Bangkok, Thailand to Singapore

March 20 – Today we are going into Bangkok. The bus trip to town took about an hour and a half. Our first stop was the Pak-Klong-Talad flower market. The flowers were beautiful. You could buy flowers in bulk by the kilo or in individual bunches. Most were being strung in garlands, necklaces and other shapes and sizes to use for offerings to the various gods in Hinduism (left). There was a booth selling lotus blooms that were not open and looked very plain. I couldn’t figure out what these would be used for until I saw a man folding the green outer sepals under to expose the inner white petals. Then he folded some of the white petals under as well forming a white blossom with a green fringe. These were fastened to a tall green woven dunce cap shaped cone above what appeared to be yellow chrysanthemum-type flowers (right). There are small shrines everywhere and there are always fruit, tea and flower offerings on them.

Among the flower stalls there were also fruit stands and a variety of Thai fast food booths. One was making soup to order. It had boiling broth in a large pot. The broth contains some basic ingredients and it would be scooped out into bowls and then various sauces and additional vegetables added to make the serving. It smelled good. Another booth was frying small bananas and one was grilling chicken (below right) and still another selling dried or fried fish (below right). People were stopping by to pick up flower offerings and then grabbing a bite to eat.

They have a unique form of public transportation here called a tuk-tuk (left behind chicken stand). It’s essentially an elongated, covered three-wheeled motorcycle with a two-person bench back seat in a small pickup truck like bed, driven by a Thai kamikaze pilot. They are named for the motor sounds they produce. It’s very distinctive and you know one is coming before you can see it. You can see several in the picture of the flower market chicken fast food seller. Technically they are taxis but it’s more like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride at Disneyland. They provide a fast, efficient mode of transportation on Bangkok’s often-narrow congested streets.

Our next stop was the Royal Palace. It’s a compound style area with many buildings. The oldest buildings on the property are the Dusit Maha Prasat Hall (the picture below left, the building with the green roof) and the Amarindra Winitchai Hall. King Rama I, formerly Chao Phraya Chakri, built both. He was the Thai army commander that led the successful invasion of Laos to recover the Emerald Buddha in 1778. It was Rama I who moved the capital city to the opposite side of the river and founded Bangkok.

The Dusit Maha Prasat Hall was built by Rama I as a place for his remains to lie-in-state and that is how it is still used today. It is also used during the annual Coronation Day ceremony. The Amarindra Winitchai Hall, one of three buildings that make up the Phra Maha Monthian, was also built in 1785. It holds the throne and is used to celebrate the King’s birthday and anniversary as well as other state occasions. The other two buildings are the Paisal Taksin Hall, which contains the coronation chair and is used for that ceremony, and the Chakraphat Phiman, which was the residence of kings Rama I, II and III. An interesting custom has developed. Each king since then has spent at least one night there after his coronation to signify the taking up of official residence.

If you’ve seen the movie ‘The King and I’ you’ll remember the King’s eldest son Chulalongkorn. Well, he became King Rama V and built the Chakri Maha Prasat (the building on the left with the red roof in the picture above left) completed in 1882 the same year as the centenary celebration of Bangkok. The reception rooms are still used for high-level meetings and parties. Thai soldiers, dressed in white tunics and pith helmets with black trousers and shoes, guard the building. They stand guard exactly like the guards at Buckingham Palace. They don’t more or react no matter what silliness is going on around them. Pretty tough when faced with hoards of pleasure seeking tourists.

The holiest building in the compound, and for that matter Thailand, is the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. Inside the temple is the Emerald Buddha. It was discovered in 1434 in a stupa in Chiang Rai. At that time it was covered in plaster and thought to be an ordinary Buddha statue. Later the abbot that discovered the statue noticed that its nose was flaking and that there was green stone under it. He thought the stone was emerald and thus began the statue’s legend. It is actually carved out of a large block of green jade. The image (right) was taken to several cities in the area until King Chaichettha, who was the son of a Laotian King, was asked to act as King of Thailand because of a void in the royal succession. He agreed to do this but in 1552 he returned to Laos to ascend to the throne of his father. When he left he took the Buddha with him and it remained in Laos until rescued by the future King Rama I in 1778. It has been in Thailand ever since.

