When Irish eyes are smiling

Top o’ the mornin’ to yah!

Well the great plan of doing 2 blogs from Dublin to cut down on the amount of rambling per blog pretty much flew out the window due to laziness.  I really like Ireland and have learned a ton about the place I never knew before probably due to that laziness we were just talking about.  It really made it difficult to try to find the right line to walk writing this one because I could easily turn this into a ginormous history of Ireland thing with a few “oh and look at this pretty place” pictures and I don’t think I want to do that.  So instead I am going to try to throw out a few things I never knew before without going into details about things like the 1916 rebellion they are celebrating the 100^th anniversary of or try to remember all the dates that things happened throughout Ireland’s history.  I am going to try to self-censor, but I will probably go down some side paths along the way so if I start to bore you, let me know (or not…too late, it’s already written).  One thing to note, most of what I will be writing is based off the various tour guides stories and as all of them have admitted: they don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.  So caveat emptor on any of these “facts”.

I started out Sunday feeling better after the flights and the food poisoning so after a good, super overpriced breakfast at the hotel, I figured I would do the hop on hop off bus and start with checking out Kilmainham Gaol (it’s a jail).  Not only is it the #1 “thing to do” according to tripadvisor, Pam Moore gave it her seal of approval!  The bus costs 22 Euro (1.2E to 1USD exchange rate if you wanted to know) for all day and while you can pay the driver, I only had 50E bills and he didn’t have change.  He let me on anyway.  We passed quite a few cool places including St Patrick’s Cathedral (yes THAT Patrick…the one with the day) that is built next to the well where Pat supposedly converted the heathens to Christianity.  One thing I didn’t know: Jonathan Swift, of Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal fame, was the Dean at St. Patrick’s back in the day.  Heck, I didn’t even know he was Irish!

When we got to the gaol, I got off without paying since he still didn’t have change with the thought I would pay the next bus dude who hopefully would have that change.  What I didn’t know, until I read the note on the door, the gaol was closed until 1 (it was 9:30ish at the time) and for that afternoon, special dignitaries and invitees only were allowed in.  Crap.

The gaol is about the farthest thing from me on that tour and the tour busses are 20 minutes apart so I decided screw the hop on hop off, I would just walk back and wander through Dublin sort of doing a walking version of the hop on bus…sort of.  I went up to Phoenix Park which is >1500 acres and the largest “within a city” park in Europe.  Heck, I need to stop fact checking via the internets…it’s “one of the largest” as compared to THE largest.  What really drew me up there was a huge obelisk that could be seen from the gaol which turned out to be a monument to the Duke of Wellington (the one who beat Napoleon at Waterloo) who was also Irish.  Another I didn’t know.  To be fair, he wasn’t all that down with being Irish according to the various guides throughout my stay, but yet again, the one quote attributed to him (just because you are born in a barn does not make you a horse) isn’t his according to Wikipedia…which admittedly also isn’t that reliable.  The park also houses the zoo (didn’t even go there) and a gardens which was really nice to walk through.

 

The Wellington monument.  You can see it from all over the city

Flowers (tulips, I believe) in the garden in the park.  Really a nice walk

After that, I headed around down to the quays (pronounced keys, btw) and started back towards city center.  I was keeping an eye on the time because on Sunday, alcohol sales are not allowed until 12 or 12:30 which includes tours like the Jameson distillery and I was going to be going right past it on the way back to my hotel.  I actually hit it around 11:20 but since the tour lasts around an hour, I figured I would be good to go once it was done.  I actually didn’t get into a tour until the noon one but it was good that I was that early because by the time my tour was done, there was a 2 hour wait for the next free tour. 

The Jameson distillery is on the site of the original, but they no longer make it there.  Instead they moved their operations to Limerick.  The tour goes through a bit of history and then tells how they make their whiskey.  They are one of the few distillers that triple distill their whiskey (I was going to “educate” on distilling, but I think you can look that up rather than me making this even longer).  Part of the tour had us tasting their 5 year old, the most popular scotch in the world (Johnny Walker, 2x distilled) and the most popular American whiskey in the world (JD, 1X distilled).  To be fair, Jack Daniels sort of sucks anyway, but you could definitely tell the difference the distillations make as far as smoothness goes.  I don’t think I have ever had Jameson before on its own and it was pretty good!  These were all thimble sized samples, but you get a full ounce (at least) at the end of the tour too.  It was a good tour, learned some stuff and the guide we had was pretty good.  Matter of fact, he was giving me crap about my KU pullover I was wearing before whipping out his badge and showing a KU sticker on it and throwing out “Rock Chalk”.  Some ESPN reporter I had never heard of was there about 5 years ago with some buddies and they were touring Europe with about 1000 KU stickers they planned on sticking everywhere they went including the back of this guy’s badge.  We’re everywhere!

