Impressions

Transportation in Bangkok is easy – lots of taxis and tuk-tuks waiting for you everywhere. Metered taxis were all over and they can be relied on. They also have AC, a very good commodity while spending time in transport jams.  But there are some tips with tuk-tuks – some kind of open carriages for two passengers made from motorcycles.  Everyone needs business. So tuk-tuk drivers are especially annoying – -offering their service on every corner. But be careful with them – you have to talk before and agree on price, you have to let them know how many “crazy’ stores you agree to visit with them and be prepared to breath the polluted street air all the way. By “crazy” stores I mean the following: some stores make an agreement with them – tuk-tuks are supposed to bring customers and in return they get a stamp on their card in order to get free gasoline at some point after acquiring a certain number of stamps.  Usually those are very unpopular stores, like suit stores – who for heavens sake is thinking about an office suit during vacation, let alone us-  who don’t work in offices at all…or they take you to travel agencies, who are the very expensive ones, while there are hundreds around with better prices.  So it makes you  feel uncomfortable to be pushed into a store you are complete;y not interested in, and to pretend you are. Otherwise -the driver doesn’t get the stamp… Also – they are very small vehicles  for people like us – hard to get in and out. So as you see – I am not a fan of them. Very often they catch you in the street while you are looking at your map, pretending they are some guy who knows the city and is willing to give advices. Try to avoid them, just simply walk away. because those ones are the most desperate. They offer you a super cheap price, then during the trip they mention that in reality the price is bigger and then they drop you somewhere, creating an unpleasant feeling – so better to rely on your feet and just go. Which would be not as bad if the blisters didn’t develop at once…or if the motorcycles were driving only streets not the side walks…or if the sidewalks were not densely covered with tables and goods for sale. But you can find your ways, I did, I walked a lot. To the extent,  that sometimes I had to buy different slippers on my way – to get blisters on different toes.  And it is my way of getting in touch with life there more. A tip for walkers – you can’t look up or to the sides, only down – the sidewalks are very uneven, steps, cracks, anything can get you in trouble…Once while climbing some steps and almost cursing them – so narrow, so close to transportation brushing to your side – here I see two men carrying a casket draped in green silk…and also climbing those narrow steps, etc…Life.

Speaking about transportation – river!  it is booming with boats, shooting and roaring back and forth, across, sideways. never bumping each other, very skilled drivers. as well as the ones on roads. As I like analyzing maps I figured out that we can take a public boat from Shangri La hotel to Phra-Atit road, where we were heading to spend the next three nights – the backpackers – hippie area. The river is very wide and very full of dirty water. it was a good experience to use that boat and see the temples on the banks and the city from it while paying only the “bus” ticket. After that trip we lost any interest in going on an excursion  boat trip in the river and canals – the water is so dirty and when it splashes on you – you want to sanitize…On the other hand  – they push those boat trips all over in an annoying way and they are priced  so inadequately.

Here is the Temple of Dawn – Tha Wat Arun. That boat stops in lots of places and is really comfortable for visiting several temples and places on the way. Therefore it is very popular among residents. The price – 13 bt.  per ride. But if you want to get to this particular temple – you have to get out on the other side of the river  – the stop is only there and take another boat, which takes you across the river for 3 bt. They have their system .

Here is how it looks like – people are allowed to climb to a certain height up the very steep stairs.  But that day it was so hot, we preferred to stay in the back of it in the shades of big trees with exotic flowers coming out of their stems at the bottom:

and enjoying the surrounding buildings:

But that happened the next day. The day we moved – we had our backpacks with us. So directly to The New Merry V hotel in the hippie area.  Or as they know it there – the Khao San Road area. It is well known for its cozy atmosphere, like a tourist  friendly village. Little streets with many restaurants, hotels, massage places and, of course,- tables with goods and foods, and still many cars and motorcycles trying to pass those narrow streets, but no accidents. I took pics of the area at the end of the trip, they will be there, keep on reading .

This area is a walking distance to University, Kings palace, to lots of big temples, so we figured it is better for us to investigate the city from there.

