, and incense is offered to the spirit every day.

While its roots are in the animist past, for all practical purposes the modern-day celebration of Loi Khrathong has more in common with St. Valentine’s Day, for Loi Khrathong is especially a day for lovers and, the morality police report, the most popular day for young people to lose their virginity. As such, there is a public relations campaign in advance warning young people not to be in secluded or dark areas on Loi Khrathong, and threatening “love motel” owners who do not actively check the age and identification of all guests.

Right: Full moon over the lake. The Emporium is in the background.

After attending a performance of “A Christmas Carol”, presented by Bangkok Community Theatre and starring our friend Justin Brook as Bob Cratchit, we headed to dinner at a Chinese restaurant famed for its Peking-style roast duck. Located next to the Emporium, it was just a short walk to Benjasiri Park. This is the same park I walked by on Thanksgiving and saw the legless beggar crawling along on his belly, teaching me a lesson not unlike those taught to Scrooge by the three ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future.

Below: Post performance with Justin “Bob Cratchit” Brook. From left to right: Tawn, Roka, Justin, Chris, Markus and Tam.

Above: Our Peking duck has arrived, served in the style I’m accustomed to with the crispy skin served with small pancakes, plum sauce, green onions and cucumber. The rest of the meat arrives later in another dish. Markus was convinced that this was not authentic based on his experiences eating Peking duck in Beijing, so he proceeded to SMS two different friends in China who could validate and add authority to the question of what was truly authentic Peking duck. I’m not sure why the question needed to be answered at that moment, but the answer seems to be that in Beijing the meat is served at the same time as the skin. Anecdotally, most everyone I’ve spoken with on the subject has said that the Peking duck in Beijing is a disappointment. Anyhow…

Along the sidewalk a hundred vendors were selling khrathong, most made with somewhat environmentally friendly banana tree trunk, a few made from illegal styrofoam bases, and a good number made with bread bases – fish food! They sold nearly universally for 50 baht, a fair price if you consider the time put into making them.

Below: Chris shops for khrathong. Below that: Bread based options.

The park was lit up for the evening, fluorescent lights casting their eerie blue glow and the fire department’s search and rescue units having set up several light towers with bright-as-daylight tungsten lamps. Thousands of people were around the lake, many of them families, and while there were many people it wasn’t crowded. There was always room to go to the side of the lake to loi (float) your khrathong.

Video shot by Pune of our launching. It goes vertical for a few moments when she forgot that she was shooting film, not photographs!

After launching our khrathog we walked around the lake to see the full moon. The festival is held on the night of the full moon in the twelfth lunar month, usually the second half of November. Two years ago it fell on my birthday, which was fun. It was difficult to get a really good shot of the lake and the moon, since the moon had climbed quite high into the night sky.

Some more shots from our evening adventure:

Below: At the shallow end of the lake, people tear through khrathong searching for money. It is customary to place a coin on your khrathong (along with a hair) and so children and the less fortunate are known to go after the khrathong to search for money.

Random Photos in November

Posted on 24 November 2007 by christao408

Additional random pictures from the past few days:

Above: Christmas decorations are up at the Emporium, next to Phrom Phong BTS station. Below: Window washers hanging by a thread at the building next to our current apartment. You never know who may be watching you from his balcony!

Above: Even the little ones are getting decked out with Christmas cheer. Below: Jetstar Airways celebrates its first year of Bangkok-Melbourne service with a giveaway of mobile phone charms and flyers announcing “2-for-1” promotional fares to Australia.

Deconstructing a building

Posted on 24 November 2007 by christao408

Next to the Asoke Skytrain station, on the north side, sits an empty lot that was the Ford and Mazda dealership until some time last year. The dealership moved and the buildings were torn down and for the entire rainy season, most of the property became a swamp. In the southwest corner of the lot, where Sukhumvit Soi 19 connects with the main street, there is a row of four-story shop houses that contained among other things a nice Indian vegetarian restaurant.

It looks like construction on whatever is going to be built there, is going to start soon. They shop houses are being demolished this week, an interesting process of literally deconstructing, or un-building, them.

Below: From the platform of the Skytrain station, looking towards Sukhumvit Soi 19, you can see workers have already dismantled the top two stories of the building and are now working on the floor between the second and third story.

Above: Workers use sledgehammers (one worker has only flip-flops on to protect his feet) to break away the concrete, which falls through the re-bar to the floor below. Notice that they have to balance on the re-bar.

