Thailand 2025. Day 32. I am back home!

I had a restless night, no doubt already in travel mood, so by 7 am I was out walking to the skytrain (what I have been calling the metro, although it is above ground). The metro was packed, which made me and my backpack very unpopular. But it was a short ride of only seven stations. I then transferred to the rail link to the airport, which only took half an hour. 

Fortunately Cathay Pacific didn't give me any pushback when I checked in, and armed with my boarding passes I found a place to have breakfast and try to spend my last bahts (I ended coming back with the equivalent of US$ 20, as I did with Indonesian, Sri Lankan, and Indian paper money).

The flights were mostly on time. It took two hours to go from Bangkok to Hong Kong, a three-hour layover, and then 12 hours to go from Hong Kong to San Francisco. All along I had been worried that someone was going to look at my passport picture and say "Hey, you are not the same person as the hirsute guy in the passport", but it never happened. Mostly I scanned my passport and then faced a camera that did some face recognition and approved me. Even entering the US it took me less than 5 minutes to go through immigration!

I took BART from the airport to Pleasanton, where I had to wait for one and a half hours for DJ, who came to pick me up after a long day at work and a two-hour lacrosse practice with the brand new Turlock City League! He then brought me home, where I arrived after nearly 24 hours of traveling. It was 11 pm, but I was wide awake because I have 12 hours of jet lag to adjust to.

So I am home, safe and sound, ready to tackle the problems of daily life. Thanks for worrying about me and I will get back on blog writing mode next time I go gallivanting around the world.

Finis

Thailand 2025. Day 31. My last day in Bangkok

I have decided to break through the urban ceiling by devoting today Sunday to stroll in the equivalent to Golden Gate Park. Here it is formed by two parks adjacent to each other: Chatuchak Park and the new Queen Sirikit Park. The latter was rededicated a year ago, on the birthday of Her Majesty, as an environmental sustainability demonstration park. I was there by 9:30 am, so I caught a good deal of the morning joggers and sport enthusiasts, which a couple of hours later were replaced by the bird watchers and the bicycle riders, and by early afternoon the young couples.

The parks are beautifully tended and have many contrasting mini-landscapes, including a couple of lakes, a meandering stream with peripheral islands, all sorts of flower beds, and a part dedicated to demonstrate irrigation and other agricultural practices.

An important feature of the park complex is a Center for Environmental Education, which in the lobby has a very interesting sets of displays about the environmental issues Bangkok is facing today. It was very interesting to me because these are the types of issues I cover in my Environmental Geology class, which meets for the first time in four days!

To start with, they acknowledge that Bangkok, with 10 million inhabitants, is short in green spaces, with an average of 5 m2 per inhabitant, when the desirable goal is 10 m2 per inhabitant. The municipal authorities are busy looking for land that can be bought and repurposed as parks, and for private partnerships to increase the number of trees and grassy spaces.

Being by the banks of a river, Bangkok has been flooded several times (five times in the last 20 years). The flood of 2011 was particularly severe and affected about 50% of the surface area of the city. The problem is that Bangkok is a coastal city, with gentle slopes that do not promote efficient surface drainage. They are also struggling with issues of subsidence because of the rapid growth of the city and groundwater extraction.

Water supply is another big issue, and they are actively pursuing water conservation programs and water recycling technologies. According to the panel, wastewater is being generated at the rate of nearly 200 liters per day per person, which puts water consumption at slightly more than that. That is a high rate taking in consideration the fact that public water use for parks is likley to be low.

Municipal solid waste is another big issue, with plastic waste being generated in huge amounts every day. They are trying to promote reduce, reuse, and recycle, as well as diverting some of the waste to waste-to-energy power plants (but landfill is still the main tool used to manage solid waste).

Energy generation is still dominated by oil-fueled plants, although the country has considerable hydroelectric resources. Transportation is still based on diesel and gasoline, although from time to time you see a Chinese electric vehicle. Air pollution issues can be significant. Traffic jams take away an hour per person every day. The metro system is somehow limited and not very cheap, with charges varying depending on the distance traveled.

Somehow depressed by the challenges that a big city faces (but inspired to get my class going in just a few days), I took another long walk through the park before coming back to my hotel to prepare for a day of travel tomorrow. I am departing at 12:30 pm from BKK to Hong Kong (a 3 hours flight), a 3 hour layover, and then a 13 hour flight from Hong Kong to SFO. 

Thailand 2025. Day 30. My second day in Bangkok

Bangkok has an enormous concentration of Chinese and accordingly one of the largest and most colorful Chinatowns in the world. There is a whole boulevard that has been taken by Chinese shops and temples, and this boulevard curves in and out to simulate the form of a dragon. I started my day by walking along Chinatown, fascinated as always by the variety and curiosity of objects that are offered for sale in the small shops that line the street.

