The Clock and watch museum (no the other one)

Well who would have thought that Thailand would be a burgeoning bastion of bim bams! A horological, historical, happening? A clock collecting cotillion? Well no one that I know of. At any rate here in the Swissotel Le Concorde a section of the third floor is set off as a museum for the clocks and watches of the owner of the hotel. I have yet to meet him but - enjoy the following pictures of the museum. Note there are no clock factories in Thailand, In fact many swiss watch companies put out special edition watches for the king's 80th birthday-- the only time they were allowed to use the royal crest of Thailand. You can see these probably on the internet. The following, however, you wont find anywhere but here!

There is one more real old clock museum in Bangkok- originally all the clocks owned by King Rama V and collected in the 1900s, and as well the clocks collected by his Grandson the current King of Thailand. This explains why you find old European, Japanese, and even Korean clocks in many temples in Bangkok. Many are donated by businessmen to one of the WATs that were built by the king as a measure of respect to him.

The reign of King Rama V can be called the golden era of clocks. During His 42 - years reign, King Rama V visited Europe twice, in 1897 and 1907. From these trips, His Majesty brought back several types of clocks of be used in the palace.

Following are pictures from the Swissotel's owner's museum! CLick on any of them to make them larger.

What are these?

Following are a series of photographs of objects found everywhere on the palace grounds, in various temples, all over the city. What are they? Look at them and see below for the answer. PS there are literally thousands of them all over the place.









































You will notice that these are Chinese characters carved primarily in some kind of sand stone- not a very hard stone.












Notice too that they are kind of elaborate carvings.














These are in fact ship's ballast!

When Thai sailors first opened up routes to China and began an intense trade with them, they would sail their ships fully laden to China, and sometimes sailed back less full than they went. All of these ships did not sail well if they were too buoyant and hence needed to manage their waterline buoyancy with ballast. The same was true of all the older sailing ships in the rest of the world too.

The only difference here is that the Chinese, instead of providing them sand, or bricks, or plain old rocks to use as ballast, gave them these stone carvings- since they were only student examples, prototypes, etc etc and were starting to pile up in the courtyards!!

The Thai traders were only too happy to have something as ballast they didn't have to pay for and it was a good deal all around- until they got home. Well what should they do with these statues? They had no need for ballast on the outbound trips and now these statues were starting to pile up in Thailand. ( Chinese had a good laugh on that one!)

In a grand gesture of support and love they donated these statues to the King, who used them to decorate damn near everything in the city, and to this day there is probably a storehouse full of these statues lying around some where waiting to be sprung on the next state park!

Random Thoughts part 1

• OK OK I will show you a picture of the danged overblown Christmas tree-- enjoy - and remember this is 30 feet tall and sits in the main lobby of the hotel. To get it all in I took this from the 3rd floor mezzanine.


















• There is also a closeup from the first floor, and some wicked angry looking Santas they are selling.
  

























• On another note - traffic flow is interesting - most one way multi-lane streets have one lane reserved for traffic in the other direction.
• The metro train system is wonderful and a nice place to duck into if you need some air conditioned comfort. It is trivially easy to get around and is often 10 times faster during rush hour than any other form of transportation. Grid lock during the work week is the norm not the exception.
• The whole country is left side drive - like England - But it is right hand walk- especially up and down stair cases- kind of disorienting.
• Not one of the places the tuk tuk drivers ( 2 person auto rickshaws), or tour guides, or taxi drivers takes you - to show you the great wondrous treasures you can take back home with you ( tailors, gems, wood carvings- etc) has any crap worth blowing up.
• OK Im about to go on a rant- take it with a grain of salt.
• Every govt store, high end etc etc that you are shown is basically hand in glove (the same as any country really) with the taxi companies and tour guides and they produce poor class goods for the western tourist. You have to look far and wide for any kind of reasonable value and quality and believe me the people ( taxi drivers, tour guides) here won't tell you readily where to look. However, the regular peopel talk with you very readily and will tell you where they find good value. However you have to get out of your air conditioned car and wander around with the people- you would be surprised how many speak English!
• It turns out that the drivers get 30% of everything the store sells you AND they get free gas vouchers ( gas here is about $4 a gallon)
Jewelry.