Below: Another worker then uses a welding torch to cut (or at least, weaken) the re-bar so it can be cut into smaller pieces that workers then manually carry out. I’m curious why he’s not at risk of the re-bar just giving way under him as he cuts. In the picture below you can see the concrete pieces that have fallen through.

In other rooms, workers are clearing the concrete and re-bar and a small Caterpillar with a jack hammer is breaking away the interior walls between the load-bearing columns.

Above: A few days later I passed by again and saw that they were now close enough to the ground that they could tear down the structure using this back hoe.

I’m curious to see what will be built here. It is a very large property so a complex of several towers could easily be built. Good place for another mall, right next to the Skytrain station and the Metro subway at the corner of Asoke and Sukhumvit. Because that’s just what we need – another mall!

Below: Just to the other side of Asoke, on the northeast corner of Sukhumvit, is the under construction Interchange 21 building. Here’s an update photo of the construction progress from this week:

As you can see, there is just lots of fun civil engineering stuff going on here in the City of Angels. There is also a elevated walkway being built that will connect the Skytrain station directly to Interchange 21 and, I would assume, to the Exchange Tower that is on the southeast corner of Asoke and Sukhumvit.

Above: In this photo taken from the Skytrain station ticketing platform looking generally east along Sukhumvit towards Asoke, Exchange Tower is visible in the upper center with some just-visible True Fitness purple signs over the ground floor windows. The elevated walkway will sit underneath the track viaduct and there will be a long span across the Asoke-Sukhumvit intersection. You can see work progressing on the foundations for the support columns.

Below: Taken a few days after the above photo, the photo below shows the support for the walkway where it will go around the concrete column. Note that the support structure for the walkway does not connect to the concrete column so the walkway does not impose any additional load on the track viaduct.

In this picture, you can see the Honda Jazz starting to turn right into the Asoke-Sukhumvit intersection. The steel structure that will span the intersection will connect to the structure you see in place here. Construction workers will hoist the steel span into place from 1-5 am on December 9th. I’m thinking about getting up early (or staying up late) to go down and watch that and take some pictures.

In the final bit of engineering updates for today, there is a project going on along Asoke Road, which is prone to flooding, to raise the sidewalks by several inches (and centimeters, too).

The construction process involves jack hammering the existing curbs (all done at night – here is a photo of the workers the night they were working just outside our building… all night long), building new curbs, removing the paving stones and raising up the ground level, then pouring a cement sheet and laying new paving stones.

As of yesterday, much of the block we live on looks like the photo below. We have noticeably higher curbs but nothing has been filled in yet. Notice also that the covers to the sewers have been raised and new steel and concrete doors have been poured. The doors have a space for pavers to be added to them, too, so they match the rest of the sidewalk.

Hopefully this project will be wrapped up soon as it is a pain to walk on the sidewalk and dangerous to walk in the street. And that’s this week’s civil engineering report. Back to you in the studio.

Thanksgiving Day 2007

Posted on 22 November 2007 by christao408

In most any big city on earth, the vestiges of your own foreign culture and traditions can be found. From the little Ethiopian enclaves in Los Angeles to the Bangladeshi community in Stuttgart to the remaining bits of the French in Laos, we bring a bit of ourselves and our cultures wherever we go.

Yesterday evening our bit of American culture in Khrungthep was found in a restaurant located down a scrappy soi behind a theatre with a marquee proclaiming it as “the best female impersonator show in Bangkok”. That was where our slice of Thanksgiving Day was located.

Left: Roka and Jhone, after she told Jhone (who is in sales) that she would never buy anything from him.

As Roka, Markus and I walked from the Skytrain station to join the ten other people in our party, I was thinking about how exciting my blog entry the next morning would be: a play by play account of the experience of a Cajun/Creole Thanksgiving Dinner at the Bourbon Street restaurant.

Sitting down to write this morning, there are certainly plenty of things to tell:

I could tell you how disappointed I was that Tawn couldn’t be there, since he was at the airport picking up his partents. I could tell you about the chaotic mess and disorganization that left our group waiting, even though we had reservations, for a half-hour before we were split into two tables and, eventually, reunited to one table. Or I could tell you about the buffet which, while the food was tasty, was constantly running out – especially of turkey, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin and pecan pies, the staples of a Thanksgiving dinner.

But before we arrived at the restaurant last night, as we walked by Benjasiri Park, there was a beggar in the middle of the sidewalk, legless, pulling himself by his hands and holding a plastic cup in his teeth. A man crawling like a worm.