 

The guide talking about the triple distilling they do at Jameson

Rock Chalk Jayhawk

After that I had lunch at the Dublin version of Chipotle (I didn’t know…just saw they had burritos…but it was the same assembly line).  Not the same name and they didn’t have the Tabasco Chipotle sauce but it was filling none the less.  Since I was close, I made my way past St Patrick’s Cathedral (again, pretty cool) over to St Steven’s Green which was funded with money from one of the Guinness boys.  The Jameson guide was laughing about the news talking about the heat wave hitting Dublin and how they had a segment called “what to do during the heat wave”.  It was maybe 70.  The heatwave did bring out tons of people to just sit on the grass in the sun.  It looked like Portland the first time the sun comes out in the spring. 

 

The park next to St Patricks.  It has the well where he converted people to Christianity (supposedly...that it's the well, that is)

St Steven's Green...tons of people enjoying the yellow thing in the sky

Didn’t do much that evening as I was still recovering.

Tuesday I did another Pam suggestion: go out to the Cliffs of Moher (pronounced “moe her” if you wanted to know).  I found a day trip company (Wild Rover) that did a trip there and then up to Galway before circling back to Dublin.  It was a pretty good tour even though at least 8 of the 13 hours was spent on a bus getting you to the places the tour was going.  Pretty scenery along the way so other than being cramped in a full bus, it wasn’t too bad.

 

Wind turbines along the drive.  They look larger than the ones I have seen in the US

Castles everywhere.  Most of them are looking pretty ragged.

We first stopped at a truck stop midway to the west coast dubbed the Barrack Obama Center.  Turns out one of Obama’s mother’s ancestors came from the town next to the truck stop and he visited here a few years ago looking for the missing apostrophe in his name according to a quote in the museum-like area on the second floor of the stop.  Obama -> O’Bama…get it?  I thought it was funny.  Anyway, the truck stop owner decided to cash in and changed the name and added that little museum section. 

 

Obama!

The cliffs were pretty cool and I wish I had more time to spend at them…pretty much a running theme on both day trips I made.  To be fair, I think the Oregon coast line with its cliffs is pretty special but these are no less so.  Luckily it was fairly nice weather with the sun peeking out from time to time so it made it that much better.  From there we went to the Burren which is this rocky area that is pretty desolate.  It covers some of the area between the cliffs and Galway.  Cool landscape even if it is barren. 

 

Pretty good caution signs.  Not as good as the ones in Israel (where the dude is already falling) but still pretty good

The cliffs.  Thankfully, while it was overcast a bit, it wasn't too bad and we could see for miles

There is a path along the cliffs that connects the towns out there.  Rule #1: Stay on the official path

Yeah...the official path is the lonely one on the left.  So much for rule #1.  I may or may not have been on the wrong side at times myself....guess we will never know for sure.

looking back the other direction on the cliffs.  Really beautiful

North Carolinians be warned!  Bathrooms at the Cliffs might have the wrong gender in them!!

Proof that there are shitty parkers all over the world.  Maybe that's their handicap: can't park worth a damn

What the burrens looks like.  Miles of this.  

Throughout the drive we passed a lot of fields that had the dividing walls made up of rocks that had been dug up and then stacked.  Watch any movie supposed to be set in Ireland and I am sure they have had these walls in them somewhere.  What I didn’t know (and here we go) was that during the potato famine that caused Ireland’s population to drop in half from 8M to 4M people due to death and emigration, they also built famine walls.  Turns out the Victorians didn’t believe in charity so rather than just feed the starving, they had them build more walls that would literally go over hills and have no purpose in dividing land for pasture just so they could then get paid for an honest day’s work and buy food to keep from starving.  The coast drive up to Galway had rocky hills crisscrossed with these famine walls.

They also had what the tour guide called long necked western Irish sheep…yep, some of the farmers are raising alpaca.

 

Not the long necked variety, but added for Tam.  Yes, these are Irish sheep, but mutton love should know no borders!

