Thailand

March 16 and March 21, 2009
Thailand

Queen Victoria’s calls to Laem Chabang (a port city for access to Bangkok) and Phuket were two days I was greatly looking forward to on the 2009 World Cruise. In the prior months, when discussing the world cruise with guests, I often would talk about how badly I wanted to visit Thailand before even talking about Australia, Japan, or China. Part of this may be rooted in the fact that I love Thai food, but I somehow knew that my days spent in these two wonderful ports would be spectacular.

March 16, 2009
Bangkok (from Laem Chabang), Thailand

Queen Victoria’s call to Laem Chabang meant that a long day was in store for me. The ship was docked here so that tours could operate to Bangkok, which was located about 90 minutes away by coach. While [like always] I chose to do a tour to Bangkok, I changed things up a bit and did the “Bangkok on Your Own” excursion. My girlfriend ended up doing the same excursion so that we could meet up and explore the city by ourselves.

For me, the excitement started around 30 minutes away from the hotel we were meant to go to, as while the coach was on the highway, there was a large audible pop, followed by a clacking sound that repeated every second or so. The driver of our coach pulled over, and sure enough, our left rear tire suffered quite the blowout. I am unsure as to what caused the tire to blow, but there was structural damage to the coach as well. Luckily, the tour operator was able to arrange for another coach to pick us up on the highway about 40 minutes later. Some guests opted to hail taxis on the highway to take them the rest of the way, but I had to stay on board and wait in a bus that luckily had good air conditioning.

Upon my eventual arrival into Bangkok, I found my girlfriend and we set off on our journey to explore what we could in the time we had (only about four and a half hours). We decided that the must-see attraction was the Grand Palace (the formal royal residence) and Wat Phra Kaew, the location of the Emerald Buddha Temple, and getting there was half the fun.

Instead of hailing a taxi or tuk tuk (the tourist’s name for the small tricycle taxis commonly seen in Thailand and India, among other places), we decided that it would be fun to get to the palace via the city’s rail system followed by a ride on a city ferry. The rail ride was pretty straightforward, and once we got off, I saw a small food vendor selling various meats on a skewer. I asked her how much for one skewer and she told me 5 baht. 1 US dollar was equivalent to around 35 baht, so I ended up getting two beef ones and two with chicken. These four skewers cost me a total of approximately $0.55 USD! They were quite nourishing as well, especially considering I skipped out on breakfast.Upon boarding the ferry, I began to see more of the city than I was able to see on the train, and passed by a few Buddhist temples, or as the Thai call them, Wats, including Wat Arun, which translates to the Temple of the Dawn. It was a spectacular-looking temple with a huge tower located at its center that one can climb up. I was told by a friend who lived in Thailand that this was a must-see, but unfortunately I did not get any closer to it than from across a river. Soon after passing Wat Arun, the ferry arrived at the stop for the Grand Palace, so we got off and began our short trek to the palace and temple entrance. Once I walked through the gate and saw the compound from the inside, I was immediately wowed by the colors and architecture. The buildings in Thailand are unique to that part of the world and it was like nothing I had ever seen. I was eager to get up close and even go inside some of these buildings, so I quickly made my way to the ticket office and got inside.We started our walk around the palace grounds near Wat Phra Kaew, and made our way around the different temple-like buildings. The architecture continued to amaze me, as did the gold-colored roofs. I encountered different statues of Buddhist art, including a couple golden statues of the Kinnara, a mythical creature that is half bird and half man. We continued to walk around until we found ourselves just in front of Wat Phra Kaew, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha.

Since this is still a place of worship, before entering the temple, my hat and shoes had to come off, and I had to turn my camera off as well. Upon entering, I was immediately taken aback by the sheer beauty of the Buddha statue. It was situated high above the floor in the back of the room, and was surrounded by smaller pointed pillars of varying heights. The sheer amount of gold in the room was ridiculous, and the Buddha itself was made of jade and covered in gold and emeralds. We moved past seated Buddhists, tourists, and Buddhist tourists and took a seat on the floor. The last restriction inside the temple was that we were not allowed to point our feet at the Buddha, so I had to sit quite uncomfortably. Nonetheless, I took my seat, took in the atmosphere for a few minutes, and then left when it was time to leave. We continued to walk around the palace grounds some more and made our way to some of the more grand halls and away from the temples. The buildings were huge, and the architecture continued to amaze me. We went into one of the buildings to catch a glimpse of the interior of a former Thai royal palace, and it was ornately decorated. The patterns on the walls were beautiful, and the ceilings were higher than the temple buildings.