There are three interesting buildings on the Upper Terrace. The Phra Siratana Chedi (left), a reliquary shaped like a chedi, entirely covered in gold leaf. The Phra Mondop that contains the Buddhist sacred scriptures within a beautiful mother-of-pearl inlaid cabinet. And lastly, the Royal Pantheon, in which statues of past sovereigns in the Chakri dynasty are enshrined.

The king currently lives in a relatively modern mansion, the Borom Phiman. It was built in 1903 by King Rama V for his son the future King Rama VI. It is still used by the current king, Rama IX.

I’m sorry to go overboard with this, but I find the history of this area fascinating and the buildings are beautiful. My pictures don’t do justice to them.

Next stop was the Shangri La Hotel for lunch. The food was great!! It was served buffet style. They had a salad line, a hot food line, a desert line and (Yippeeeee!!) a sushi and sashimi line!

Well, I couldn’t wait to observe the usual lunch protocol and headed directly to the sushi bar (left). They had several kinds of nigiri type sushi; maguro (tuna), sea bass, tako (octopus), ika (squid) with smelt eggs on top and mackerel (saba). They also had several types of cut rolls, the usual dikon radish, cucumber inside rice and nori (seaweed paper). They had a sort of California Roll, crab and avocado wrapped in nori with the rice on the outside and smelt eggs around the rim. Those were great!! There were several other combo rolls that were ok too. I’m not sure exactly what was in them. If you asked the chef there he made you a little sashimi plate with a variety of fish. The wasabi was very hot, must have been fresh. They also had clams, oysters and mussels on the half shell and extremely large prawns cooked in their shells. They were all excellent.

The hot food line had various curries and other stew type dishes, several meats on the carving table, beef, pork and lamb, different types of vegetables. The curry was great. Some were sweet, others very hot, most were in between and they were all good. At times like this I take a small spoonful of everything I can’t identify because I want to taste it. The grouper curry was the best, lots of flavor and plenty of heat.

The desert table was a combination of fruit and sweets. No chocolate but I didn’t mind as they had lot of exotic stuff to try. We had dragon fruit, jack fruit, coconut tapioca in a half coconut shell and mango. Yikes I was stuffed!

I went out to the hotel pool area to look around. There were people out there eating lunch on their lounge chairs with a bed type tray in front of them. It was a tray with short card table type legs that folded down to let them sun and eat at the same time. I had never seen these before. Nice way to have lunch. There was a whole row of them but I wanted to sneak a picture so I only got the one on the end.

In the lobby of the hotel they had some statues of various Hindu gods with the flower constructions we had seen earlier at the flower market.

Then next stop was at a silk market. I bought a Thai silk tie, grey with very small elephants on it. Next stop a jewelry manufacturer. No buying here, I just took some pictures of the Hindu shrine in the entrance to the parking lot.

After that it was back to the ship. A long, hot, humid day in Thailand with lots of interesting things to see.

March 21 – A short day at sea to recover from two days in Thailand.

March 22 – Today we are docked in Tanjung Gelling, Malaysia. We’re on a short tour this am to soak up some of the local lifestyle. Our first stop is in the city of Gherating at the pandanus weaving center. Pandanus is woven strips of dried palm leaves. A lady there demonstrated the stripping of the leaves and scraping them down to allow them to cure. The strips are then dyed or left natural color and woven into all sorts of products, handbags, placemats, fans and hats for example. Diana bought a fan that was pointed like the spades in a deck of cards. The fan has a curve on the wide part of the shape nearest the handle. It is amazingly efficient at moving air with very little effort. It’s a deep turquoise, red, lavender and natural colored, very pretty.