So as I sit down to write this morning, as those of you in the United States are just finishing up your turkey dinners, let me instead tell you this about last night’s little slice of Thanksgiving in Khrungthep:

I am thankful for the health I and my friends and loved ones enjoy, giving us the means to earn a living, enjoy our lives, and walk upright in this world. I am thankful for the bountiful food we had and the means by which to eat so well. And not least, I am thankful for the pleasant company and the six new friends I met, the opportunity to visit and talk and laugh and learn about different lives and different experiences that brought us all to the same table.

Whatever your worries, whatever your ills, remember to count your blessings and be thankful for them. For if you have the means to access a computer and the leisure time to read or write a weblog, you most likely are among the fortunate.

Happy Thanksgiving!

From Left around the table: Marc, Piyawat, Stuart, (a friend of Doug’s whose name I did not catch), Steve, Markus, Roka, Jhone, Nicha, Doug, Brian, and Tri.

More geeky civil engineering stuff

Posted on 21 November 2007 by christao408

Enjoying drinks at the top of the Banyan Tree Hotel with Kenny and Amelia the other evening, I was wondering about the tallest buildings in Khrungthep. We don’t really have a concentrated downtown and the tallest building – Baiyoke Tower II – sits off by itself in a way reminiscent of a gangly teenager who has been shunned by his classmates.

Found this useful site – SkyscraperPage.com – that keeps the statistics on skyscrapers in cities around the world. They also have nifty scale illustrations showing how the different buildings compare. What’s incredible to me is that if you include both current and under-construction buildings, five of what will be Khrungthep’s ten tallest buildings are being built right now.

The award for “Biggest Blot on the Skyline” goes to The River Tower, a 73-story condo complex under construction on the western bank of the Chao Phraya just north of Taksin Bridge and across from the Shangri-La Hotel. This building is completely out of scale for its setting. I understand that after the plans were approved, the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority enacted legislation restricting future riverside developments in that area to only 7 stories. Whether that was to prevent future behemoths befouling the waterfront, or to protect the views of the deep-pocketed condominium owners, no one can say with certainty.

Asoke Place, from which we’ll soon be moving, is the 112th tallest building in Khrungthep at 39 stories and 136.5 meters. Raintree Villa, to which we’ll soon be moving, is not even on the list, at only 8 quiet stories tall.

What level am I on?

Posted on 21 November 2007 by christao408

This morning I walked to Ble’s shop to pick up some light fixtures and ask a few questions about the final stages of the condo remodel. His shop is only two sois over, about a ten-minute walk. The weather was cool and the sun not too strong, so it was a pleasant walk.

On the way I stopped at the post office to mail some letters and buy some stamps. Our neighborhood branch is a small affair, four counter positions and room for about twenty waiting customers, seated in a cozy configuration. Off to the side is an old metal office desk, 70s style, and at it sits a young looking man. I’ve never been sure what his job is, though sometimes I seem him helping people with envelopes or packaging, taping up boxes, etc.

I grabbed my number and was waiting, when the young man called over to me and asked what I needed. I explained that I had a domestic letter and two international ones and wanted to buy some stamps as well. He explained that the envelope I had for the domestic letter couldn’t be used: it was a Postal Service envelope used for selling stamps. (I was recycling an envelope in which I had carried home a previous stamp purchase.)

As he explained all this, he was sitting in his chair behind the desk and I was standing in front of it. Finding the difference in our heights awkward, I squatted down in front of the desk so we would be eye-to-eye. As I did this, I realized that I’d better think carefully about that: Thai culture is foremost a hierarchical one and where you stand (literally) in relation to others is an important matter.

Had I been insulting by standing over him? Was I embarrassing him (or myself) by squatting down to his level? Was anyone in the room watching me and shaking their head, sighing to themselves at the poor manners of these farang?

All this played as a commentary track in my mind as I proceeded with the transaction.

He saw the envelope I had was addressed in Thai and after he gave me another envelope, I started to write the address in Thai. “You write Thai?” he asked. “Yes,” I confirmed, “and read it, too.”

“Wow. You write Thai…” and his voice trailed off in amazement.

As we spoke, I realized that the young man was developmentally challenged. His job at the post office was possibly part of some government scheme to integrate the disabled community into the workforce. The reason I was never clear what he was doing there was because he probably rarely has much to do. He’s there because some puu yai (“big” person – someone higher up the pecking order) said he was supposed to be.

After addressing the envelope, he took my letters to a counter, butted in front of another customer, weighed them and returned to me to report that with the purchase price of the envelope, my total was 61 baht. I gave him a 100-baht note and he opened his drawer, revealing a modest change fund. He asked if I had a one-baht coin. “Sorry,” I replied.