Galway was a nice little town.  Again, wish I could stay there longer.  For sure next time I am getting over my “I ain’t driving” thing, getting a car and then wandering all over the island.  We did a walking tour down through part of it before we broke and I got my first fish and chips…ever?  Cod, if you care.  It was good.  Crispy and the chips are fat French fries that are firm and delicious.  Although I tried the vinegar thing that I have seen (and saw a lot of people do) on the chips, I fell back to ketchup like the heretic I am.  The vinegar was good…it just wasn’t good enough to cause me to switch.  I also had my first beer in Ireland: a Galway Hooker…a pale ale they make there.  Sure I should have had Guinness and all that, but I was going to the brewery the next day and I knew part of the tour was a free pint so I figured my first Guinness in Ireland should be directly from the source, right?  The beer was good…both of them.

Tuesday I started off going to Christ Church Cathedral.  It’s on the highest point in Dublin and while the church itself started in 1100 the Vikings had used it as a place for their settlement long before.  It’s a nice church (as churches go) but I was even more excited when the girl collecting money mentioned the entrance to the crypt.  Crypt, you say?  Do tell.  Guess where I headed first.  While there were people buried there with monuments to them along the wall, there was also a display going on with various knickknacks that had been given to the church along the way.  A set of gold plates from King William, some candlesticks from King James.  Then there was this book laying there under glass opened up.  Turns out this contained the knight of the time’s copy of the Magna Carta!  Yep, this book just sitting out was created around 1200.  I have to admit I geeked out a little bit.  The Magna Carta!  Of course, there are probably thousands of copies lying around Europe and it isn’t that big a deal, but I don’t know that.

 

The Cathedral (on the right side of the bridge)

knickknacks from kings.  sure they are gold...but knickknacks just the same ;)

The book with the Magna Carta in it.  This thing is 8-900 years old.  Crazy

One of the burial markers in the crypt

The tomb of Stongbow who was the knight that got that copy of the Magna Carta.  The original tomb was lost a while ago, but this one is from the 1400's...still before Columbus did hit thing

Next up was the Guinness storehouse.  Normal, self-guided tours run about 20 Euro…$24-ish.  But they include a “learn how to pour a Guinness the right way” session where you keep and drink the one you pour as well as a free pint at the 7^th floor glass enclosed observation deck so it’s a good deal.  If you care, correctly pouring a Guinness is a 2 pour process to ensure it comes out properly.  I opted for the Connoisseur Experience which ran 40E not really knowing what was involved other than you go to a private bar area.  The tour itself is okay.  I mean it’s self-guided and while they do have some pretty good short films and what not, you still have to work for it rather than having someone spin tales to keep you entertained.  The Experience was pretty cool and worth the extra money, IMO.  They limit it to 16 people at a time and basically take you into a small bar area and have you taste 4 of their beers while talking about them and where they came from.  You do the pour your own thing there as well as take a bottle of one of the 4 beers you tried with you when it’s done.

 

One of the guides said this was THE St James Gate...not sure if that is true or not as there are a lot of gates around the property, but it is a fine gate.  Oh, caption tidbit: Arthur Guinness signed a 9000 year (yes, nine thousand)  lease back in 1759 for the property where the brewery is.  Now THAT is thinking ahead.

Various bottles of Guinness throughout the history

They had a section with some of the advertising that was used throughuot the years 

Ahh...the first Guinness of Ireland...straight from the source

The private bar where the Experience happened.  Those are my tasting glasses in front of me.  The 4th taster was Guinness drawn from the taps right there.  Mmmm

One tidbit I didn’t know was that Guinness draught, the most popular beer…the one you get at bars…the one you think has been around forever, was first introduced in 1959 as a 200^th anniversary special occasion beer and wasn’t intended to last more than a year.  It was so popular, they kept it and it became what you know today.  The big thing with it?  They took their already existing Guinness Extra Stout and added nitrogen.  Matter of fact, both beers are now brewed as the same beer right up until they nitrogenate (their word) the draught.  Two of the beers we sampled were these 2 and they taste completely different even though they are the same beer.  Now you know.

After that I walked over to the gaol.  I knew I was good to go this time because I had purchased my ticket online.  Might not have been the wisest idea heading to another tour after downing 4 pints of beer, but the walk over was about a mile and a half and I was pretty clear headed by the time I made it there.  The tour itself is really interesting.  It was one of the first prisons to have individual cells rather than a common area where everyone was kept.  It’s pretty gloomy in the east wing but the west wing is relatively open and bright mainly for the guards benefit.  It was mostly used as a short term jail for misdemeanors as apparently anything above petty theft resulted in death back then.  But they didn’t discriminate on sex or age (youngest prisoner on record was a 5 year old who stole food during the famine).  It’s also where they performed a lot of executions including the leaders of the failed 1916 rebellion.  All in all, it was a good tour and I totally recommend it.  It didn’t get to #1 by accident.

