Bangkok

Early Flights - Savings With Penalties

If you want to try to avoid extra days off from work, or if you wish to lower your transportation costs by getting a cheap, unpopular flight you can pick ones in the early morning or late at night.  But this seems to defeat either the purpose of cost-reduction, or the purpose of the trip - to explore and/or relax.  We took a very early morning flight to Bangkok.  It was quite cheap, saved us from taking Friday off, but it also ruined our first day in Thailand.  We were too tired to do anything as a group (us, and Connie's aunt and uncle).

Our hotel would not let us checkin before 11am, so we decided to drop our bags and start exploring/relaxing.  We found the pool and toured the grounds, then went outside to look for breakfast - a street vendor who fried an egg over rice on-demand.  We found a nearby 7-11 for some sundry items, and got oriented (found the nearest Skytrain station, and the main artery that is Silom road).  After this, Connie, Lizzy and Uncle were done for the day.  Auntie and I went for a walk to the nearest bank of the Chao Phraya river for some boat gazing, ducking in and out of street markets along the way.


Bangkok is a very developed city and it is undergoing some modern urbanization projects (like establishing a mass transit system).  In areas along the newly-built Skytrain there are wires everywhere above and along the sidewalks, and some look downright exposed and dangerous.  There are street vendors everywhere, selling drinks, fruits, mango salads, satay meats, and all manner of stuff.  Near hotels and tourist attractions there are many tuk-tuk drivers bothering everyone to take their cab.

In the evening we met ex-Bloomberg colleagues of ours who are now stationed there - the husband, John, works for the State Department.  We had a Chinese banquet meal at Paragon mall.  This is one of the nicest malls I've ever been to, and Singapore has its fair share.  Lizzy really enjoyed the company of their 5-year-old daughter, Heather, and spent the rest of the trip and some of the following days begging us to reunite them.  As I'm writing this, two weeks later, she has just woken up from sleep screaming that she wants to go to Thailand...

What's a Wat?

The following day we woke up early to fill up on breakfast buffet and take a semi-guided tour of three of the city's many and varied Wats or Temples.  The first was Wat Traimit, an old Chinatown temple complex with a brand, new shrine built to house a Buddha statue made of 5.5-tons of gold - the world's most valuable sacred object.  Lizzy and Connie earned merit by getting a monk to splash them with sticks dipped in holy water, buy some flowers and incense as offerings, ring bells, and throw money into a large urn.

Next we visited Wat Pho (also know as Wat Phra Chettuphon Wimon Mangkhalaram Ratchaworamahawihan, but why?).  It holds a huge reclining Buddha and a mind-boggling attraction made of buckets where you can throw in fake money you buy with real money - ie earn merit.  The buckets are lined against the wall, and the coins are dropped one by one in a long procession, and when lots of people are playing this game, this holy temple sounds like the winingest casino in Vegas... Lizzy liked it.  I am still trying to find out the meaning of it all.  The vast temple grounds are also really interesting, with loads of Buddhist statues and symbols, and beautiful tombs as well.

Finally, we walked through the well-kept grounds of Wat Benchamabophit - the Marble Temple.  I'm not sure we earned any merit here.  We played the collection of drums in the courtyard nearby, which I think counts...

We also managed to go on a short canal tour - off the Chao Phraya.  The canals wind around people's backyards, where some have setup shop to sell this and that.  We saw a small crocodile on one house's fence, and we bought some bread from one of the sellers to feed catfish congregated just for this purpose in the canal in front of their home.

After a short rest back in the hotel we went out to see Siam Niramit - a cultural/historical/fantasy extravaganza.  The production quality left something to be desired, and the story-line was not at all clear or educational.  But the staging was nice, some bits like an underwater scene were even spectacular, and it had something for everyone.  One part (a scene depicting hell) was a bit scary for Lizzy, but after each act and curtain drop she demanded more - "there's another one... another one..."

This was a very full day.

Shopping

We spent half the following day at MBK mall for some bargain-shopping.  We did not bring a stroller with us and by mid-midday Lizzy was going crazy (as was I)...  We had a nice lunch (tom yum, satay, rice and vegetables), waited out a rainstorm, and headed back to the hotel.  We spent the afternoon soaking sun pool-side.  We met Heather and her family for dinner again, and the girls spent some time at a kiddie arcade together.  Lizzy liked whack-a-mole.