He then made change in a most interesting fashion: he made two piles on his desk. One pile was 61 baht: three twenties and a single, shiny coin. The other pile was the remaining 39 baht. He gave the second pile to me and then carried the first pile and the letters back to the counter.

I followed along to see about my stamps.

I explained that I wanted 40 ten-baht stamps and either some one- or two-baht stamps. He wrote this down on the back of a piece of note paper I was carrying that he grabbed from me. Then he asked each cashier, one by one, to see who had stamps.

The ten-baht stamps caused only a little confusion. Purchasers of these are perhaps infrequent at this branch. The small denomination stamps caused an absolute riot, however. “We don’t have one-baht stamps” said one clerk to the another, who then repeated it to the young man. He turned to me and said with utmost sincerity, “We don’t have one-baht stamps.”

“Do you have two-baht stamps?” I asked, trying to direct my question both to the young man as well as the clerk who was one step further along the communication chain.

A skeptical pause.

“How many?” she asked.

“Do you have forty of them?” I asked, figuring I had best get whatever I could. Her gasp surprised me; surely it was not de classe to purchase that many stamps?

She rifled through her stamp book, the young man looking on, desperately willing her with his eyes to… find… the… stamps.

All she could come up with was twenty, so I bought out her entire supply. Who would have imagined that buying stamps at a post office could be such a big deal?

The transaction completed, the young man smiled and thanked me. Khap khun maak khrap!

That was my post office adventure, an encapsulation of Thai culture in all its charming idiosyncracies. And I do say that with utmost sincerity.

Above: This evening I took Brian out for dinner for his birthday. Somehow, through people being out of town, his having a extremely inconsiderate and self-centered quasi-boyfriend, and his originally planning on being out of town on business for his birthday, he was going to be all alone on the evening of his birthday. Tawn had to go out to the airport to pick up his parents, so I met Brian at All Seasons Place and we went to Coffee Bean by Dao for dinner.

Civil engineering update: Airport Link

Posted on 19 November 2007 by christao408

For you civil engineering buffs, here’s an update on some of the work happening at the Suvarnabhumi Airport Rail Link construction site. First, a little background:

The Airport Link is a 28.6 km (17.7 mile) mostly elevated train way that will serve as the eastern half of the “Light Red Line” in Khrungthep’s master transit plan. The western half of the line is a planned extension north to connect to Don Meuang domestic airport, with no specific time frame in which that will occur. Started in 2005, construction of the eastern half is expected to be finished sometime in late 2008, with recent news reports puting the construction at a 70% completion rate as of this point. Both local and express services will be offered on the line.

Above: “We apologize for any inconvenience as we build the maintenance complex for the airport train.” The picture is of the delivery of the first of nine Siemens Desiro class 360/2 trainsets arrives in Thailand.

The express train will run from the Makkasan City Air Terminal (at the corner of Phetburi and Asoke Roads, where you will be able to connect with the MRT subway Blue Line) to the basement level of Suvarnabhumi Airport in 15 minutes. It is expected that you will be able to check in for flights at the Makkasan CAT, receiving your boarding pass and handing over your checked baggage, just like at the Airport Express terminal in Hong Kong.

The local train will run from the Phaya Thai station, (where you will be able to connect with the BTS Skytrain Sukhumvit Line), stopping at Ratchaprarop, Makkasan, then at four additional stops before arriving at the airport. The total trip time for the local service will be 27 minutes. The initial plans had several additional stops along the lines, including one at Royal City Avenue, a popular nightlife and entertainment district. It appears that those stops will not be built at this time but just based on my own visual assessment of the construction in the RCA area, it looks like the tracks are being constructed in such a way that a station could be added in the future.

The Airport Link’s maintenance yard and depot will be in the Soonvijai district, an area on the north side of Phetburi Road from roughly Thong Lor to Ekkamai. Bangkok Hospital is located just to the west of this area and Tawn’s parents live just on the other side of Ekkamai Road, to the east of this area.

Sunday morning while running errands I stopped to snap some photos of the construction:

Above: From the Ekkamai Road flyover, looking west. On the left is the Soonvijai train station with a train stopping momentarily before continuing on to Hua Lamphong Station. On the far side of the buildings that face the train station is Phetburi Road. Bangkok Hospital is the white building on the right hand side of the picture, behind the construction site. The elevated track is clearly visible on the left and the ramp where trains will exit and enter the main line is being built along the elevated track in the center of the picture. The maintenance sheds are under construction in the center and right side of the picture.