 

Hi, welcome, come on into the Gaol...don't worry

The gloomy wing

The not so gloomy wing

A look at one of the cells.  Now I am not saying I would have wanted to be in here but it didn't appear to be that bad...for only one person

That evening I had an awesome dinner of seared corned beef with veggies before hitting a few pubs since the Guinness door had been opened earlier at the tour.  Good night with some good Irish music.

 

Traditional Irish music at the Temple Bar Pub

Wednesday I did the other Pam Moore suggested day trip up through Belfast and to the Giant’s Causeway and the Carrick-A-Rede rope bridge all up in Northern Ireland.  Again it was a lot of bus riding on a full bus but totally worth it and we were blessed with more great weather and sunshine.  In Belfast we had the choice of a Titanic Experience (the Titanic was made in Belfast, FYI) or doing what is called a Black Taxi Tour where they take you around and show you some key areas from what they call “the troubles”.  You know which one I picked, of course.  Sadly there was very little in the Experience about Jack and whatsername.  Kidding!  I did the Black Taxi Tour. 

And here I have to admit to some pre-Ireland ignorance.  I thought Ireland was totally a part of the United Kingdom along with Australia and others.  I learned (the first day here) that actually most of Ireland is a free state and a republic having gotten their freedom in Dec, 1921.  That 1916 rebellion failed miserably, but the fact they executed all the leaders and then treated their bodies to an unmarked grave made them the martyrs the English were trying to avoid.  After WW I was over, the Irish did a full on rebellion in 1918 and this time had the world at their back and peace was signed.  Part of that accord was 6 of the 32 counties of Ireland, the ones with Protestant majority, would remain British subjects and that’s where Northern Ireland came from.  Same Island, different rule (and money for that matter.  Ireland is on the Euro, N. Ireland is on the pound).

So in Northern Ireland, the Protestants ruled the day and the Catholics were treated like second class citizens both through law and through job discrimination.  Really the whole history of Ireland is the Protestants suppressing the Catholics so much so you almost feel sorry for them until you remember all the things Roman Catholics have done to other people throughout history…but I guess that isn’t the Irish’s fault.

Anyway, the “troubles” basically came about when the Catholics, following the civil rights movement in the good ol’ USofA, tried to get equal rights for themselves in Northern Ireland.  The Protestants basically said screw you and violently responded to a peaceful march, the Catholics pretty much all joined the IRA and then 3000 people were killed and more than 100k people were injured before Clinton, of all people, got the Good Friday peace agreement negotiated in 1988 or 89.  The tour took us through some of the neighborhoods and showed us the “peace wall” that divides the hard core Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods that are literally side by side and things like that.  It was very interesting.  Screw the Titanic…it sank.

 

Murals capturing what happened all over the place

These gates are between the Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods and still close at 10PM every night

The peace wall.  They had us sign it so we could be a part of history.  Cool touch.  It's supposed to come down in 2023.

The Giants Causeway is pretty cool.  Way up in the northern portion of Northern Ireland, it’s these basalt columns that form hexagonal shapes and look like a giant put them there to create a causeway.  There is a legend about 2 giants, one on Ireland and one on Scotland that would yell at each other until one built the causeway to go beat up the other.  So maybe that’s where it came from instead.  Either way, lots of people there.  Lots. 

 

Dunluce Castle on the way to the Causeway.  Very quick stop, but this is included on the inner portion of Led Zepplin's Houses of the Holy.  Interestingly, the cover of that album is photos taken at the Causeway!

At the causeway, example of the pilards

Leading into the sea headed towards Scotland

Some of them had cool tidepools in them.  The safety nazis wouldn't let me get closer but still cool

The rope bridge rounded out the day and it’s a bridge out to a small island the fishermen used to get out to fish salmon back in the day before the world heritage people took it over.  Now it’s still a suspension bridge, but it’s steel cables and wood and fairly secure.  Don’t get me wrong, there is still some bounce to it, but it wasn’t nearly as “wow” as I thought it would be.  One interesting note to me is that I think the bridge climb and stuff has helped with the height thing because I didn’t have any twinges at all on this thing.  I even did a little bouncing to the utter terror of the women in front of me. 