The Big standing Buddha and temples around him:

There are carpets in teh temples and everyone is supposed to take off shoes and kneel or sit on the carpet. And to bring a lotus, flower leis,  incense or money to Buddha. Sometimes they sell a bunch for 20 bt. – several sticks of incense, two candles, a lotus and a little paper slip with very thin gold foil to be glued to Buddha’s body or toe. Wherever everyone else  is gluing those foils onto.

Here is a woman – evidently she has a very important wish! They sell little cages, even smaller than this with a lot of birds inside…for 100 bt. – you buy and save the birds lives, let them out for your wish to be fulfilled…but monks don’t support this cruel practice of easy money… Interesting philosophy – Buddhism as if teaches to dis attach from your wishes and desires…While there we mostly noticed people sacrificing, giving offers and visiting the temples mostly for the reason for their wishes to be fulfilled…But maybe it is a very wrong assumption from my side – ha, what do I know having visited it for so short and having no person with good English to explain me what is going on…

But this I can say for sure-  they seem to be deeply religious, very sincerely, from their hearts. And that makes a really safe country to visit with a very tolerant atmosphere for us,” farengas” or whatever they call us. And it makes a difference while you travel – not to be afraid of thieves, to trust their word, etc.

Those decorations are incredible, I bend my head…it maybe not our taste, but the detail, the creativity, the imagination they have – I am humbled…

In another temple we walked around and found a viharn – monks’ area, they live there and maybe meditate:

each temple also has a set of chedis – they remind me of a cemetery with fancy tombs. Some of them are used as tombs where the ashes of well known monks are buried. But some, as i heard from one excursion leader who spoke Russian, are just built in honor of some kings, their relatives, well known monks. Maybe it is not so simple to understand it in our way – as we are used to understand tomb-like structures built around churches.

Here I feel like I am in the Land of White!

Those ones are built in quite a different style.

The next day we visited Wat Po – the temple of reclining Buddha – it is a very impressive and important temple -it is considered, that Buddha lied down and there and then he reached the  Nirvana.  Wat Po is next to the Grand Palace and can be recognized by a lot of buses parked by its side.

And here is the reclining golden Buddha and its toes and feet all encrusted with the sea shell- mother of pearl:

Hard to understand how it is – well, it was hard to get him all into one picture. One of  the temples is built around this very big and long golden Buddha…

here are the big rectangular bottoms of his feet…

(to be continued)

Here we are back from Thailand, getting rested at last, and I am starting to recover the trip by writing the Blog!  Before going we got advices from friends – it wasn’t enough. We did mistakes and it made the beginning of the trip not so wonderful as it could be. So as usual  -I will give lots of advices for those who plan to visit the country, along with my impressions.

The first impression- a very very long trip to BKK.  2.5 hours from us to Las Vegas, a night there, 1 h. to LA, 12 h. to Tokyo, 7 h. to Bangkok, 45 min to hotel.  And some waits in between – usually the waits happened while we were already packed into airplanes – to the misfortune of my long legs… The last part from tokyo to BKK was the easiest – for when the body is so tired, it collapses. I don’t remember that part . Except that once in BKK you have to gather yourself, look good and go through a very serious passport control. We get entry for only a month. They don’t want us longer there. Well, there is one way I figured, though I didn’t need it this time, but who knows… If you volunteer teaching English to the monks – then they give a 6 months visa. So I wonder how those Lithuanians who are writing to delfi.lt managed to the whole 6 months over there. Maybe that or crossing borders every month to neighboring countries (I wouldn’t like it).

The night we got there we took a metered pink color taxi to our reserved Silom City Hotel – I can recommend it to anyone. It is located in a very narrow street, as lots of streets are there,(amazing how the regular size sedan cars can drive there), and therefore looks small, but it is tall. And has one of the  most beautiful little temples by its side – for good luck and to have a place to collect peoples offerings for, I guess,  monks?  Maybe just Buddha. Who knows.

Those little temples are at every hotel, only the larger the hotel – the smaller the temple . Usually theyare on a leg – to be taller and surrounded by fence, staircase, flowers, waterlilies in pots. They have so many details, that you can’t even keep attention and notice differences.

