Mum and Dad come to Town

Almost all good adventures in Thailand start in Bangkok and that is where I met my Mum and Dad for the first part of their three week journey in Thailand. Although we have traveled (years ago) as a family in Singapore and Malaysia, the folks have never been in Thailand before and I was eager to show them where I have been living and working and playing for the past year and a half.

We settled ourselves in to enjoy Bangkok in luxury. There are many ways to enjoy BKK from the 150bhat guesthouse room with its hard mattress, thin sheets, thinner walls and shared toilet to the five star riverside hotels. I have been all over the spectrum, but for my parents, on their jet lagged arrival, after over twenty hours of flights and transit lounges, I used my NGO discount to book us into a classy joint, the Centrepoint hotel.

From there we enjoyed a full buffet breakfast by the pool with our own omelette chef and fresh expresso coffee. We ventured forth from our air-conditioned wonderland to the mad hot world of downtown metropolitan Bangkok for several hours at a time, only to return to shower, nap, swim and enjoy cable TV.

My trips to Bangkok have been all business or all pleasure. I come for the food and the nightlife, to meet friends, to shop for foreign goods or else to attend meetings, conferences and workshops. I have been here over a year and not done anything on the usual tourist’s itinerary. Mum and Dad’s visit was the perfect excuse.

We made our way through the motorcycles on sidewalks, amoung the vendors, through the mad crash of cars, up the steep stairs to the expressway trains. We were whisked high above the city in air conditioned calm towards the river. The water was brown and rushed by, swollen by the rains and clogged with green debris from farms somewhere far away.

The Grand Palace in Bangkok is grand indeed. In the sunlight, it is almost blinding. You could spend hours there, soaking in all the detail and never really see half of it. In the shadowy alcoves around the edges of the temples there are oil paintings gilt with gold showing scenes from the Ramayana in exquisite detail. Tiny bells hang on the rooftops of temples, the tiles are all ceramic. Mosaics make up the gargoyles. Tiny sculptured figures peer at you from all kinds of unlikely locations. The air is full of incense and the scent of lotus flowers and the sun is bouncing off all the gold.



We wandered through the grounds, through the temple and in front of parts of the palace. We watched the changing of the guards and perused a large collection of ancient weapons.


By the time we found the exit, we were dripping with sweat, but after a brief interlude for refreshments, ready for more. We hopped across the river to Wat Arun, Temple of the Dawn.

Wat Arun is a beautiful mosaic decorated entirely with pieces of broken plates that have been donated by the inhabitants of Bangkok in order to gain Buddhist merit. Steep steps climb the edifice although visitors are only allowed to ascend to the first tier. From there, the view over the river is nice, but not as refreshing as the cool breeze on the hot sunny day. We lingered amidst the shady trees of the garden, ringing the deep bronze temple bells and sipping on cold drinks.


From Bangkok I had train tickets to Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second biggest city. Chiang Mai is to Bangkok what Ottawa is to Toronto or Canberra is to Sydney, only more so. It is quiet, without sky scrapers or sky trains. The City Centre is surrounded by ruins and a moat. There are plenty of cosy guesthouses offering courses in Thai massage, Thai cooking, treks, visits to the shooting range, tours with elephants. Unfortunately, the heavy rains had flooded sections of the train tracks and we arrived at the station only to find it packed full of people camped out on the marble floors waiting for service to resume.

We got a full refund, then hopped in a cab and made for the bus station where we were just in time to get the overnight bus to Mae Sot instead. Eight hours later, somewhere around 5am, we arrived at my home for the next phase in our adventure: Mae Sot, the migrant community, Umphang for trekking and Umphium Mai, the refugee camp where I work… (To be continued…)


Arriving in MS (left)


Bugs in market (right)