Below: Taken from the other end of the above picture and looking to the east, you can see the construction of the exit/entry ramp where trains will connect with the elevated line (right) via the ramp (center). The Soonvijai station is on the right side of the ground-level rail line, now occupied as the train has left the station.

Below: Turning around from the above picture and looking west along the tracks, towards Makkasan Station. The Royal City Avenue sign that is blocked by construction is a bit deceptive. Before construction started, there was a frontage road along the rail tracks that you could drinve from the area where the picture was taken (which is essentially the entrance to Bangkok Hospital) to the entrance of the RCA entertainment district about 300 meters to the west. That road is gone and, I assume, will not reopen.

Above: A look inside one of the mainenance sheds, where you can see the rails have been laid and the catwalks that will run along the side of the trains have already been installed.

For more information, 2bangkok.com maintains a space dedicated to this project.

Chris hit by credit card fraud

Posted on 5 November 2007 by christao408

It took two years to happen, but almost as if to welcome me into my third year in Bangkok, I was bitten by my first case of credit card fraud. When I woke up this morning, I had a voicemail on Skype from my credit card company asking me to call them to verify some purchases. When I called in there were several purchases from high name fashion and cosmetic stores – the companies were based in France but I’ll assume the charges were made here in Thailand – totalling about $4,500 on Monday.

Who got the number? Hard to know for certain but I haven’t used the card in several days nor have any charges appeared until after I used it at the Food Hall at Zen department store at Central World Plaza yesterday evening. My guess is that there is some scam going on with the ladies working the check-out lines there.

I’m not certain whether I should lodge a complaint with their management or even inform the police. I do want to go back to Central World and see if the names on the list of charges correspond with shops there. Even to talk to the store managers and make them aware of the fraudulent activity.

Thankfully, Chase was on the job and spotted the unusual charges. Bless those spending algorithms.

Posted on 28 October 2007 by christao408

This entry would have been written earlier today, or yesterday, or even the day before. But I wanted to post some video that I shot and am having difficulties. You see, the nifty new camera I bought – a Panasonic Lumix TZ3, which I really do think is terrific – outputs video in a .mov format. This is an Apple-proprietary format that can’t be edited with the existing software I have on my Windows-based laptop computer.

I’ve been searching for a way to convert the files to something I can work with, but the freeware and shareware I’ve downloaded don’t seem to work correctly. So I caved in and went to the Apple website to spend $30 buying the upgrade to QuickTime Pro. My order is “being processed” and I don’t know how long that will take. I’ll probably end up having problems because my billing address is in the US but I’m connecting to the internet in Thailand.

Out of patience and not wanting my readers to think I’ve forgotten about them, I’ll go ahead and do the post the traditional way, with still pictures.

The big event recently was the dress rehearsal of the royal barge procession. Last done in June 2006 in celebration of the King’s 60th anniversary on the throne, this rarely-seen most of monarch transportation is being rolled out again next week for the thrice annual changing of the Emerald Buddha’s robes, in Wat Phra Kaew in the Grand Palace.

Using the barge procession to go 3 km down the Chao Phraya River is a whole lot of effort, especially since His Majesty is still in the hospital recovering from something stroke-like. The good news is, he is recovering nicely. Still, I think some other member of the royal family will travel in his place.

I’m quite surprised that the barges aren’t being used instead for something related to his 80th birthday in early December.

Nonetheless, I went with Roka, Ken and Francois to the River Mansion guest house, which sold tickets for seating on their poolside (and riverside) deck for viewing of the dress rehearsal. The view was spectacular, the weather cool, overcast and breezy, and there were only twenty people there viewing the barges.

Right: Chris, Francois, Ken and Roka, poolside.

Quick introduction for those of you who try to follow the cast of characters in my blog: Francois is a friend of Stuart’s, most recently from San Francisco but raised in Kentucky, who has bought a condo here and will be splitting his time between the Bay Area and Khrungthep.

We had a really good view and drinks and a plate of appetizers was included in the admission price. To give you an idea of the view and how close we were to the river:

We spent a good ninety minutes waiting and then the barges went past in about thirty minutes, a little more rushed than normal but this was their first dress rehearsal. They have two more before the big day on Tuesday. It was still very spectacular to see and amazing that they take more than 2,000 sailors to man the 52 barges and are able to control them so smoothly and gracefully, rowing to the stentorian chants of the Brahman priests.

Expect to see more monarchy fever in the next two eight weeks as we approach the big 8-0 on December 5th.

christao408

The adventures of an expat American who moved to Bangkok for his husband.

Tag Archives: Khrungthep