Our next stop was at a nearby beach for a demonstration of Malaysian kite flying. There was an attractive little resort on the same beach. There must be good surf there as the small village has a surfboard rental office, a restaurant/bar and the resort and that was it. The Malay kite (above right) has a bow shaped structure attached to it that vibrates while the kite is flying and produces a buzzing sound. They’re about 4-5 feet long and have two flat surfaces, a large one shaped like the large Zulu shield near the center of gravity and a smaller crescent shaped one at the bottom. The kite maker flew the kite a little but there was not much of a breeze so it kept coming down. He let us pose for pictures with the kite.

Then it was on to a Malay home for a top spinning demonstration. The Malay top is a metal disk about 8 inches in diameter and about 1 inch thick. It has a small point in the center on the bottom and a 1-¼ inch across, 3/8 inch high grooved disk in the top center. A rope is tightly wound around this small top disk. To make sure the rope is tightly wound it is attached to a tree and the man pulled away from it using his legs and back as he wound the rope (left). When about 5 feet of rope was wound around, almost covering the top surface of the disk he walked over to within about 5 feet of a clay square a little over a foot square. He threw the disk like a Frisbee while holding the rope and it landed on the square spinning furiously. He then took a stick with a rimmed flat surface on it over to the clay square and scooped up the top on the end of the stick. He asked if anyone would like to hold the stick and I said I would. That top was heavy; I’d say at least 11 pounds. I was amazed that he could throw it so accurately. He was not a big man. In fact, I doubt he weighed 100 pounds.

He also had trained a small member of the ape family to climb palm trees and pick coconuts. He only picks the ripe ones and throws them down to the ground. When he has picked all the ripe ones he climbs down and is rewarded with one of the coconuts that has had a hole chopped into it and a straw. Apparently he loves coconut milk, the ape that is. The man then husked the rest of the coconuts and offered us the milk to drink and some of the coconut meat to eat. It was very good. The coconut was a little sweet straight from husk.

Our next stop was at a batik factory. We watched the workers apply the wax outlines to the cloth while others painted or dyed the cloth after the wax outline is applied. Then the cloth is boiled to remove the wax and set the dyes. Since no color will stick to the waxed portion that remains white. There are two methods to apply the wax outlines.

One method is like ink stamping. The man doing that dipped a stamp about a foot square in hot wax and then stamped it on the cloth. The put the stamps right next to one another and then rolled the cloth forward to continue. When he finished another man with a large paintbrush applied the die to the cloth after stretching it on a frame. After drying on the frame the boiling process is started.

The second method is to stretch the cloth on a wooden frame and apply the wax by hand using a pen like implement with a small watering can looking device on the end (left). The girl filled the end with hot wax and then drew the pattern on the cloth freehand. The one she was working on while we were there was a floral design. After the wax cooled another girl was painting in the flowers and leaves with dye (below right). Nearby a man was working on the coloring process of a totally different geometric design. When the dyes dry the boiling process is the same as for the first method.

The second process is much more labor intensive but because it is all hand done many colors can be used. The first method produces a one colored cloth with a white design. The second process produces a many-colored fabric with a white outline. This type cloth is much more expensive than the cloth produced in one color only. I bought 4 yards of a single color cloth in blue to get a shirt made when I get back to the US.

Next we stopped at Tanjung Api, a small fishing village. The boats were very colorful and most seemed to be about 26-36 feet in length. As it was pretty late in the morning the local fish market was just about wrapping up business. There were some fish still available. The have one that they have dubbed the Michael Jackson fish. It’s black on one side and white on the other. I’m not sure they could get away with that in the states. It’s a flat fish like a halibut or flounder and the same general shape.

