This morning, we checked out of one of the world’s finest hotels (if I and numerous rankings are any judge): The Mandarin Oriental in Bangkok. Aside from seeing glimpses of my mom’s former life and showing my dad around, the highlight of our time in Bangkok has to be staying at the Oriental. Before we picked my parents up from the airport several days ago, Joylani and I swung by the prestigious hotel to drop our bags and check-in if possible. We walked up the manicured driveway with our backpacks (still with the reddish tinge they acquired in dusty Ban Lung), past the security booth and past the valets. Just before we made it through the doors, which were being manned by costumed men, a man in a suit with a phone cord coming out of his ear, asked us if he could help us. We said we were here to check in. He asked if we had a reservation. When we replied in the affirmative, bell boys quickly appeared and took our packs. Besides trying to convince the gentleman that we would be guests at their fine establishment, it was awkward giving up our bags. I mean for nearly the past 8 months, we’ve rarely taken our eyes of our bags, much less voluntarily given them to someone. We were in a state of shock for the first few minutes after we arrived: bell boys to carry our stuff, fresh flowers and juice upon check-in. Once in our room on the 15^th floor, I flung open the curtains and we both laughed in disbelief at the unbelievable view. The call button for the butler (next to the bed) and plate of fruit were nice add-ons to a stellar room, with an amazing bed and bathroom. Life was different.

Besides enjoy the hotel, we spent most of our time in Bangkok sightseeing. Jetlagged, my parents slept most of their first evening in Bangkok. Day two was spent sightseeing with one of my mom’s old friends. Day Three was a marathon day, which included plenty of transport in my mom’s beloved river taxis and my dad’s first ride in a tuk-tuk. Yesterday, was a relaxing day spent at the hotel. Although we just stayed at the hotel yesterday, I think everyone’s had a good time here in Bangkok. For Joylani and I, it was awesome to see my parents and relaxing to stay at such a nice place. My mom has been pretty jubilant since they arrived and its interesting to hear all her stories and comments on the Bangkok of today and yesteryear. I think my dad is having a good time too- he gets to be a follower on a vacation for once, instead of the planner and director. Smoking his cigars and enjoying my mom’s excitement, while seeing a new place seem okay to him. Its been an awesome few days here and I’m looking forward to the rest of our time with my parents, but its almost sad that a third of the trip is over.

my mom visiting her old haunts

my dad enjoying new Thai experiences, like tuk-tuks

Joylani enjoying the luxuries of The Oriental

and I’m up top enjoying some mangoes and sticky rice

I must say, not that I ever thought otherwise, but staying in a “real” hotel is quite lovely.  I’m glad they let us in the other day without a hassle, Matt mentioned our dusty backpacks, but we also were lugging a black garbage bag stuffed with trekking gear.  Everything here is gorgeous, the room is absolutely amazing, there’s a floor butler, fresh fruit and orchid in our room, and an amazing breakfast buffet.  The bed is soft and fluffy and covered with pillows. 

On top of all the perks, in the morning we have a wonderful maid who does up our room.  We return in the afternoon to find all our little junks (pens, accessories, clothes) that had earlier been strewn around the room and on the desk top are now positioned in pleasing arrangements.  It’s like having Dwight Shrute for a maid. 

We finally visited the Grand Palace compound today.  I didn’t think it would be that much different form the other ones we’ve seen so far, maybe bigger.  So I was happily suprised by its practically immaculate state.  Things seemed to be restored and well taken care of.  One of the most impressive sights inside the compound was this mural that ran along one of the wall of an inner courtyard.

(this pic courtesy of Rob Shibata)
I think some restoration work had just been completed and the gold highlights on the mural were great.

Mostly we just walked around and gaped at the usual glitz and glimmer of tiles and mosaics with some other fun components thrown in.  Even though some of it borders on gaudy, overall the look is still tasteful.  It was just cool to see whole huge structures decked out in tiles and shiny things.

Jolly stone guards guarded entrances

And delicately patterned tiles adorned the walls.

We met my parents Suvarnabhumi Airport, in Bangkok, today. After the Valentines Day rush (my Dad is in the flower business), my parents hopped on a redeye to Bangkok. Besides coming to visit us, they’re celebrating an early thirtieth wedding anniversary (real one is in June) and its my mom’s long awaited return to Bangkok and Thailand, where she taught English for two years, thirty years ago. For Joylani and I, it’ll be awesome to see and spend time with them. Additionally, it’ll be a bit of a break from the backpacker life for us, since they’re treating us to a couple weeks of travel. Needless to say, their standards are bit higher than ours, so we’ll be rolling in style for the next couple of weeks. Although they are some of the last people we saw (July, in Paris), it’s been nearly seven months since we’ve seen them. It was great to see them today, although they were both understandably tired. We had a nice lunch and then my Dad crashed for the night. We walked around with my Mom a bit before taking the SkyTrain over to Siam Square. It was interesting to hear her perspective on the city, which so far is: most of the city looks much the same, but there weren’t skyscrapers everywhere and its way more commercialized now. After our little excursion, we headed back to the hotel, where my Mom stayed for the rest of the night. With my parents catching up on jet lag, Joylani and I enjoyed our unbelievable hotel room at the Oriental, which may warrant its own post at some point. Like nearly every night for the past seven months, we went out for dinner and I followed Joylani around a market for a while, while she looked at clothes (Joylani asks that I clarify the “every night” refers to going out to eat, not following her around shopping . Now back at the hotel, we’ll enjoy the night and look forward to hanging out with my rested parents tomorrow.

postnote: as the photo of the day can attest, the view from our current room is substantially better than its been in awhile…

Grrrrr.