Ascott - Travel 2 Cents

The Ascott Group is a Singapore-based chain of serviced apartment properties with locations all over South East Asia.  We first stayed at one for our temporary stay through my company when we moved to Singapore.  For our last two trips (4 adults, 1 child) we've booked 2-BR apartments instead of getting 2 rooms in a hotel.  This comes out a lot cheaper and you get a proper living room, dining room and kitchen.  We highly recommend serviced-apartments as a primary choice for families travelling in this region.  We plan to continue travelling this way ourselves.

We spent the last hours of our trip in the lap of luxury that is breakfast at the Bangkok Sathorn Ascott, and chilled in the swimming pool, readying ourselves for the short flight back.  And the following workday...

Malacca & Kuala Lumpur

Over the weekend we braved crossing the Singapore/Johor Strait into Malaysia again.  Last time we did this we got stuck in traffic for 4 hours over the Second Link bridge in-between the two immigration stations, so we had been traumatized from that experience.  This time, we picked a non-holiday weekend and left home at 6am.  We cleared both sides in no time, and the total drive time from our home to the historic town of Malacca took about 3 hours, as advertised by Google.


Malacca / Melaka

Both spellings are officially correct.  Malay is written with the basic Latin alphabet, like English, and Melaka is the way it is written in Malay.  The origin of the name Malacca is fanciful and includes a story about a mouse deer.  It has nothing to do with Greek, though... Malacca can refer to a Malay Sultanate dynasty which ruled the region, the current county/state in Malaysia, or our subject matter, its capital city.  It sits on the narrowest point in the Straits of Malacca - which is why it was historically significant.  It lost this significance due to a self-ransacking, and the rise of Singapore & Kuala Lumpur.

The town is quaint and has an interesting mix of architecture styles as it was ruled by the Malay, Portuguese, Dutch and British empires over the years.  The A Famosa fort, which was completely destroyed by the Brits when they left it in early 1800's (if we can't have it, no one will!), is the center of the historical district.  There are old dutch churches and state houses that now house several museums, and a little park.  There is some antiquing in the Jonker street quarter, and lots of restaurants selling Chicken Rice Balls.  I don't get the source of the excitement about this local cuisine, but basically it's rice cooked in chicken broth and mushed into two-bite-sized balls.  You get ~8 per person and a cut-up boiled chicken to share.  That was lunch.


After a brief walking tour of both these areas, and lunch, we drove off to Kuala Lumpur - another hour or so.  Driving in Malaysia is mostly comfortable, but drivers are very aggressive.  Speeding on the highway seems to be a national pastime and in the cities, if you're not aggressive yourself, you may get stuck at some turns for a very long time.


Kuala Lumpur


Entering the Malay capital we noted the urban sprawl and we passed through some nice-looking developments on a hilly terrain.  We followed our GPS through a criss-crossing, meandering and very confusing set of highways that loop around the city and its main business district - the City Centre.  Some parts felt like a roller coaster (big elevation changes combined with nasty turns).  At some point both the KL Tower and the KLCC/Petronas Towers became visible and dominated the skyline and our attention.  Traffic was bad on the main roads but opened up once we entered the smaller streets of the city centre.  We checked in to our hotel for 1 night just as it started to rain.


We chilled out waiting for the rain to stop, but it was getting late in the afternoon while still coming down hard, so we decided to drive the 500 meters to the convention centre, which houses an aquarium.  It was surprisingly nice.  The entrance has a small Piranha exhibit and we were sorry to have missed the feeding time.  There is also a small hands-on display where you can touch a small shark and a sea cucumber, and hold a horseshoe crab.  The rest is well-designed and houses all sorts of underwater and over-water creatures and was rated high as a plan B by our group.


The convention center has lots of eateries but we made our way by underground tunnels to the Suria shopping center and Madam Kwan's restaurant to sample some Malay cuisine.  By the time we finished the rain had let up and we walked around KLCC Park snapping photos.  We had an idea to drive around town for a bit, but after being stuck in traffic for 20 minutes and getting nowhere we decided to head back to the hotel and call it an evening.

The traffic had not let up by morning, and our trip to Merdeka Square was hampered by some army celebration that closed the area down to motorists.  On the way over we saw 7 paratroopers making their way down into the scene.  We ended up parking in Chinatown, did some knockoff shopping and wandered about.  We made our way by foot to Merdeka Square eventually, but the sun was beating down hard on the open space and we were squinting about the commotion of the army's event.  By this point we were all drenched and exhausted (Elizabeth had a bad morning as well), so we decided to call it quits.


Kuala Lumpur seems very interesting.  I need to figure out a better way or time to get about, as we are sure to return to see and eat some more of it.  Other than the immigration checkpoint (getting back was just as easy this time), the trip time/distance is about the same as NY-Boston.