Mother and Son Make The World Their Classroom for a School Year: March 16, 2015 (Bangkok, Thailand)

This day started early when Sydney and Austin arrived at the hotel at 2:45 a.m. after a delay in their flight from Tokyo. But a few hours of sleep later they were game and ready to see Bangkok with us.

We arose early, it being Nate’s last day of the trip and only day in Bangkok there was much to see. We started with the Imperial Palace, the former home of the king until the last king who was assasinated there and then the king moved to another home. The palace grounds were unbelievable filled with ornate buildings gilded and covered in glass mosaic and porcelain tiles. There was also the temple that housed the Emerald Buddha, Thailand’s most famous and valuable possession. Each building was so ornately done and colorful. There were funeral rooms where when the king dies the place the body in an urn for a year before it is cremated and then placed in a small urn in a room above the reception hall on the Palace grounds. There were beautiful Buddhist temples and a coronation hall. There were hand painted murals on all the walls telling Hindu stores, which are part of their traditions here.

The country has a constitutional monarchy very similar to England with the king being more of a symbol than a ruler, but still influential and loved by the people. The current ruling political parties have been in conflict and almost like a civil war has broke out here in July last year. The military took over running the government. They hope to have a regular election soon to restore the democratic voting system. We learned that King Rama the 4th was very wise to have had his son taught in the ways of the West and was taught English by the British woman, Anna,, as the films "Anna and the King" have portrayed. When countries were being colonized by Western influences like France and England in the 1800s the king and his western ways and education was able to negotiate and compromise and appease western powers by giving away land and keeping their freedom. Thailand has never been ruled by a foreign power.

The current king is very ill and hospitalized now. If he had been in good health he may have been able to influence the government leaders this past summer and prevented a military takeover, some say. His son who is the crown prince is apparently a bit of a playboy and the daughter that is 60 is very beloved and some think that maybe the next ruler will be a queen. They hope to have an election in the next year to put in a place an elected official and go back to a democracy rather than military rule.

We walked near by to the home of the golden reclining Buddha that was surrounded by other ornately decorated stupas. The golden Buddha is enormous and lies in a hall with beautifully hand painted walls. After we were all very hot and took the van with AC to the waterfront where we walked through the flower market.

This flower market is where all of Bangkok gets their flowers and is open 24 hours a day. There were also fruits and veggies being sold here and just when it was too hot to bare we turned off some side street into a totally nodescript building and had lunch. It was a modern restaurant with great food and a view of the river. Following lunch we hopped in a river boat cruised down the river and through canals and neighborhoods with homes built on stilts and decorated with potted flowers and each having a spirit house our front. We stopped at an artist house, which was like a little commune of arrtists. There were paintings upstairs and a free puppet show downstairs and artists and others drinking coffee and selling their art. It was very charming along the water and we stopped and took in the traditional puppet show. This was different than others we had seen with 3 people wearing black and black masks manipulating a large puppet which allowed the puppet to be more animated and allowed more movement. They reenacted popular Hindu stories of good and evil, similar to the stories we had seen in Bali depicted. We were all entertained. When we were done we were all ready to get back to the hotel and hop in the pool, which is exactly what we did.

The girls were exhausted from 3 hours of sleep and 29 hours of traveling and sightseeing so we left them with Sam and they enjoyed dinner at the hotel while Nate and I hopped in a taxi and headed to Chinatown for his last night in Bangkok. There was street food everywhere. Each kind of food that was being sold had people wearing different colored shirts. The seafood restaurants were set up on the street with waiters wearing red and green shirts. The streets were packed with people eating. Not going to lie, I thought if we eat here we will get sick and the Chinese food looked very authentic, almost too authentic. We hopped in a tuk tuk and headed to the night market, Asiatique, down by the river. It was fun and felt surreal to be riding around the streets of Bangkok with Nate at night. The night market was hopping like it was holiday. We found some street food there that looked good and sat and ate under the large ferris wheel. I was fading and while Nate sampled a few other items I enjoyed watching the people and the movement around me. It was a fun vibe and nice to spend Nate's last night just with him.

Surprise treat by the hotel with oj filled personalized mugs this morning #thoughful

Royal Roundabout

Military procession as we enter the Royal Palace grounds

Wat Phra Kaew, temple of the Emerald Buddha- most valuable possession in Thailand

Royal Palace guards standing watch

Outside the Royal Library

Another temple in the style of the Cambodian Khmer Architectural tradition with the corn cob towers

Golden Stupa

Architecture and details of these royal buildings were mind blowing

Mini model of Angkor Wat, the largest temple in the world and the former center of the Khmer Empire, before the 1300s when Thailand was part of the Khmer Empire, along with Laos, and Burma and Vietnam. Interesting since we were there yesterday and entered on this side of the temple and here we are today in Bangkok at the Royal Palace :)