I’ve discovered the joys of chicken sticks, sticky rice, and baby tigers. We came to Kanchanaburi for a few days before heading back to Bangkok to meet Matt’s parents. While the WWII museums have been interesting, my highlight was playing with baby tigers. I opted to not take pictures with the big ones because they wouldn’t let Matt and I go in together, was hot from standing in line, and frustrated from a few things, one of whom was a fat and hairy tourist who refused to be a civilized person and wait in line. (It wasn’t like India where the way is do what you can to get served because there is no line. There was obviously a line.) After Matt was done with the big cats, we decided to walk around the compound instead of waiting in the parking lot for our truck to leave. This was a great decision. We saw a couple staff helping visitors hold baby tigers. We walked up, just to watch, but then got offered a cub.

It filled my arms; being a tiger, the size of the cub was more like a puppy than a cat. It was so much fun to look into their sweet little faces, more curious than ferocious. After taking turns holding the cubs, we were ushered to an enclosed area since the big tigers were being brought up the hill to their normal cages. This meant we had 20 wonderful minutes to play with the cubs. There were only about 15 other visitors in their with us. We sat in a circle on the ground and let the tigers walk around. One climbed into my lap, followed by his brother.

(it’s a little blurry because it was dusk and we couldn’t use the flash and they kept moving)

Luckily for me, they seemed to like it there and stayed for a while. One took a liking, er licking, to Matt’s knee. A lady commented on how he must be an animal lover, “They [the animals] can just sense these things.” For those of you who know Matt, you know what an animal lover he is…

The cub finds Matt’s knee…

mmm…salty!

After the big tigers were back in their cages, it was feeding time for the other animals. Bunches of bananas and veggies were strewn about the path, and heard of boars, buffalos, and other funny creatures came stampeding from around the compound to get a bite to eat.

It was a little tricky walking back out to the parking lot, but luckily we made it ok. I don’t really know how ethical/realistic the whole place is, particularly with the tigers. I mean, with so much human contact since birth, I don’t see how any of the tigers could be released back into the wild. There is no “back,” they were raised in captivity and allowed to play with tourists for goodness sakes. The admission fees are supposedly going to fund building of better tiger facilities though, so we’ll see what happens in the future. Any animal activists out there have any thoughts on this?

And no one says anything about the boars. What about releasing them back to the wild? (The story on the boars is that the monks cared for an injured boar, and after it was released it returned a few days later…with its whole family! They must like getting all those bananas. It’s got to be hard for a boar to get bananas in the wild.) I mean, when I get food I like, its hard for me to go back to the wild too…I mean back on the road. You see, the other wonderful thing we’ve been enjoying for the last few days are these flavorful bbq chicken sticks from a stall the rolls up right outside our soi in front of 7-11. I’ve seen similar stalls in Bangkok and all, but I never really thought they looked too appetizing before. Until I got a whiff of un-polluted bbq aroma. We bought a bag our first day here, and each day after (except for one day when she ran out before we got there…)

Feasting on our favorites: bbq chicken, sticky rice, beer, REALLY yummy crunchy wafer cookies, and deliciously juicy oranges. I think I had a coke too. Thank goodness for 7-11 and street food.

Yesterday was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. We visited Wat Pa Luangta Bua Yannasampanno Forest Monastery, also known as the Tiger Temple. What began as caring for an injured boar, led to the monastery welcoming all sorts of local animals. In 1999, they accepted a tiger cub which was saved from being stuffed. Since then, several tigers that have been intercepted from poachers have been brought for sanctuary. Today the temple houses many full-grown tigers and they are bred for eventual reentry into the wild. In the afternoons, the tigers are let out of their enclosures for their “exercise time.” Their collars were attached to chains several meters long, so they didn’t look to be getting much exercise, but they sat around for all the tourists. The place was definitely a tourist trap with high prices and lots of special things you could pay extra for. Nonetheless, its not everyday that you get to touch tigers, so we stood in an incredibly long line for our turn to get near the tigers and take some photos. The tigers have several-meter long chains and all tourists are guided around the area as only one person is allowed around near a tiger at a time. I was still quite a bit anxious about being next, much less touching tigers many times my size and weight. They were pretty docile though, which probably accounts for the rumor on the backpacker circuit that the animals are doped (the monastery says they have been brought up by humans since they were kittens, so they’re used to human contact). I did hear there was once an “incident” between a tiger and a water buffalo at the monastery though. Some of the tigers were enormous and touching them was intimidating. Their thin and short coat of fur wasn’t at all what I was expecting.

