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 A woman rubs gold leaf on a Buddha figure as an offering on the grounds of Wat Phra Kaeo, the holiest shrine in Thailand, at the Grand Palace in Bangkok. |
Bangkok scenes Bangkok presents an intriguing mix of the exotic and the modern. Traffic is always heavy, tall hotels abound, but monks in saffron robes are a regular sight and we even saw an elephant trudge past on a main street. The Chao Phraya River is also a principal thoroughfare through Bangkok, with regular and inexpensive river taxis running all day and into the night. Bangkok once was a water city, but most of the canals have been filled in and built upon. A network of smaller canals or khlongs still exists in some areas, lined with residences and small businesses and vendors cooking and selling food and supplies from long-tailed boats. Beautiful wats (temples), astonishing in their intricate and elaborate decoration, fill the city, visited by tourists and also by local people making offerings and prayer. Bangkok is also a center of international trade, a diverse city popular with entrepreneurial immigrants from many lands. We found wonderful antique Afghani jewelry being sold by hopeful young Afghanis in several shops near our hotel and a number of young Africans working in the gem trade were living in our hotel. But try to find cardboard boxes for shipping! We spent a morning driving around the city looking for boxes, checking with professional scavengers, searching for a box shop, asking shopkeepers for their extras. These valuable objects are snapped up as quickly as they are discarded- and they are not discarded very often. It was an eye-opening reminder in this bustling, cosmopolitan center.¨ |
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