Those are the houses on the opposite side of the hotel.  Having in mind their climate-  people’s energy to grow flowers in balconies exhausts at their temples…

To finish the talk about our hotel  – it had Wi-Fi in the rooms, it had a buffet type breakfast, it had this view from our 9th floor, yes, but it wasn’t much pleasure staring at the city – so hot and humid…hard to describe. While outside – you are totally wet, the skin is always covered with some slime – like snail’s…Hard to walk, to be interested in things, hard to enjoy. But after several days you get used to it, at least a little.  I didn’t notice too much pollution in the air except the regular one-  lots of cars, motorcycles  -what can you expect…

But the room was cool and nice, the bed huge – especially comfortable to get a Thai massage from hotel’s masseuse. They stretch you and turn you and stand on your muscles – it was convenient for the girl, too.  Notice the national Thai scarf on the edge – you get introduced  into their world of colors, patterns and fabrics starting from the hotel already…

And here are the hotels that we didn’t stay at:

Orchids everywhere – starting from the airport. They are in beautiful vases, they are just hanging from poles or on trees with their roots in the air – and blooming in full swing! I wish I could get some of their liveliness!

Note: there are lotus flowers floating in the pond below.  So those big and fancy hotels are located by the river and I remember two of them by name – Oriental and Shangri La. Ruth told us to visit them and see where rich people enjoy life.

There is a pier by one of those hotels and the boat that looks like a house is carrying visitors from one fancy hotel on one side of the river to the other fancy hotel on the other side of the river, for having meals at different restaurants, or so we were told.

Some kind of trade house on the way to Oriental. This is a very typical roof for temples and I see now a lot of it in my pics. But this one was the first we saw and it was fun!  It also shows the wires…they look like that everywhere and I hope someone understands their order.

This is a very special Erawan Shrine – San Phra Phrom. It is built by a three story busy street, lots of tall buildings around, very noisy and congested, very polluted place. But it is magic to Thais. To my eyes – it is not a even real temple, looks like one of those small ones by hotels with a busy yard around it – except that it has a four faced Buddha. But monies are flowing like a river there – everyone is buying flower leis, candles, incense – as you can see lots of leis are on the fence surrounding Buddha. They all are placed for some wish to be fulfilled. And – it does magics. The wishes always get fulfilled! And in gratitude you have to return, pay some money to the cashier and have the special dancers dance for the joy of your fulfilled wish! Like this man did.

(to be continued)

Yes, I know, it was long overdue…But I was busy with garden work lately, then some house work , while in November-December I visited my country Lithuania, so there were no blogs. the weather is too Grey there at that time, can’t get good pictures.

But here are some pics from Vegas – we visited it during Christmas time and the highlights of the visit was contemporary architecture and interiors. I never get tired of seeing what is constantly created and built in that sin city, which doesn’t bother us for its sins or crowds. We almost never gamble, we pass the casinos as if regular streets with some nice stores on both sides, and we head towards where new things have emerged. What makes it amazing is that they don’t save on materials, on ideas, they let their architects go wild.  Also – the speed in which they demolish the old hotels and build new ones in their place.  You come in several years-  and won’t recognize the Strip, it is like a new city. So here it is  – the City Center  -which is a complex of casinos and hotels with all their satellites – fancy restaurants, hotels, passages, entrance spaces, fountains, flowers and decorations:

There are real cacti  planted in between those pyramids, poor guys…

The entrance: they made two spitting  fountains with their spitted portions of water colliding in the air – and at that very moment a colorful light flashes on them making it look very spectacular,  different colors each time.

It seems the yellow stone on the floor is Jasper…I have a pendant made of it , no so dirty cheap. So how much could those floors be worth, not even speaking about the design.  And yes, the walls on the sides are leaning, it is not some optical effect.

I know that my brother architect would say those are crazy decors, but they were decorating the desert bar, what else can one want. They look very happy to me, especially now, when I am no longer eating deserts.

Andrei in the same pyramid hall we liked so much. But his pic shows more of the ceiling design.

Here we went for dinner at a Spanish restaurant:

These are the tapas we got there. Beautiful, very tasty, but for people like us – not much food .