 

The bridge now.  The lady pictured (and her friend in front of her) were not amused about my bouncnig a bit.  I took a selfie too but it's only of my head....it could have been anywhere.  

View of the bridge from on high  

This is gorse.  All over the island.  Really pretty flowers that smell like coconut!  Also super thorny so you don't want to mess with it.

Today has been a pretty relaxing day.  I went over to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells.  It’s an illuminated (illustrated) copy of the 4 gospels from around 8 or 900AD that the monks in Dublin created.  They have 2 sections out and on display but there are no pictures allowed and, I don’t know…I guess I was expecting more or something.  It was ok…not sure it was worth the 11E price of admission.  After that I walked down to the harbor to check it out and then came back for a little lunch.  Tonight I am meeting up with a friend from work (Intel has a factory here in Ireland), Phil Wade.  We are going to do dinner and some drinks but not get totally blotto because a) he has to work tomorrow, is married, and lives 40ish minutes away and b) I fly out of here tomorrow at 9:30AM for Kansas City!  Get ready KC, here I come!

 

This is called the Long Hall...it's above the Book of Kells.  Finally could take photos so I did.  It's a pretty cool hall with TONS of old books

The harp that the original Irish flag was based from (used to be green with a harp now it's orange (for Protestants), green (for Catholics) and white for the peace between them)

Famine memorial down near the docks.  Representing the emigrants leaving

Looking back at downtown Dublin.  Cool harp bridge.

And now, after 6 freaking pages, we are caught up!  I suppose I will do some bits from KC, but I anticipate a lot of “I ate BBQ” and “I sat around and relaxed while drinking a Boulevard Pale Ale” amid going to see a couple of Royals games so it might be sort of thin.  On the other hand, I have been winning at every casino I have gone to so far so a trip out to the riverboats might be in order.  We will see.

Until then remember: It’s our time, the people’s time

Love to all

Jim

Thailand Tales

Hey all,

First of all: Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

It has been a while and I need to catch everyone up with the fun from Thailand before I forget too much of it.  I am actually now in Dublin staying close to Temple Bar within walking distance of all kinds of goodness.  It’s actually sunny here today and people are taking advantage of it in full force so I need to write this and get back out into the sunny weather while it’s here because it’s supposed to turn chilly in the next few days…at least compared to Bangkok.

One quick (like that’s going to happen) tidbit about the Liveaboard that I forgot to put into the last update.  On the trip, we dove a couple of times around Phi Phi islands (there are 5 of them, I think) and cruised around them all in the boat.  The Phi Phi’s are where the movie The Beach was filmed.  On that island, on the back side, there are cave systems where swallows nest.  Apparently the Chinese LOVE their bird’s nest soup that is made with, you guessed it, swallow nests…real ones.  So in these caves, the Thai have put an intricate set of bamboo “ladders” (really 2 or 3 poles strapped together that they climb around on) to harvest these nests.  I have seen stuff on NatGeo or some other channel about this and the people who climb around on these things.  They are super protective about them because it’s big money.  They leave someone there to guard the place all the time and supposedly shoot if you get too close.  Anyway, we could see into one of the caves and there was a network of bamboo going on.  Pretty cool little side note.

 

Not the caves...but setting off fireworks to begin the dive trip

So back to Patong.  We stayed at a place called BYD Lofts which was really nice and by American standards was pretty cheap.  By Thai standards, we paid for the niceness.  Kris and Junior (the two guys from Denmark from the dive boat) stayed at a relatively nice place in Patong for the same amount of time we did and payed for the entire stay what we paid for one day.  But nice is relative and our place was pretty sweet.  Once funny side note, I didn’t plan it but it turns out BYD was right around the corner (literally) from Nap where Sophia and I stayed when we were in Thailand on her sabbatical.

Kris (drinking) and Junior

The first of 2 days in Patong, we went on John Grays Sea Canoe trip.  If you were a reader of my original Thailand tales from 10 years ago, you might remember (or not) that this is the same sea canoe trip that Marci and I went on when we went diving there (hi Marci!).  On that trip, we actually got to meet John Gray who, if memory serves, had an ego barely contained by the large boat we were on.  He told stories of all these amazing exploits that seemed like a complete load of BS although reading his self-written bio on their webpage now it doesn’t contain nearly what he claimed to have done then. 