After a considerable wait I took the next round of the tourist bus all the way to the Royal Palace and the National Museum. I felt no need to pay the fee to visit the Royal Palace, which seems to be covered in gold leaf down to the smallest corner. Currently the king is part of the Chakri Dynasty, which started in 1782. The names of the monarchs are quite complex, but they have simplified it by calling themselves Rama. I believe the current king, who ascended in 2016, is Rama X. The monarchy started as absolute as they come. King Rama IV (Yul Briner in the King and I) was a reformer that opened Siam to Western culture. His son Rama V and grandson Rama VI did much to modernize Siam, slowly introducing the role of cabinet ministers. Eventually, in 1932, a quiet revolution took place and the the monarchy was transformed into a constitutional monarchy, where an assembly draws legislation that the king, as Head of State, approves. The executive power is under the hands of a Prime Minister. But to judge from what you see around, the king and queen are immensely popular and their photos are displayed all over the place.

The National Museum was a good mix of displays that walked you through the prehistory of Thailand, and the muddled growth of independent kingdoms from the 6th through the 18th centuries. I enjoyed seeing the aerial photographs of impressive medieval sites, a couple of which I had actually visited. There is an overwhelming number of Buddha statues of all conceivable sizes and styles, as well as multi-headed cobras, fantastic animals, and representations of the elephant god Ganesh. A good two thirds of the museum are devoted to display objects from the royal house, including enormous funerary carts covered in gold leaf, saddles for the royal elephants, vestments, weapons, and other impressive royal regalia. I spent about one and a half hours in the museum, and then had to wait another half hour for my ride to come along.

My last hurrah was a stop at one of the mega-malls, which from the outside looks like a giant glass box, and in the inside is six floors of top notch brand stores. The ground floor is an immense food market, where one can find all imaginable Thai dishes offered in the way a street market would offer them (but in a much more ritzy environment). I did my visit in much less than an hour, and then wasted another hour waiting for my ride because traffic congestion was fierce. I am pretty much done with the city now, so tomorrow I will have to look for a quiet alternative for my last day in Bangkok.

Thailand 2025. Day 29. My first full day in Bangkok

My first full day as a tourist in Bangkok was pretty interesting. I took the metro to downtown (a very poorly defined downtown) and bought a two-day pass for the hop-on hop-off tourist bus, to which the company added an additional day as a bonus, so now I have a way to move from point to point inside the city.

First I did the whole circuit, which took about 2 hours, and confirmed my opinion that this is a huge city, mostly built for cars and scooters. The interesting stuff seems to be inside warrens of small streets, so it is hard to see from the bus. The narrative tells you about this temple or that palace, but they are buried amidst the tall buildings.

The formal city of Bangkok is on the left bank of the Chao Phraya River, but the megalopolis extends for a long distance across both banks. The views from the river crossings are very impressive.

After the circuit I stepped down from the bus to visit Chulalongkorn University, which is the main university of Thailand and the one all students aspire to be accepted to (there are dozens of other universities, of course). It was a very handsome campus with a big grass-covered quadrangle that is a big relief to the eyes. Then I had to hustle to catch the next bus. In theory the buses come very 30 minutes, but with the traffic the schedule becomes a bit unpredictable. I know because after I stepped down for my second foray the following bus took nearly an hour to arrive.

My second stop was at the Temple of the Gold Buddha, famous because it hosts a solid gold Buddha that is invaluable. It was hidden under plaster that had been gilded but because of its great weight it slipped when it it was being moved, cracked, and the inner gold statue was discovered.

By then I was flagging, so I just enjoyed the rest of the ride, promising to myself that tomorrow I will visit the National Museum and one of the Mega Malls.

I got off the bus at the site of one of the night markets famous for being party central during the night. It was too early for the action to begin, but I thought I could take a look at the preparations while walking to the metro for the ride back. I had not gone more than a few steps when I was accosted by a tout, which in typical friendly fashion inquired where I was from and what was my name, and then grabbed me by the elbow to come see his bar. We walked through the maze of streets where the vendors were unpacking their wares until we got to a dingy stair that led to the bar, where there was a stage with a bevy of beauties who were ready to give me a special Thai massage to make time for the bar to be able to start serving drinks at 5 pm. Somehow I extricated myself promising to come back with my friends the following evening. And here I was thinking that my white hair protected me against all evil!     

Thailand 2025. Day 28. My arrival to Bangkok

All that relaxation I had achieved by driving through rural Thailand evaporated in a big fiery explosion as soon as I reached Bangkok! This is an enormous city where the cityscape of skyscrapers extends as far as the eye can see. Much more like Los Angeles than San Francisco, and like LA it has an incredible maze of highways, bridges, overpasses, elevated causeways, and toll booths. Unfortunately the maze is too tight for the Google Map Lady, who from time to time forgot to mention a key intersection such that I took a left when I should have taken a right. Everyone of these screwups dumped me in heavy street traffic that I had to navigate through several turns before I could get back on the speedway to the airport (and had to paid the toll again, grhh).