• Every "Government" sanctioned store that sells jewelry has a tremendous square foot overhead to accommodate one tour bus after another. While the gemstones may be of reasonable quality in most of these places, the quality of the gold smithing work is crap ( this is a technical term C-Cheaply fashioned, R Random mutilple flaws in workmanship, A - Apathetic workers and sales people, P Poor finish and presentation) leaving much to be desired. IE channel set stones wobble in the channel, a lot of the jewelry has the channels half soldered in, and in many cases the channels are made from poorly rolled bar stock snipped with rough edges , left rough not polished well ( polish marks left on the piece) rather than cast in- and in generally have only value - as gold to be melted down again.
• Once I pulled out my 10X eyepiece to look at the jewelry- most of the sales people rolled their eyes and left me to take up with other patrons. They never came back to push the jewelry after that. They know what kind of crap they sell.
• They handed me pieces that had prices on them the equivalent to $100 000 US dollars , and expected me to buy it because it shined. Upon close observation the stones were not matched, they did not sit well in the channels- often leaving gaps between the stones, all the pave settings were so over blown that it looks like they gobbed the gold on to set the stones. All bracelets were under weight for what they should be - causing the bracelets to roll around the arm and wrist instead of sit nicely on them.
• There is an official government store that you can find- still the same crappy gold work, BUT much better prices, and you can buy stones too. The only bargains here may be the stones not the jewelry.
• I would love to take the time to find the artisans in each category. The same is true in many US cities. IE you find mass made jewelry settings of average quality being filled with stones of average quality. However every once in a while you find a genius jeweler and his or her stuff is worth spending time with

Wood carvings

• Same deal - the drivers get 30% of everything they can sell you so they push hard. The carvings are intricate but of no detail. IE they are very busy but when you look close there are tool marks, chips taken out, etc etc. It is almost impressionistic rather than realistic.
• The first store I went in to offered me a roll away liquor bar for $4500.00. One dead give away is that each piece of crap is labeled for sale in US dollars- no Thai would own any of this.
• The further you get into the store the more you find trinket crap made in China and India. Then you realize you saw most of this stuff with street vendors too.
• One store only - had something interesting- huge rocking chairs made of teak root bowls. The one I liked was about 5 feet across and 8 feet in length and you could crawl right into it and feel the spirit of the tree. Of course it was $7000 US delivered (haha)
Tailors

• Lessee- do you want a cashmere winter coat for only 400 dollars US? Or a mink cashmere one for $500? hmm I didn't either. The cashmere was rough but of course hand made in Thailand yet in another store with the same markings on the cashmere rolls- guaranteed it to be imported from Italy.
• There are dozens of ads for 3 suits 3 pairs of pants, 3 shirts, and 3 ties for $105 US. However when you get there the choice of materials at that price - well lets just say that if you want to look like Bozo the clown- have at it.
• The prices in the states are better for similar quality. All of the tailors claim they can measure you yet ask them how they make a pair of pants that accommodates a sitting girth larger than a standing one to look decent in both positions and you get a dead eyed look. Obviously the MASTER tailors were some where else today.
• 2 of them volunteered to make me some bow-ties for $30 each without ever seeing the design I had in mind. I can get Thai silk ones on the internet for $25.oo-$65.00
• When I asked to see a sample of their handiwork, one went over and got a coat off a dummy. The buttonholes were frayed and unfinished, the coat lining was not stiched in place properly, and it was just generally sloppy work You would think they would put their best foot forward on this occasion. Most people have no idea what to look for- and they find it.
• Again- you have to go with the locals to find the good tailors.
The obligatory Cultural event

