It is amazing how quickly one can adapt to a new environment, without even realising it. My parents have been to visit me the last week and a bit and their comments about the traffic, the dodgy taxi drivers, the spiciness of the food, the number of kids out and about in the street at all hours of the day and night, and the difficulty in making yourself understood have reminded me of how much I just accept that all these things are part of Bangkok life and they don’t really bother me anymore. In so many ways, Bangkok is so different to Sydney, yet I’m increasingly feeling quite comfortable here. I’m still really only scratching the surface of what this huge and diverse city has to offer, but I’m still enjoying both the challenge and the fun of living here.
It’s been good to catch up with my parents while they are here. The first weekend of their visit we took the bus to Kanchanaburi, which is a few hours west of Bangkok. The old part of Kanchanaburi down beside the river is very nice and relaxed, although quite touristy: the street we stayed on seemed to consist of only guest houses, bars, massage places and travel agents. We stayed in a nice guest house right on the River Kwai. The area is famous for its role in WW2 when a lot of English and Australian (among others) POW’s were forced to build a railway for the Japanese from Thailand to Burma, and tragically over 100,000 people (mostly Asian “workers” - in reality they were more like slaves) died in the process. We visited some of the war-related sites, including the cemetery, a couple of museums and Hellfire Pass. We also did some of the cheesier tourist things like an elephant ride and bamboo rafting. After this my parents went to Cambodia for a few days to see Angkor Wat and then returned for the weekend. We went to the huge weekend market in the north of Bangkok last Saturday and then they headed down the coast on Sunday. They get back to Bangkok tomorrow and then fly back to Australia on Thursday.
Mum, Dad and I on our very adventurous elephant trek.
Mum and Dad steering their bamboo raft down a jungle river.
Konyu Cutting, also known as Hellfire Pass.
The Death Railway - with a lot of tourists hanging out the window to get the obligatory photo.
The Bridge over the River Kwai.
While my parents were in Cambodia, I finally got around to seeing a Muay Thai (Thai kick-boxing) match. It was quite an experience. We had to pay 1000 baht for the privilege of being in the standing section up the back. We could have paid twice that much for ringside seats with the tourists, but now that I and my colleagues are Bangkok locals, we decided to hang up the back with the rest of the locals. However, we still had to pay tourist prices (the local ticket windows were only written in Thai, so we don’t know how much they pay to get in, but I did see one Thai guy hand over 100 baht and get change – some serious discrimination we felt). The other thing that made us westerners stand out was that we couldn’t participate in the constant gambling that was going on all around us. The amazing variety of hand signals that were used to bet on various aspects of the fights were completely beyond our comprehension. It was fairly crowded and with all the activity and buzz going on around us, the atmosphere was quite good.
There is a very elaborate ritual that the fighters go through inside the ring before the match starts.
But once that's over, there's no holding back.
These guys were doing "old-school" Muay Thai with no gloves.
A knee to the head is fair play in Muay Thai...
...as is a kick to the head.
This is the more modern style, with gloves and coloured shorts.
And afterwards, there's hugs all round.
So they have been the highlights from my last few weeks. Work continues to be busy and challenging, but that's fairly boring to write about, so I won't. Cheers!
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