The
boat then took us to the Royal Barge museum. This contained busy men restoring
at least two of these long ceremonial boats. The barges are used on important
ceremonial occasions and are highly decorated. They indicate the importance
of both the river and the Royal family to the people of Bangkok and Thailand.
This was the furtherest part of our journey.
On
the way back from the Royal Barge museum we stopped, along with other river
boats, to feed the fish. When bread was passed around to throw to the fish
I expected a few small fish, instead we got lots of large frenzied fish
surging to the surface to bite anything that’s going. They looked like
cat fish but I would welcome a more correct description of them.
On
landing we took a short trip to Wat Po, the largest temple in Thailand.
We viewed the famed statue of a huge reclining Buddha - it’s 50 feet high
and 150 feet long. It was built in the reign of King Rama III (1824-1851)
and is covered in layers of gold leaf. The statue represents the Buddha
in his dieing moments shortly before he enters the state of Nirvana. The
huge complex of buildings has it’s own colony and a School of Traditional
Medicine. We all got a traditional massage here, I wasn’t looking forward
to it and was in reality quite pleasant.
After all these tourist activities we ended up in a fine restaurant that had stunning river views.
Here
is a good opportunity to say how much I liked Bangkok. On arrival the airport
is large, clean and efficient, which is important after a long flight.
From various guidebooks I knew Bangkok was a large modern city but I was
still impressed by the sheer scale of the place as my taxi took me to the
Conrad Hotel, Wireless Road. This trip gave me an unexpected tour of the
city as the Conrad had only just been opened and most taxi drivers were
unaware of its presence. Although the roads are very congested most of
the drivers are very polite; there isn’t the honking of horns and intimidating
tail-gating that you would expect anywhere else in the world. This kind
of politeness seems to run throughout all life in Thailand.
I will add some more notes here soon....
See the rest of my report on the 5th
Bangkok International Film Festival.
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