• I'm beginning to wonder if I'm just cranky or what - but you can see the same cultural event anywhere in the world with minor twists
• Come to the event and be greeted in mock traditional fashion by having some one shove a bone through your nose ( ok that was Samoa but you get the idea) ( is thsi a proper rant yet!)
• See the happy natives all dressed up in their happy native costumes
• Participate in some kind of food event where you stuff yourself on some indigenous lizard they wont tell you about until after. After all they have to have some fun too wathing the tourists turn blue hen they find out what they just ate ( just what exactly is a giant water komodo)
• When totally full -watch performancea of "natives" leaping and cavorting- while someone speaks in mock English telling you about how their ancestors either navigated to the "new world" using a toothpick and the light from a candle, or killed something really big that tasted good when deep fried and covered in powdered sugar.
• Try to stare down native approaching you - he wants to have you leap, and cavort like a native. Explain that if you leap and cavort there is a 20% surcharge - and if your dinner comes back up there is a 30% surcharge - that will have to be paid to you by union contract.
• Watch confused native pick some other tourist.
• Fake natives smile and wave good bye to the rubes and give them some little gift that will immediately: ==> give birth to a million tiny spiders, ==> crush and leave stains on your shirt that have to be cut out or you will get a rash from hell, or ==>be made out of an endangered species and have a game warden standing right there. Pick one - or on a really good day pick all three.
• Don't forget to step in the elephant poop on the way out.
• Realize you just spent a hundred dollars on the equivalent of a bucket of Kentucky fried god knows what, and a really bad out of focus movie with Urdu subtitles and spoken in Swahili.
• If you are male at least admit you had fun ogling native women. If you are not male then admit you had fun ogling the native men. On second thought lets not go there!

Panoramas

I'll be doing more of these - if you like them let me know-- I like the panoramic shooting style but sometimes i cant cram it into 8MB ( the limit for uploads here)

This is a view of Bankok from the pool deck of the hotel- which is 5 floors up!

Merry freaking Christmas

Ok so what's funnier than snowshoes in Bali, screen doors in submarines, or stupid pet tricks? It's Christmas in Bangkok! OR as I have seen Merry X'mas, Seasons gratings, Seasons greatings, Merry Exmas etc. WE have infected the freaking universe with commercialism- ever since Jim Thompson revivified the Thai silk industry in the 1950's. Or maybe a stronger way to say it is Commerce, and Trade, and Business is a very strong force independent of the meat puppets that act it out. Once one meat puppet gets a scheme that works, not only does he sell it on TV for 19.95, but also other meat puppets copy it . Christmas is a meme (A MEME constitutes a theoretical unit of cultural information, the building block of cultural evolution or diffusion that propagates from one mind to another analogously to the way in which a gene propagates from one organism to another as a unit of genetic information and of biological evolution.) of the corporate culture.

Also listening to Christmas songs in every possible noisy venue is a bit mind numbing. I am starting to prefer elevator music- some one shoot me!

Get this- in Thailand there are about 67 million people. Around 90% are Buddhists, 9% are some form of Christian, 1% is Muslim, and of that last 1% , most are Sunni Muslims with about 40 nervous Shiites tossed into the mix for spice. Do we see anyone celebrating Buddhist festivals with crass commercialism? No - they are not as profitable as Christmas is. There are many Buddhist festivals, but they involve offerings of fruits, flowers etc not spending your self into foreclosure to impress neighbors you didn't much care about any how.

OK so why the hell are we celebrating Christmas over here? And I mean every damned store- every taxi cab, even some dogs are wearing Christmas caps. The hotels are pushing Christmas and New years- but does anyone care that its really the year 2550 in Thailand ( based on Buddha not Christ- go figure) and its not even on January 1!. So we are infected by Christianity cum commercialism, and western commercialism Cum New years. Good god no wonder I cant find any culture in the Thai cultural center.