No John Gray this time…the business has become just that: a fairly large scale tour operation with double or triple the number of sea canoes I remember from the first time, but still maintaining the cool vibe of going through these islands with caves in them that lead to internal lagoons that are beautiful and peaceful and like nothing you have seen before.  They still do a float making exercise where you light it and float your bad luck away before playing with the bio luminescence in the water after the sun goes down.  It was a really cool trip and I am glad we did it.

 

Monkey inside one island's lagoon

Muddy the mudskipper

These islands are limestone with cool undercuts like this

panorama of one of the lagoons

The next day we just toodled around Patong trying to move slowly and stay in the shadows to sweat less….didn’t help really.  We went to the mall to walk around mainly because it was air conditioned.  We barely escaped a time-share presentation session by being honest that 1) we had no intention of buying a time share no matter what they said and 2) using the current vacation as an example, we were on a boat for 8 days and on land for 3 so how does a time share make sense?  We finally made it to the beach and a nice little bar area where we sat next to a really nice Malaysian guy and talked to him for a couple of hours (and a few beers).  It was a nice, relaxing way to spend the afternoon before showering in the evening and going to dinner. 

 

Ronald "the Buddhist" McDonald

The Patong mall has Portland for sale inside

After dinner, we went to the main Patong drag where they sell souvenirs, have a ton of bars and have the sex shows…or at least offer them.  On the John Gray trip, we talked with a South African couple that said their friend went to one and instead of women it was men doing the things listed but I can neither confirm nor deny this claim because we didn’t do it.  We DID look at the menu and yes there was a menu of the acts that would/could be performed that, of course, started with Ping Pong show (kids, ask your parents what that is).  The barkers (if that is what you call them…agents sent out to lure you in?) would approach you with the menu and make a popping sound with their mouth that sounded like a ping pong ball getting hit…or maybe shot out of something…either way it effectively let you know what they were advertising.

 

The gateway to the Patong strip

I really really really wish I had taken a picture of the menu (if they would have let me…I tried in Bangkok and they said no) both because I want to share with you, dear readers, the amazing list of activities one could see and because I only got to about item number 10 before my amazement (and those beers on the beach earlier) caused me to stop reading and ask the people “catfish show?  What is that?  Really?”.  I do have to say that the Patong lists were more “clean” than the ones in Bangkok…sort of.  On the one hand, it seemed like they had more things listed than the lists in Bangkok, but they were listed more tastefully with just “catfish show” or “dart show” while Bangkok had things like (kids, stop reading!) “magic knife pussy” or “fish in pussy” and “rainbow pussy”.  Sort of wish we saw that one…rainbow?  Or maybe not. (okay kids, it’s safe).

One other funny side note on Patong: we saw Kris and Junior, the two dudes from Denmark who were on the dive trip with us, pretty much every day we were there.  No planning involved, we just ran into them.  Sure, Patong isn’t that big, but it was still sort of funny.  To cap it off, we were on the same flight to Bangkok with them.  Turns out the remotes that have the phones built into them on a plane allow you to call other seats in the plane for free as discovered by Junior and used to call Stacy and me.  Sadly we didn’t run into them in Bangkok while we were there.

Bangkok was what felt like an order of magnitude hotter than Patong.  Patong was sweat city but Bangkok turned the streams of sweat into rivers.  Luckily water is super cheap there.  You can buy a large bottle (2 liters?) for like a quarter at any of the conveniently located 7-11s.  Yes 7-11 is huge in Thailand.  They are the ABC store of Thailand…and if you haven’t ever been to Hawaii, that reference went right over your head.  Let’s go with: they are about on every corner there.

Our hotel was pretty cool (the Easton Grand).  I had reserved a room high in the hotel for a view and they sold me on upgrading from that to the top floor for only a little more per day and it came with access to the executive lounge that had free happy hours from 5:30-7:30 as well as got breakfasts included.  So blam, we had a room on the 32 floor and free drinks every night in a lounge with a pretty sweet view!  Since Bangkok was hot and humid, we were back in the hotel before happy hour to cool off and shower in preparation for the evening’s sweat event anyway so we took advantage of the happy hours.

