Saturday 6/25 I wrote about most of the day, and then after I logged off we went to dinner at the hotel's buffet. It was a bizarre combination of Western and Asian foods, served outdoors in the wilting heat. You have to wonder about the meat sitting out there, dontcha? Some of us had "Mongolian barbecue," that famous Thai speciality, obviously, where you choose your own meats and veggies and they stir fry it for you. They also had raw seafood sitting there and they would BBQ your choice on a large grill. Halle asked for a BBQ'd prawn, a gigantic thing almost like a small lobster, with head and antenna on. Go figure, I knew she liked shrimp but it seemed a bold choice for a five-year old. After she ripped apart and peeled the first one, she liked it so much she went back for seconds and then thirds. The highlight of the evening was that the buffet also had a tin cooler with well-frozen ice cream so we all had a scoop before a sprinkling of rain drove us inside.
Indoors there were two Thai weddings taking place in the hotel's two ballrooms. Each bride and groom seemed to have purchased the hotel's standard package: a huge 7-foot high heart made of roses, an ice sculpture, ballroom chairs swathed in white slipcovers, the cakes looked amazingly similar. We stood around watching photos be taken for a while. Halle said she wants to live here when she grows up.
Sunday 6/26 we got up a little earlier - Don's luggage had arrived in the night safely from its baggage snafu (not to China, in fact --of course!!-- it had sat in New York), so we dressed for church and assumed it started at nine. We got the doorman to write out the address in Thai so we could show it to a taxi driver, and we took a cab to the newer downtown part of the city and found the chapel on a quiet side street - luckily there was a sign at the corner, because the street was not labeled. Turns out that the reason we couldn't get hold of the branch president by phone was that he and the entire branch presidency were out of town, gone back to the states to visit family like many of the ex-pat families that make up the Bangkok English branch (so the poor High Priest Group Leader was conducting and in charge, and made it clear he wasn't going to accept tithing checks!) What was interesting about that branch was that it wasn't all Americans/Europeans working in Bangkok, but about half made up of Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese refugees who don't speak enough Thai to integrate into the Thai branches and so choose to attend the English-speaking branch. They hold a second sacrament meeting in Cambodian for the benefit of that group and then have combined third-hour meetings.
It was a fascinating setting in which to discuss the week's lesson, on signs of the second coming... the one that was on most people's mind there, not surprisingly, was that the gospel will be preached in all the world, and there was firsthand perspective there from people in diplomatic corps who have seen branches of the church begin to meet in countries where our missionaries are not currently permitted to preach or even travel, including Pakistan, Burma, communist Laos, and China. The overall feeling there was one of tremendous hope and optimism in establishing Zion as a place of refuge in every nation even though the folks who live here certainly are sensitized to the realities of the difficult and violent world we live in. Our kids were made very welcome in the Primary and the Primary president expressed regret we weren't moving there.
After church we took a taxi to the hotel where Don had stayed with Thompson and Forrest in 2002, a European hotel called the Swiss Lodge and we ate in their mostly-Western menu restaurant (specializing in fondue), then took the modern and swift Skytrain to the end of its line, the famed Mo Chit weekend market. Eight thousand venders, cheek by jowl, under rough corrugated roofs, and I don't know how many thousand people there - we held hands and plunged into the sea of humanity, peddlers, and wares. We bought some fabric and sarongs and flip flops and saw many amazing things for sale. Most of the family thought that the exotic pet section was the most interesting, with teeny street puppies and tree shrews... Don muttering as we passed the avian sellers "Keep away from the chickens, keep away from the chickens" (Asian bird flu, yikes)... but Thompson was apalled at the condition of the animals and wished he had money to free them all, especially the little chained-up squirrels. We waited out a fierce thunderstorm under the shelters and then grabbed a cab for the hotel.
Naps, more swimming, and then we found a dinner theater that had a Thai "traditional" (term used very loosely here) dance performance. Cheesy and touristy, no doubt, but the kids enjoyed it and the opportunity to see even a little of Thai folk performance - the tale with the Monkey King in full mask chasing the mermaid around the room was a favorite.
Monday 6/27 dawned very hot. We slept in, then took the public water shuttle down to the temple area and visited the Grand Palace complex with its two important Wats, Temple of the Emerald Buddha and Temple of the Reclining Buddha. These are just jaw-dropping in their immensity, complexity, beauty, and calm, while outside the gates touts try to convince you to go with them for "tours," inside the gates it is serenity and grandeur. It was tremendously hot, but inside the temples and eaved courtyards it was cool and relaxing. Jacob did some sketching, he wanted to figure out how to draw the stacked roofs with their upturned corners that are so distinctive here. We spent the afternoon at the Vinanmek teak mansion, a palace built by the king in the 1910s, an exquisite "Western-style" house executed without a single nail. Naps and swimming at the hotel, and then we went to a nearby cafe for Thai food and conversation.
Our read-aloud book here has been a simplified version of the memoirs of Anna Leonowens, the governess to the king in the 1860s whose life was made into the musical the King and I. Her original text was a favorite of mine as a kid, and although the simplified one isn't as detailed it is still fun to read about the very place where we are and to imagine it as she might have seen it.
Ok - that's enough for now, we will try to post once getting an internet account in Bhutan.