The ship had packed us each a snack to carry on the bus but we eat so much on the ship that no one had eaten much out of them. They had an orange, apple, granola bar, two pieces of hard candy (Jolly Rancher), a small container of orange juice and a muffin. There were lots of children in the village that seemed quite curious about us but were very shy. Someone wondered aloud about giving the bags to the kids as none of us were going to eat them. The guide, a very nice, petite Muslim lady with excellent English skills, said that that would be nice as the kids have very little in the way of treats. So everyone on the bus piled off again to give their sack away. At first the kids didn’t know exactly what was going on. They accepted the bags shyly without looking into them. After we were mostly back on the bus they started to look inside and the fun began. They were grinning from ear to ear and waving at us vigorously. As the bus pulled out they all began to run toward the village to show their goodies. The guide told us that the local people have a very strong sense of community and that the contents of the bags would be shared among all the children very happily.

After that we visited a Hindu temple in Kuantan (left). It was very ornately decorated, as they all are. Colorful figures abound everywhere outside and inside. We had to take off our shoes to go inside, although ‘inside’ was really just under a roof supported by pillars.

On the way back to the ship we made a photo stop at the local Mosque. It was a large on mainly white accented in a very nice light blue. Then it was all on board to sail to Singapore where we arrive tomorrow.

March 23 – Today we are on the rather strict island of Singapore. To say that they take their laws seriously here is a gross understatement. A taxi driver told me that if you are caught driving illegally in a bus lane or stopping to pick up a passenger at an improper place you do not get a traffic ticket you go to jail for 3 months, six months for the second offence and so on. Double Yikes!! This is the country that was going to publicly cane that kid for writing graffiti on a car. Not that seems eminently logical to me, but jail for minor traffic violations, I’m going to have to think about that.

All that being said, the place is clean, efficient and the people are very friendly. Diana is leaving today for a 6-day overland trip to India to see, among other things, the Taj Mahal in Agra. I’m taking a tour in the morning but am scheduled to be back before she goes to the airport.

The tour started with a trip to Little India. In the Indian section you find a lot of Hindus and other Eastern sects. We went to the market where they sell produce, fruit and flowers (above right). Most of the flowers were for offering purposes just like Bangkok. There were spice shops with very exotic smells. I love Indian cooking and my mouth was watering all morning.

We left Little India and drove to the Chinese section to visit a teahouse, the Tea Chapter, to sample tea. Let me tell you these people take their tea very seriously and based on my experience they definitely know what they are doing. Queen Elizabeth II once visited here for a spot of tea while in Singapore.

First the process involves 3 pots for the table and two cups per person. The first is a regular sized teapot that holds the hot, but not boiling water. The second is a very small teapot into which the tealeaves are placed. The third is an open pot, almost gravy boat like in shape. The tea is poured into this pot after the brewing time to get the water off of the leaves and stop the diffusion process. First the brewed tea is poured into a very small, straight-sided cup for smelling. This is only done for the first pour. After the aroma is properly appreciated, tea is poured into a very small traditionally shaped Chinese teacup (no handle). Tea is then drunk in three sip sets. The cup is kept small so that the tea will always be warm. The aroma cup is not used again.

The amazing thing was the length of time the water was allowed to stay on the leaves. First a small amount of the hot water is poured in the small brewing pot to wash the leaves. This is swished around and then discarded. The brewing pot is then filled with water (above left) and allowed to steep for only 30 seconds before being poured into the serving pot. The leaves can be used for four additional pots full by adding 5 seconds to the brewing time each pot, 35 seconds for the 2nd, 40 for the 3rd, 45 for the 4th. Then those leaves are discarded and the process begins over with the leaf washing.

The tea we were drinking was light oolong. Other varieties of tea use different steeping times, mostly longer. The taste of the tea was amazing. I had to buy some. They believe that if the water is to hot you cook the leaves and ruin the taste. They think if you allow the hot water to be on the leaves too long the taste becomes muddy. Based on this experience, I think they’re right.

Our next stop was at the Sri Mariamman Hindu Temple. It’s the oldest Hindu national monument in Singapore. A wooden structure was built on this site in 1827 and the current structure was finished in 1862. As with all Hindu temples it’s very elaborate and colorful. They are painted every 5 years because the sun and wet weather here fade them rapidly. This one is due to be painted later this year so the colors are more pastel in nature than usual (left). There was a wedding there in the morning and the bride and groom were seated off to one side accepting the gifts and well wishes of their friends and relatives.