 

Sunset from the executive lounge.  The building with the dome is where the sky bar is (bar in Hangover II)

View from our room,  Cool building on the left

Hot…Bangkok was H O T.  You might think like I did: let’s get up early before it gets too bad…but you would be wrong like I was.  Sure the real temperature was a little lower but the “feels like” temp due to the humidity was over 100 no matter what time of day or night it was.  Seriously.  But that didn’t deter us…much.  We still got out on our first day to go jump on the water taxi and head up to the Emperor’s Palace and Wat Pho and the flower market.  Of course, with my luck, it was Coronation day so the palace itself was closed off.  The Temple of the Emerald Buddha next door was not, though so we waded through the throng of 1000’s of Chinese tourists to check it out.  We also waded through them at Wat Pho where the reclining Buddha is (still impressive).  As we were walking down to check out the flower market, we fell for it!

 

Reclining Buddha

Temple of the Jade Buddha (not supposed to take pictures inside)

Weather bug hourly temps...with "feels like" making it sort of depressing...it didn't rain

That’s right, we got sucked into the pretty well known scam of Thailand: The Happy Buddha.  We were close…like 2 blocks away from the market when a “helpful” Thai guy came up and asked where we were going.  He said the flower market wasn’t open till 2 because the coronation but he could help us out with the happy Buddha, which was open, and this tall Buddha and some other place we ended up not going to.  He arranged for a tuk tuk for 40 baht to take us around to them all and like suckers we went with it.  40 baht, is just a hair over a dollar, btw. 

 

Stacy in her first tuk tuk!

We got to the Happy Buddha Wat and it was under refurbishment…should have been a clue…with none of the doors open.  One guy at the back said they were only open on the weekend and to come back then.  After we left there, the tuk tuk driver convinced us to stop at a Thai shopping area where the scam was about to come down.  Really it was to lead us to clothiers…where we could get suits or shirts made.  And that is what the Happy Buddha scam is about…you hear that and it’s really just a trip to a couple of lesser Wats as a pretext to taking you to these clothes makers you wouldn’t want to go to normally…unless you needed some suits in which case, happy Buddha!  Our Tuk Tuk driver said he got a free gas card if we would stay for 10 minutes and being the nice suckers we are, we tried.  We made it 2 and a half minutes in that place because it was small and we said “no we don’t wear or want suits” which sort of ended any reason to stay any longer.  Our driver’s enthusiasm dropped when we came out so quickly.

We did get to see a tall Buddha that was pretty cool…before the driver took us to another, larger clothier (I was hoping for jeweler just for variety) asking us to try to say 10 minutes so he could get his free gas card.  This clothier was larger than the first, to be fair, and I did meet a guy who went to Rockhurst (a Kansas City high school) and commented on my Royals shirt I was wearing (go Royals!).  I even flipped through the “catalog” of items they made trying to drag out the time, but still we were out of there in under 8 minutes.  Our driver’s enthusiasm was at 0 at this point and he took us to the flower market where we wanted to be from the get go completely ignoring the third temple he was supposed to take us to.  We didn’t mind as it was hot and the flower market was what we wanted to do anyway.

 

Cool tall Buddha

Hot enough I will admit I got a Tutti Fruitti Berry smoothy

The flower market was interesting…fewer flowers than I was expecting, but it was in the middle of the heat of the day and I guess the peak times are evenings and early mornings.  It is also an area that has bulk food supplies like where restaurants come and buy from so it was cool to see anyway.  After that we went back to the hotel to cool off and shower.

I wish we could find some garlic around here....

That night we went to a night market north of where we were staying.  Our hotel was right on the light rail line with a bridge from the 3^rd floor to the station so getting around was super easy.  We took the light rail to the subway up to the night market and had dinner and walked around.  Really if you are looking for stuff to buy for cheap, night markets are the way to go.  There was a ton of stuff there.

The next day we did a canal tour with Pandan Tours that ran from 8:30 to 3.  This also started from the light rail but was off the beaten track in Bangkok.  There are some tours/canal trips that start from the main river and sort of do a loop back to the river.  Marci and I did one back in the day that was pretty cool.  This wasn’t like that and got more into the “real” Bangkok experience, I think.

Our guide was Nui who was an older lady who was Buddhist and shared that philosophy with us throughout the day.  Thailand is 95% Buddhist (4% Muslim, 1% “other) so she brought a nice flavor to the day and the tour.  We stopped at a couple of Wats and walked around them.  The first was what I would call a traditional Wat with the temples and what not.  The second was more nature oriented and more open but still had monks and Buddha’s but a completely different feel. 

