Bangkok Weekend

Bangkok: 10 Million People living in the Land of Smiles.

We have just got back from a weekend in Bangkok. Actually it was a Monday, Tuesday and fly home on Wednesday morning weekend. What an interesting place! Ruth and I had a really great time. It just happened to be their Songkrang festival. Which is the equivalent of Thailand’s Lunar New Year. It's a National Holiday for three days and it seemed to me that the whole city was involved in a water fight. Songkrang is the Lunar New Year celebration when Buddha images are bathed, and a lot of water is generally tossed around. Everywhere we went there were people on corners splashing a lot of water about. Large numbers of young people were on the streets with loaded water guns freely wetting each other. In fact every time we ventured out doors we ended up wet, it was a lot of fun. The temperatures were up around 34 + degrees so being wet was quite good and everyone seemed very happy.

We did the usual tourist type activities. We stayed in Sukhumvit, very close to the sky train, so we used this to get around. We also found our way down to the river and spent an afternoon cruising and exploring the various stops up and down the river. We managed to find our way to the temple of the Emerald Buddha and the Palace. What an amazing place, there were so many gold covered statues, with loads of ornately covered buildings. Because it was an important public holiday there also happened to be lots of people out and about.

We enjoy exploring night markets when we are travelling so we thought we would Patpong night market as we were told that it is a good Market to go to. We set of in the evening on the sky train to Sala Daeng, which was the right stop to get off. We got off the train and were immediately aware of lots of noise, a steady hum of crowd, banging, and loud voices. Wondering what was going on we looked over the side of station and we were absolutely gob-smacked with what we saw. As far as we could see was a wave of people, with buckets of water raining down on them. They were all happy and having a great time. They were tightly packed together getting out of the station and to our destination was going to be very difficult so we opted to stand and enjoy the atmospgere from our safe viewing platform instead. Finally we made the decision to return to Sukhumvit and find somewhere to have dinner and watch the fun going on in our local neighborhood.

We enjoyed Bangkok and were surprised by how easily we found our way around. We thought the people were very easy going and happy which to date has been our experience with other Thailand destinations. The impression that will last in my brain is the contrasts from very poor people begging in the street and right next door very rich people in expensive cars and clothes. Very run down buildings with amazing expensive examples of modern architecture right next door. Finally the water freely splashed around, with polluted canals and river providing vital transport links. Lots of smiles and loads of contrasts.

Kuching

Well we are safely back from our adventure into Sarawak on the Island of Borneo.
It was our best adventure in Asia so far.
We had a great start to our holiday in that we stayed a night in The Elizabeth Hotel…it was a prize that I won at the annual dinner last year. It was in the executive room and we were able to utilize the mini bar as part of the prize. This is the same hotel that we stayed in when we first arrived in Singapore last year. We had packed our bags, took them to work on the Sunday and arrived at the hotel which gave us a great start to the holiday. We flew from Singapore to Kuching. The flight took less than an hour and a half. We were met by a driver from the travel company who took us to our Hotel. Kuching itself is an interesting city with a population of 500,000. It is very spread out and doesn’t feel that big. There are a lot of empty buildings. We spent most of our time in Kuching around the river, which has a lot of interesting tourist places. It is very laid back and friendly, although the shop keepers were continually telling us to be careful of pickpockets and bag snatchers. We actually felt very safe.


We had decided to stay in Hotel Hilton…we were doing a free and easy
holiday in which you pay for your flights and hotel accommodation all in one. Hence the stay in the Hilton. We were shown to a room with a river view but we didn’t like it as it was a smoking room and it had quite an odour. They shifted us into another room on the other side of the hotel and it was a suite with its own bathroom ensuite and a lounge area as well as a bedroom and a small kitchenette. We thought we were in heaven!


We went down to the local travel agent and organised to do a river cruise. Although this was a good way to see the river area and have a bit of a commentary about the area but I don’t think I will be doing that again.
We did get a glimpse of some dancing that the locals do. So we booked a tour of their cultural village where we saw 6 different types of long houses…this made me keen to stay in one. The next day we were walking down to the local tourist centre when a lady asked if we were keen to do a homestay in a longhouse. She had a contact but they wouldn’t take anyone on their own and wanted us to join her. We decided to go with her after meeting with the guy who was arranging it. (He had just been voted back into parliament! In the elections that had just taken place that weekend.)

The stay was with the Iban on the River Skrang. It took us 3 ½ hours by car and then 1 ½ hours by long boat. The Iban are the people who use to do the head hunting! This was scary until we realized that they don’t do it anymore! When they say they live in a long house …it really is a long house! This one had 21 families living in it. They have their own living area and kitchen area but share a communal verandah area which is closed in. The first night there we were shown where the toilet was and where we were able to sit and encouraged to have a look around. We were quite surprised at the conditions they were living in but everyone seemed very happy and content. We had to walk down some ladder like steps to go to the toilet. It was very basic but by the end of our stay we realized that they had few material things but that they have everything!

The Long House

When we went to Kuching, Sarawak we ended up going on a homestay at a longhouse. This was a magical experience. Two night and three days staying at an Iban Longhouse about two hours up the Skrang river. This was our host, he was really good and worked hard to make sure we were looked after.

The Long House Chief was a friendly man. He seemed to spend a lot of his time doing jobs in and arouind the longhouse. He was very proud of his tattoes, which included an interesting pattern on his throat.

On our first night we were treated to a display of local culture and dance. These guys were really happy and got us all up to dance with them.

Check out the rainbow over the top of the trees. We had quite a lot of rain while we were there but we did manage to get out and spend a proportion of day two treking through rice, rubber and pepper planting in the hills.

Each family works their plantings and they bring the produce back to the long house and they dry it out on their family area. In this case there is pepper, rice and rubber drying out in the sun on the deck.

When we went treking we had lunch beside a stream, it was all cooked in bamboo. The fish and chicken was skewered and cooked over the flame. The bamboo in the picture contains rice, palm shoots, fern shoots and they even placed water in the bamboo to make a brew of tea. It was quite a feast.