Sri Mariamman is a goddess can be traced to the Tamil people of South India where she is a local village deity. She is believed to be responsible for rain and protecting the crops during droughts. There are shrines to 11 additional gods in this temple. The Hindus have about 2,000 gods and the thought of keeping on the right side of that many deities boggles my mind. I have sufficient trouble pleasing just One. The art however is beautiful and very exotic.

Next stop was at the Raffles Hotel in downtown Singapore. It’s named for Sir Stamford Raffles the founder of Singapore. He founded the city and island as a British enclave in 1819 to establish control over the nearby Straits of Malacca a bottleneck in the shipping from Europe to the Spice Islands of the East. With control of this strait the British could extract duties on every shipment of spices to Europe regardless of which country owned the ship, a pretty good deal for the British and Sir Stamford. Singapore has transformed itself into the fourth largest financial center in the world. They have t-shirts here that read, ‘Singapore is a fine city!’ and then it lists all the things you can be fined for and the fine for each. Some of them are hilarious.

We’re having lunch in the Tiffin Room, which dates from the early colonial period. The food was Indian and Asian, curries and vindalus of various types as well as traditional vegetarian dishes (left). They have one that is spinach and home made cheese that I love. It’s very unusual for me to like a dish of this type with no meat. As you know I’m pretty much a carnivore.

After lunch it was back to the ship. Diana was preparing to leave for her overland trip. I helped her pack and went with her to the start of her tour. On her way off the ship Diana mentioned to me that she might not have taken her asthma medication with her. I ran back to the room to look for it and couldn’t find it anywhere so I assumed she had packed it and ran out to the pier to tell them that so they could leave for the airport.

After I returned to the room I was putting away some of my clothing and getting ready for the next day. When I pulled my shorts down from the shelf in the closed Diana’s asthma inhaler came down with them. I immediately went to the front desk to inquire about sending it overnight to her hotel in India. They said that I could probably catch up with her at the airport so I exchanged some US $ for some Singapore dollars and headed out to catch a cab. When I got to the cab stand the line for cabs was very long so I went up to the passenger drop point and asked the security there if I could catch a cab because I had to get some medication to the airport quickly. The lady took pity on me and let me board a cab that was dropping someone off.

I told the cab driver that I needed to get to the airport quickly and he obliged me with a very fast trip. I discovered the biggest bargain in Singapore in the process, a cab ride. The 30-minute cab ride to the airport was on $12.50 Singapore. That’s about $9 US a very good deal indeed. When I got to the airport the Singapore Air counter had a long line of people checking in so I went to the excess baggage payment window for Philippine Airlines. They contacted the manager for Singapore Air and he had Diana paged and I talked to her on the phone. They then had a girl from the airlines take the medication to Diana out at the gate. I was not allowed to go out there and she couldn’t return to the terminal as she had already passed through immigration.

By this time it was too late to return to the ship for dinner so I ate at a Burger King there at the airport. I’ve got to tell you that the Whopper there tasted like they did when I was working at May Company in 1969. I had quit eating them some time ago because they did not taste that good anymore. Here in Singapore they still make them like they did 35 years ago in the US. The cab ride back into town was interesting. I got a very chatty cab driver. He said next time I’m in Singapore I should eat Black Pepper Crab or Chili Crab. I asked where and he said it didn’t matter, anywhere that made it would be good. Now he tells me, the ship is sailing in 2 hours.

I got back to the ship in time to see the show and then back to the room to work on this journal and my pictures.

March 24 – A day at sea to catch up a little. Since Diana is on the overland trip I had dinner with my tablemates and then to the show.

To see the next page of pictures click this 'Older Posts' at the bottom right.


(c) Rod Longenberger - 2005