Still I felt pretty happy there:

And Andrei was, too:

And here are the fountains dripping in waves from a special wall by the entrance to this building:

We stayed in MGM hotel and to my biggest astonishment – they gave us a very contemporary style room, that I never suspected they had in MGM, though a very tiny one:

It is a pity I didn’t take a picture of the bathroom mirror – it had two rectangular windows without the shiny substance in the back of it – one was a light installed directly in the mirror, the other – a TV. You brush your teeth – and watch Larry King with some Zoo man discussing and petting exotic animals…

Then we saw some usual Christmas decorations in Bellagio – more for a tradition than for a big amusement. But still  – it looks festive:

Have in mind that the whole body of this bear is covered from carnations…

Here is a pool full of cranberries in Palazzo:

So much for the Christmas decorations…

This is Las Vegas hospital -it  has a pyramid almost as Louvre does .

And finally – the biggest impression – when we drove into Vegas, still from the highway I noticed a pile of metal that reminded of the sad remnants of New York’s Twin tower after it burned… a little further from the road, behind the World Market building.  It looked so strange that we drove there on the way home – and it was too unusual…evidently it is not a pile of metal. But a modern building, still not completely finished but already has a function applied to it – so please sit down – it is a Cleveland branch of  Brain Institute!..

I bet that people with brain problems will not get disturbed by this “creation”, and I bet doctors will find it easier to concentrate on brain problems there more that on the curly walls of their offices… To think of it…

Maybe it is not the time to write about summer, but this cold weather front that came upon us these days made me remember “the good days” – actually the end of July day in the Little Cottonwood Canyon by Salt Lake City. The Alta ski resort is in that canyon and while the snow was still not covering the slopes, which was for only 3-4 months, there was a splash of blooming flowers in between luscious forests!

You have to pass Alta going up till you reach dirt road and an entrance to a  State Park – there is the flower kingdom, which spends most of the time under snow and the fast skiers. By the height of the signs for skiers you can only imagine how much snow gets dumped into this valley. But in summer the flowers show their best:

And here are some more pics from that canyon, where there are several hikes, some longer, some shorter. We took the shortest one, to the Cecret  Lake. It is going through tall pines with meadows around them and then hiking up to the Alpine meadows, no trees and here it is the lake – blueish-green,  clear, but no secret :

There was also a waterfall on the way – kind of on the side of the way:

At this point I have to explain why the pics are sooooo small. I don’t expect everyone to be so sharp eyed, I myself have a hard time looking into such a size. But life tends to always go towards worse…Why is that? (it is a philosophical question…). The company which created WordPress tends to update and improve its program versions to this one which stopped doing what it is supposed to do. So here I am  – stuck with two possibilities that the program permits me to do – not to publish my blogs with pics any more or publish with such small ones. So I chose the second one.

I will search for ways to do something about it, but for  even my brilliant minded computerist husband couldn’t figure anything better. So it goes…I wish companies stopped improving programs that are good enough. But maybe in that way they keep their employees on payroll…

Here are some more very tiny glipses at the beautiful and wide and big views we were lucky to see:

On the same trip we had a chance to visit the Bear lake  – on the boundary between Utah and Wyoming. This creature by the lake was particularly cute:

What we didn’t like about the lake was that people are so indifferent to their nature…they are driving cars in the lake, in its pristine waters , leaving oils and trash in it. It is painful, I should say.

I know I am late with my blogging about this hike, but the views were good, the trail was even better – so I still decided to share. It all started as usual  – Adrian sent a message about the coming hike and several individuals as well as their dogs decided to celebrate Easter by challenging their muscles and getting more in touch with nature.

We drove Kolob Terrace Road to the first top valley and parked the cars by a sandy path on the right, leading through the fields towards very pretty looking rocks:

Upon reaching the rocks we climbed up on a path done at some point by Mr. Lee who owns the land and lots of lands around. He has done it for his cows to lead them from one valley to another. As if someone mentioned that he had to blast the path in the rocks:

I wonder if the poor cows see the beauty around them or they just are sad of the lack of food in this desert…

Then we descended down to the valley downstairs and walked along a stream:

The dogs had a blast in that stream , especially in the bath tubs which were supposed for the cows to drink…

Not long after this dam we had to climb up – literally, on a steep slope on a slick rock:

The view on my stop to catch a breath:

There on the top there was a surprise – I love surprises and who doesn’t. It was a pond with water and swamp plants in it:

We had our lunch here and the dogs had their fun. the view to the other side, the one we started from:

That is it, we went down with no adventures. The celebration was over, life is simple.