We made our way back out of the palace as it was almost time already to head back to the hotel and pick up our coaches back to the ship, so we decided to take a taxi to the general area of the hotel and look for a place to eat some lunch. Unfortunately, we did not find much, but ended up going to a small hole-in-the-wall eatery [I would hardly call it a restaurant], that had a small but tasty menu. I ordered a chicken soup and also a chicken dish since that was all that looked appealing to me, and weirdly enough, both items were quite soupy and both tasted amazing! The entire meal for the two of us cost me somewhere in the vicinity of six or seven US dollars, and although it tasted more Chinese than Thai, it was still a treat. We made our way from the eatery back to the hotel but had some more time before the coaches were leaving, so we decided to browse through a couple of nearby souvenir shops. Like I had done previously in Shanghai and Hong Kong, I purchased another Buddha to add to my collection, and a couple postcards before heading back to the coach and back to the ship in Laem Chabang.

My day in Bangkok was not long enough. Four or five hours was not enough time to spend in such a large city, especially with all of the sights so vastly spread out. Nevertheless, I am happy I had the chance to visit Bangkok and hope to return again one day.

March 21, 2009
Phuket, Thailand

After making a call to Singapore on March 19, Queen Victoria spent the day of March 20 at anchor in Patong Harbor in the waters of Phuket, Thailand (just to avoid any confusion, in pronouncing Phuket, the ‘h’ is silent, and the island is not phonetically named “f*ck it”). I had seen photos of the beaches here and knew what an international paradise it was, but unfortunately, the ship decided to arrive on a bit of a rainy day. Nonetheless, my girlfriend and I decided to go explore.

By the time we made it to the tender ashore, the rainy day had been downgraded to a mostly cloudy one, and we thought we might try and make our way to a local shopping mall to pick up some various necessities. That plan didn’t last long, however, as after sitting in the taxi for two minutes we decided to spend our time closer to Patong walking around and browsing some of the markets.Before long, we found ourselves in this huge building filled with many different stalls selling knock-off merchandise. One stall was filled with Gucci and Prada bags, and the next stall had Ralph Lauren polo shirts and Diesel jeans. After a while, it seemed like these stalls were in a constant rotation between different items that seemed to look the same. We ended up buying three or four shirts between the three of us, mostly with logos of various Asian beer brands on them, before moving on and finding somewhere to get some good Thai food for lunch.

We ventured back onto a busier street and walked past a few restaurants before we found one with outside seating. As it turned out, this restaurant doubled as the local chapter of the Harley Davidson owners’ group on the island, so we had accidentally found ourselves at the only biker bar in the area. Nonetheless, it was a nice day and we wanted to sit outside, so we ordered a couple of beverages, took in the atmosphere of Phuket, and waited for our food to arrive.

For lunch, I decided to stick to what I normally eat at Thai Restaurants in the USA, and despite not being too adventurous, I still enjoyed my selections. As always, I had Tom Kha Gai, a chicken soup with mushrooms and ginger in a coconut milk base, and for a main course, I ordered a green curry dish with chicken. Everything tasted great, and once again, the meal was CHEAP! The grand total including beverages came to somewhere around 10 US Dollars, (or about 300 baht). After eating, we decided to wander around a bit more and do some souvenir shopping.

We walked over to an area flooded with different shops, some selling souvenirs, others selling goods for the locals. What’s interesting about largely populated areas of Thailand is that no matter where you look, you always seem to find a tailor who will make you a custom suit, shirt, or pair of trousers, and they will never hesitate to try and get you inside to make a sale. Had there been more time, I probably would have been happy to have a tailored suit, but I had to turn everybody down. Eventually, we made our way back to Patong beach and went for a bit of a walk. It was not nearly as great as I had hoped my Phuket beach experience would be, and this was mostly due to a combination of lots of dead little fish on the sand, the lack of a real sunny day, and the sheer number of people enjoying the lack of sun and attempting to get a tan. From the beach, we headed back to the pier where we boarded our tender to the ship, thus ending two wonderful days in Thailand.In the end, Phuket (and Bangkok as well) was not doable in a day. A lengthy vacation to Thailand is most definitely in order.