Eventually I made it to the airport, where I wasted another half hour looking for a gas station, and returned my trusty steed. I am back at being a pedestrian (:

The way to move between the airport and the city is the 65 baht (US$ 2) fast train, but from the arrival station you are on your own figuring out how to access the metro. Fortunately the rail ends at the green line, which is the one I needed to get to my hotel. In Google Maps it looked like a short walk from station N10, but in reality it was a good kilometer under the sun, lugging my backpack. Unfortunately I will have to walk this one kilometer back and forth to the metro, because once I am at the station I can go anywhere in the city.

For the first day I limited my activities to a walk through my neighborhood, where I was hoping to soak in some of the local color. For the most part, however, I had to deal with a jungle of steel and glass behemoths, which reminded me of walking through Hong Kong or the San Francisco financial district after hours. Clearly there is a lot of money in Bangkok, and the corporations have spared no expense building their corporate palaces. 

I did follow a small canal boarded with simple dwellings. Most of them were just a door on an uninterrupted wall, but some had taken the time to place some planting pots along the wall, as if creating their own small gardens. Gardens is something I think this city desperately needs.

Thailand 2025. Day 27. The end of the road trip

Well, today is the last day of my road trip and I wasted it away by driving 300 km to the environs of Bangkok to be close enough to BKK to deliver the car tomorrow, while still enjoying the calm of the countryside. Most of the day I simply drove through ag fields and irrigation canals, which made me feel just like at home.

I found a very comfortable hotel out in the sticks, where I have to do the cleaning up of all the stuff I have accumulated while I had a car: plastic bags, wrappers, five bottles of water, munchies, etc. After I return the car I have to take the intercity rail to Bangkok and get in the metro, so I cannot be carrying much useless stuff in plastic bags.

Today in the afternoon I want to relax, because once I hit the big city I am sure my three days there are going to be pretty hectic. But first I need to find a barber because I am looking like a wildman ... Well, I did find a barbershop with two lady stylists. The two youngsters ahead of me had big heads of hair and were clearly going for the mop look, so my girl seemed to enjoy the challenge of engineering a close hair cut and a beard trim. She did a great job, but on final inspection decided to tip my head back and gave me shave! She was so pleased I had no heart to burst her bubble, but I feel naked without my beard. Oh well, it will grow back and I will have some stubble once I land in California.

Thailand 2025. Day 26. Thailand's archaeology

Lots of driving today as I headed north, with the goal of visiting a couple of significant archaeologic sites. Throughout central Thailand there is evidence of prehistoric human settlements, and the historic record starts with the expansion of the Khmer empire from Cambodia to the north (circa 7th century AD). By the 12th century there were major military outposts such as Kamphaeng Phet on the banks of the River Ping, and Sukhothai on the flood plain of the Yom River. These outposts were likely to keep the border stable against incursions from the folks in Burma, but eventually they became powerful entities in their own and sometime in the 13th century the princes declared themselves independent from the Khmer empire, in what is called the Sukhothai period of Thai history, which many consider as the birth of the Kingdom of Siam.

Kamphaeng Phat is found among the woods, which may not have been there when the site was originally established but nowadays give it a certain mystic quality. Most of what can be seen are temples built with laterite bricks, but in some of them you can still see the stucco that covered the brick work, which when painted most have given the site a very impressive aspect. I am sure that many of the low structures seen between the temples were dedicated to the civil administration of the site, with the people living in thatch roof structures in the surrounding area, just as was the case in Mesoamerican sites. 

Sukhothai is beautifully developed with many ponds and green areas, and given its serenity I would not hesitate to call it one of the great religious centers of the world. It is a very large site, so I saw much of it from the hop-on hop-off tram ride I bought (in retrospect, perhaps it would have been better if I had rented a bike to move around it). Once again, what is exposed are laterite brick structures (walls, stupas, colonnades) with a few monumental sculptures of Lord Buddha (the main statues have been removed to the museum in Bangkok). Unfortunately the local museum closed early and I couldn't stroll through it.

Tomorrow I need to head south and get close to Bangkok. I will try to make my approach to the big city slowly and stopping here and there to visit sites of interest. For example, I forgot to say that my first stop today was at one of the many caves, Hup Pa Tat, under the recommendation of my hotel host. The cave part was very short, but it led you to the inside of a deep and very wide sinkhole where a moist microclimate had led to the development of a luxuriant vegetation that climbed toward the light in the form of incredibly tall trees and shrubs that clung to great height on the steep walls of the sinkhole. It was an awesome sight.