 

Glass pagoda inside a large pagoda at one of the Wats

Ceiling above the glass pagoda

Us in the boat...Nui barely pictured

We ended up doing around 20 km of canal in this teak boat that had what seems like a car motor on the back powering the prop on a long pole.  It was cool to ride around in but the canals are really polluted…or full of trash (and I am sure people waste since a lot of houses along the canals are on stilts with no visible plumbing) and water would splash up occasionally onto your face.  First couple of times I was thinking “eww” but eventually, you get used to it and remember a shower is right around the corner so you don’t bother with it.

A view of what the water looked like...some places were worse with trash...some better

We also ate from a canal boat that made a noddle dish with chicken.  It was pretty good and a super cool experience sitting next to their boat while they made it and handed it over.  Occasionally children would be feeding the fish in the canal and you could see swarms of LARGE fish going for the food.  We also saw a ton of egrets and monitor lizards and snails and what not.  We stopped at an orchid farm for a while and saw different varieties there.  I guess the main season is earlier in the year, but they still had quite a few flowering plants.  We had dinner at a pretty large market on the side of the canal and then went to an artists’ conclave to see a traditional puppet show.  The puppets take 3 people to work where one person does the head and the left arm, one does the legs, and the 3^rd does the right arm.  It’s a pretty cool dance between the 3 people that translates into pretty cool movement in the puppet.  They did both a traditional play as well as a Michael Jackson bit doing Billy Jean complete with moon walk.  It was pretty cool.  Overall I would highly rate this and say “go do it” but…..

View of the back of another canal boat.  Look at that engine!

Cooking boat making us a noodle dish

looking out at the canal

one of the orchids at the farm

ginormous fish

puppeteers in action

audience participation time!

The artists place where the puppet show was

I got food poisoning somewhere in there.  Might have been the lunch since Stacy didn’t get it and we had different lunches, but by the evening the stomach cramps were starting up.  That sort of curtailed the activities for the final Bangkok evening outside of going for some mango sticky rice for Stacy (she had been wanting to try it the whole trip) and getting some pepto for me in case it was just upset stomach.

Skip the next paragraph if you don’t want to know the fun of food poisoning or if the Rio tales were enough…you have been warned….slight spoiler: there were no soiled undies.

When you’re sliding into first and you feel something burst…diarrhea…yeah!  At least I was in the hotel and prepared when it hit.  I had been doing the pepto and Stacy had an Imodium (dries you right up and blocks all output!) so that helped a bit but the stomach cramping was still there the next day.  Luckily the airport had a pharmacy AND prescriptions are not needed for much so I got Azithromycin.  I took Cipro in Brazil and knew that was right on, but the internets were saying for SE Asia zithro was the way to go instead.  It was 600 Baht…under $20 for 6 250mg pills (take 2 daily with meal for 3 days), FYI.  I was originally just going to get it “just in case” but since the symptoms were there pretty strong the next day, I started self-medicating.  Then I got on the plane for 12 hour flight to London.  The first 3 or 4 hours weren’t terrible but then my stomach was on fire.  I thought it was acid or something but I was popping the pepto like it was nothing so my theory was gas expanding due to altitude.  I think the Imodium stopping up one exit maybe trapped air from escaping that way (to my fellow passenger’s unknown good fortune) and for some reason I couldn’t burp it out.  Anyway, I spent 8ish hours in pretty bad pain that DID lessen once we started getting down towards landing at London.  The Imodium finally let some items (black sludge) come out along with some gas and I got some more medications at a pharmacy in London’s airport (anti-gas stuff mostly) and the flight to Dublin was relatively okay although I only had water for the flight.  Made it to the hotel here in Dublin and the stomach was only slightly grouchy so I survived.  Still a little diarrhea-y today, but I hadn’t eaten much in the 30 or so hours before breakfast this morning so I think maybe my system is resetting (I hope).

Okay…I guess that wasn’t bad, but the poop talk is done.

The flight from Bangkok to London was British Airways and was layflat.  The seats were sweet and the food looked good and I would have appreciated the flowing liquor had I not been sick so I am giving BA a thumbs up even if I didn’t get to do the whole shooting match personally.  At least for international.  The flight from London to Dublin (only an hour flight so take with grain of salt) was a little lame.  It was basically coach seats (with crap coach legroom) with the middle seat blocked off with a “tray” setup.  We got the nice service and dinner (I didn’t have any: sick) but the seating was poor.  Oh well.

 

International BA business = sweet

Domestic BA business...not so much

Holy crap…this was long.  Sorry about that.  I will do a Dublin update in a couple of days so hopefully it won’t be as long winded as this, but you never know!

Until then: our time, the people’s time!

Love to all

Jim