Shopping and Playing With Tigers

March 26, 2008

I took the night train from Vientiane to Bangkok, which all went smoothly. I bought a ticket from a travel agent in Vientiane that got me transportation to the Thailand border, which is about 10 miles away, and from the border to the train station in Thailand, as well as the train ticket. I got a piece of green tape to stick to my shirt so the various people picking up and dropping off the group along the way could find everyone, and made it to the train station without a problem. I had an air-conditioned car this time on the train, and actually I ended up pretty cold that night, so non-AC might be better. Or else I need to take my jacket to bed with me.

I spent a couple of days in Bangkok, mostly shopping and not buying much. I’d been there during the week before, and missed the huge weekend market, so I made a trip out there on Sunday. I’m still not big on city buses in strange cities, so I got a taxi to Siam Square and took the Skytrain from there. The Chattuchak market is near the end of the line, so it was easy to get to. I spent a couple hours walking around there, until it got too hot. They sell just about anything you can think of there, from furniture to t-shirts to pets.

Then I took the Skytrain back to Siam Square, which is the main shopping district in Bangkok.

You can see the railway line and the elevated walkways connecting the shopping centers in the area. In the center of the picture is a shrine that’s in front of the MBK shopping center. It seems like most businesses have a shrine near the entrance for good luck.

It was actually pretty entertaining wandering through the shopping centers. The fountain is in front of the Siam Paragon shopping center, which bills itself as the pride of Bangkok and contains stores like Cartier and Valentino. I think the Starbucks was the only shop I could have afforded to buy anything at.

The Siam Discover Center is where all the teens hang out. They even have a DJ, whose booth is in the picture above. They also had very cute signs for the restrooms. Check out the knees:

My next destination was Kanchanaburi, to see the bridge on the River Kwai, famous from the book and movie of that name. I must confess to having a bit of a bus phobia, which isn’t a good thing for a traveller. I’m always afraid I’m not going to be able to communicate with the ticket seller or get on the wrong bus, and end up in the middle of nowhere with no way to get back, which is kind of silly, because if buses go there, they also go back. But I still don’t like buses. However, it’s much quicker to get to Kanchanaburi by bus than by train, so I bit the bullet and went to the bus station. The Bangkok bus station was really nice, with lots of shops and places to eat. Each bus route had it’s own ticket booth, and the platform the bus left from was printed on the ticket. Kanchanaburi was the last stop so I didn’t have to worry about missing it. It all turned out to be pretty trauma-free.

The bridge on the River Kwai is part of the railway built by the Japanese during WW II to carry supplies from Thailand to Burma, using prisoners of war for labor. It’s known as the “Death Railway” because of the number of people who died during its construction. The British had surveyed the route earlier, and decided that it would be too difficult to build. The Japanese built the railway in 18 months, but at the cost of the lives of 16,000 POWs and 9000 Asian laborers.

The bridge is still in use, with about three trains a day crossing it, but it no longer goes all the way to Burma. It’s possible to walk across the bridge, but there isn’t a pedestrian walkway, so you have to walk between the tracks. There’s plenty of room to fall on the outside edge of the tracks, and since I’m not very good with heights I didn’t walk very far out onto the bridge.

I got a picture of the motorcycle taxi stand near the bridge. Motorcycle taxis are just that - hop on the back of the motorcycle and hang on to the driver as he whips through traffic. I’m not that brave, but they’re very common in SE Asia.

In the afternoon, I booked a tour out to the Tiger Temple. It’s a Buddhist temple that became an animal sanctuary in 1999, apparently when the monks were given a tiger cub rescued from poachers. One of the volunteers told me that there are now 23 tigers, most of them born there. They’re in the process of building a large natural area for the tigers, but for now they spend most of their time in cages. They’re brought out in the afternoons for tourist visits. That’s nap time for tigers, and most of them were asleep. They’re on chains, and you are taken around to several tigers to have your picture taken.

They also had a couple of 3 month old tiger cubs that I got a chance to pet.

When it was time for the big cats to be brought back from the visiting area, they brought the cubs over to an enclosed area for us to see, to keep us out of the way while the adult tigers were walked from the visitor area back to their cages.

After that long day out in the sun, I was glad that I’d sprung for a guesthouse with a swimming pool. It was a particularly nice one, too, with flowers planted all around. Not bad for $20 a night!

And then I finished up my day watching Dirty Dancing 2 dubbed into Thai with English subtitles while mending my underwear.  The romance of travel!  Usually there’s CNN and an English movie channel on TV, but for some reason the only English language stations here were the Golf channel and Bloomberg, which is all stock market reports.

Posted in Thailand