As we were leaving, Joylani and I decided to explore a bit more and discovered a couple staff members letting about a dozen tourists play with two eight-week-old tiger cubs. Right after we got there, they closed off the area as nobody is allowed in any open areas while the grown tigers are walked back to their enclosures. So it was just us and few others to play with the cubs. For twenty or thirty minutes, we sat in a circle and let the cubs walk around. We were told not to keep the cubs and let them walk where they want, which worked out for us, because they walked to Joylani’s lap and loved it there. They stayed with her, not wanting to leave. One did bite my hand, which didn’t really hurt since their jaws aren’t all that strong yet. The other licked my knee for a few minutes, between gnawing it and trying to get its jaws around it. So I guess besides seeing tigers, I can joke that I’ve been bit by one too now In all seriousness, seeing and touching the tigers was a real highlight.

what you don’t see in the other pics is the five million volunteers escorting us…

We’ve visited three WWII museums in the past 24 hours. Kind of a lot considering Kanchanaburi is a relatively small place. Not so many considering that tens of thousands of people died under the Japanese Imperial Army here between 1942 and 1945. Kanchanaburi is famous for the being the site of the bridge made famous in the movie “Bridge over the River Kwai.” More important than the bridge, Kanchanaburi was the headquarters and an important stop along the Thailand-Burma railway, today known as the Death Railway. Burma was the only theater that the Allies lost during the war (the others being the Pacific, Western Front, Eastern Front, and North Africa) and consequently its rarely taught in schools. Therefore, I’ll provide some historical background as always Although Americans are familiar with Pearl Harbor, it was just a small part of a much larger Japanese surprise offensive. On that same day, the Japanese attacked and overran British, French, and Australian colonial forces across Asia and the Pacific, from Hong Kong all the way down to Singapore. With East Asia under their control for ten years already, they took the whole of South East Asia within two months. By February, Japan had consolidated power from Indonesia to Burma. In those days, Burma was part of the British India, so Japan began moving troops to the Burmese front in order to launch a fresh offensive against the British into India, and also to cut the supply chain of Allied war materials to resistance forces throughout China (which went via Burma as the Himalayas were too big a transportation barrier). Also, the Japanese began shipping raw materials from Burma to industrial centers for processing. So Japan was shipping troops to Burma and raw materials on the way back.

Despite having conquered all of SEA, Japan’s ships were extremely vulnerable as they passed through the Malacca Straits. It is the only place for ships to pass from the Andaman Sea to the Gulf of Thailand and even today oil tankers are frequently attacked by pirates here. Anyways, American subs were sinking Japanese ships at an alarming rate in the Straits. So Japan planned to build a railway from Burma to Thailand, a railway that could deploy troops to the front and materials all the way to Bangkok. The British had once considered such a project, but abandoned it for being unfeasible. With its recent victories, Japan now had tens of thousands of Allied POWs and hundreds of thousands of Thais, Malays, and Tamils at its disposal. In 1942, Japan began shipping prisoners to camps throughout Burma and Thailand. In all, 61,000 Allied troops worked on the railway. An estimated 200,000 Asians were also conscripted to work. The museums we visited dealt with the hells that the POWs had to live through. The Japanese were slave drivers in their rush to complete the railway. I obviously cannot communicate in one post all the information that the museum conveyed, but it was horrific. Many of the photos we saw showed the POWs as little more than skeletons, their bodies wasted away from malaria, cholera, dysentery, and simple malnutrition. Latrines overflowed, barracks were incomplete, medical care was absent, and the little food was rotten and maggot-filled. The stories of sadistic Japanese guards beating prisoners, using various torture methods, and murdering men for the slightest offenses are saddening. Of the over 60,000 POWs that worked on the railroad, over 15,000 died, mostly British, Dutch, and Australians (only 131 Americans died). Records of Asian workers’ deaths were not kept, but it is estimated to be around 100,000 (although I never really trust estimates that happen to be convenient big round numbers). The museums all had war relics from both sides, stories from both sides, and gifts from each side. Back to the bridge, the famous “Bridge over the River Kwai” was just one of 8 steel bridges along the rail line. The Allies bombed it, using a new technology called Azon, which were the first radio-controlled bombs. Not so well known is the fact that when the Japanese saw the bombers coming, they ordered all the nearby POWs onto the bridge in hopes that a bombing would be averted. Dozens of men died when the bomb hit and locals said the river turned red with blood.

the bridge today

We visited the bridge which is a tourist attraction now, although two trains a day still cross it (Thailand repaired the bridge following the war). Its such a peaceful place now. We also visited an Allied POW cemetery honoring and holding the bodies of thousands who perished building the railway. In the past month or so, we’ve seen the atrocities of three wars and its all very sobering. Learning about the US’ Secret War in Lao, seeing the horrors of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and now remembering the inhumanity of World War II. Although depressing, I am thankful to be learning about all these things. These events need to be learned and remembered. Perhaps I cannot prevent them when they occur in the future, but I feel that they provide me more and more insight into mankind.