Bangkok

We got to Bangkok on Monday. I was really tired when we arrived, due to the fact the we had been traveling all night. We got to the apartment that we are staying in and we were really surprised. We are on the 33rd floor penthouse of the Four Wings Mansion. The apartment is two floors and it is bigger than my whole house! We keep finding bed rooms. We all love the apartment. In a traditional Thai house, you must remove your shoes, so when you first walk in, there is a little area where you take off your shoes and put slippers on. There is a half-wall with stained glass windows. When you go past the little wall, there is a living room with a couch, a coffee table, a couple of arm chairs, and a cabinet. Everything is in a plain tone of brown or gold or white. When I first walked in to this apartment, I wanted to explore, but I was extremely tired, so I crashed on the couch. Five minutes later, Emma told me about the bed upstairs. Although I wasn’t sure if I would make it upstairs in one piece, I headed up there and I found the bed that I claimed for myself. It is a double bed that has a gold-colored bed spread. The mattress is a little hard, but hey, it’s better than airplane and airport seats! I watched a couple of shows and then my mom and dad came back to the apartment from their outing to bring back lunch. They got themselves Pad Thai and they surprised me and Emma with Subway sandwiches. There was no complaining coming from me. To top it all off, they bought bread, bananas, cream cheese, and !NUTELLA! for breakfast! After eating and a little bit of chilling out, my parents forced us to leave the apartment for dinner. I wasn’t hungry, but the rest of my family ate at an Arab place with humus and falafel. I had some humus and it was good. After exploring for a little bit, I finally convinced my parents to take me home. I wrote a quick e-mail and then I fell a sleep (as poppy would say) in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. When I woke up the next afternoon at around noon, my mom and dad took us to a local mall called Central. We went upstairs to the food loft and I got sushi (I had been craving it for a really long time). It was delicious. The rest of my family got Thai food. When we left, my dad left his bag with all of our important documents, but luckily it was still there, passports and all, when we went back to find it. When we got home, Emma and I did some work and my parents went to try to go to the travel agent to figure out what we would do in Southeast Asia. After we did a little bit of math, one of the kids from downstairs invited us to go swimming with them. The mother’s name is Sally and is originally Thai, but grew up in America. The father’s name is David and he is a New Yorker. They have four kids ranging from ages 6-13. The six year old’s name is Sam, there is an eight-year-old named Sarah, an eleven-year-old named Jessica, and a 13-year-old named Aaron. Sam is really cute, and always seems to be having fun, Sarah is always really smiley, Jessica reminds me a lot of my cousin Kira, and Aaron doesn’t say much. After we went swimming, we went over to their house for dinner.

The next day we did a little bit of sight seeing. We took the SkyTrain to the river and then we went on a really pointless tour around the canals. On that tour we saw one temple and then we went by ourselves to the Grand Palace. We saw the beautiful structures and the amazing Emerald Buddha, which is, surprisingly, made out of jade. When you enter, you must remove your shoes. You are not allowed to take pictures or anything of the sort. When we were there, there were many people praying. You are also not allowed to point your feet toward the Buddha, so we had to sit with our feet under us. It was a very cool experience. We were all really hungry, but finally after an extremely long taxi ride, we were in another mall called the Paragon. It was the kind of mall that had tons of fancy stores. We got food and then we went to see a movie on the 5th floor. We saw Music and Lyrics with Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant. The movie theatre was a little bit like the Bridge in Santa Monica. When I got into the theatre, all of the previews were in Thai, so I was a little bit worried that I was about to see a movie in a language that I don’t even understand. It was also pretty interesting that before the movie starts, everyone in the auditorium stands up to sing the King’s Anthem. We were glad that we had our guide book to tell us that! When it went on, I was very happy to understand all of the Music and Lyrics. The movie was good and it was a fun little American outing. Then we went to get desert. Emma got a couple of Famous Amos cookies, and my mom and I went to a place that is a lot like Cold stones. It was delicious. When we got home we watched In Her Shoes on T.V. and then we went to sleep.

The next day my parents decided that they had enough with Thai malls, so we did some things that were a little bit more touristy. First we ate lunch at the local grocery store because there is a little restaurant there. It was pretty good. Then we went to a store and bought a cell phone to use while we are in Southeast Asia. Then, after a while, we found Jim Thompson’s house and we got a tour of that. Jim Thompson was the first person to introduce Thai silk to the world. Thai silk is beautiful. He disappeared when he was 61 and they still don’t know what happened to him. Later that day we went over to the family’s house again and we ate there, and the adults went out. We watched a movie and just chilled. It was fun.

We then decided to go to Chinatown. We saw the Golden Buddha, which wasn’t all that amazing, and then we had lunch at a Chinese restaurant. When we got back on the train, we were all ready to go back to the apartment. My parents went off to their two hour Thai massages and Emma and I worked. At around 7:00pm, my mom and dad were back from their massages, and we went out for the dinner that we had been craving for such a long time-Mexican food. Being from LA, you can only have the best of the best Mexican food. Someone recommended this place so we decided to give it a try. I got tacos, they were DELICOUS! I was so happy. There was even a band singing Mexican music! When we were all finished, we went home. That day was a fun day.

I think that I have had the most culture shock here, in Bangkok. When we were in Moshi, I was prepared to see tons of poverty and people living horribly, but I wasn’t prepared to see what Bangkok is. Coming from seven weeks of a completely limited society, I wasn’t prepared for the huge apartment or the big buildings for as far as you can see or even the traffic. I just felt so overwhelmed that I was seeing 7-11 or Starbucks on every corner. As I am sitting here in this astonishing apartment thinking of the kids at Matumaini who barely have enough room to sleep, or the people who are just running around the streets in tid-bits of clothes. Even though this is exactly what I would picture Bangkok to look like-with the big buildings and the tiny street markets, the flying cars and tons of traffic, I just wasn’t ready for it all. I was too busy preparing myself for the extreme on one side of the chart, but not the other. Everything that you could ever want, you can get here. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to get what ever you want whenever you want it, but other times it’s nice to know that there is nothing that we don’t have, that we really need. There has never been a time in my life when I didn’t have something that I needed and Moshi and everyone there helped me realize that, but Bangkok showed me that I had realized it.