The hotel has a 30 foot tall fake tree decorated with so much crap you would think that there was a bargain on crap at the store down the street. Even the street vendors ( where i saw the majority of the weird spellings and greetings) are xmassing away. is there no way we can stop this? This hotel had 6 chefs and assistants running around for 3 days literally turning their delicatessen into a gingerbread house- with tray upon tray of gingerbread shingles, icing for icicles, and doodads and what nots. See the pictures- mourn Thai culture! Hell mourn for any culture in the face of the holy grail of commercial profits.

Enjoy the pictures of X'MAS in Thailand.

Long Live The King

The King is a much beloved fixture in this constitutional monarchy. He turned 80 on Dec 5th and there were celebrations , speeches, concerts, parades, admonishments and fireworks galore.
The king primarily spends his time in agricultural research, and other beneficial projects for his people. He regularly listens to his people, and instructs his politicians and people to be honest and not lazy, to think of the good of Thailand. Having read several of his speeches in the local paper, he is a healer amongst factions and a stern daddy figure when his kids are being naughty and he is much loved for it all.

The only way to curry favor with the king is to donate money to the charities and causes he has championed. A lot of people say his son is similar in approach to the position, but are concerned about the country's stability at the time of succession.

You might want to look up a bit of the recent political history of Thailand on the web to see how much the King is a fixture in people's lives. He was born on a Monday and "yellow" is the color for Monday--- hence mostly everyone was wearing yellow shirts for his birthday- us included!

The closest thing we have to the wisdom of this king are a handful of elder statesmen who are still all politicians. I would have to say Jimmy Carter ( minus the prejudiced middle east politics), Al Gore (if he were truly educated), and Bill Clinton(if he could keep his pants on long enough to make a point) together would make up less than half of the effectiveness of this King.

A couple of web sites with good info on the king and current politics.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/21A7080E-CD7D-4CA5-911B-AAA7A8B17704.htm
http://www.chiangmai-chiangrai.com/hm_king_bhumibol.html
http://kanchanapisek.or.th/biography/index.en.html

Actually DEC 2,3,4- The hospital

Well they hauled me off to the hospital for a couple of days of tests. However We did manage to tour the royal castle before they did, and I got out on the King's Birthday Dec 5. Some notes on the hospital. On Dec 2 we visited the royal castle. More in another entry.

I noticed some things about the roads- everyone drives "British style" - ie on the left. However they have gone to great lengths to minimize traffic jams. The Thai have installed this ingenious "left and a u turn" system instead of right turns in a lot of congested areas. The only problem is you have to figure out which blocks have left and a u-turn and which have only right turns. The left and a U-turn are also weird in that they make you u-turn on a less busy street right in the middle of the block. It causes no end of near cursing and mild consternation.

ChaoPhya hospital is a private hospital with many specialties from prenatal care packages, plastic surgery, spinal surgery, heart care, cosmetic surgery, dentistry and opthalmology. All staffed by well trained doctors who have spent a lot of time in other countries- like US and Britain and such.

The room rates are extremely inexpensive-- ie if you want to be in a 4 person no air conditioning ward you pay about $18 a day plus another $18 for the nurse. It turns out that the room they put us heart patients in is the grand poobah suite. Costing all of 4000 bhat or about $110- a day. It has 2 bathrooms, roll away bed for a guest, private dining area, microwave, mini-bar stocked with juices etc, automatic air conditioning, and cable tv. its like a suite at the Ritz!

The practices of the hospital are using older technology but good technology nonetheless. For example they don't have indwelling catheters or butterflys- they just use old fashion needles and thread it very accurately- seems to work well- I have no bruising from all the pin pricks and at home i get bruising from people that almost find the vein. Also there is only one MRI in the region and they run it day and night - a much better use of resources I think than having one in each hospital used once a day. People fly in, taxi in and ambulance in to get MRIs. No one has to wait for more than a week- much like Canada- except Canada has a population of 34 million and Thailand has a population of 67 Million- amazing.

Unlike hospitals here- they actually leave you alone to rest and only bug you infrequently for temperature ( always maxillary- ) and wight, and blood pressure and the like. I mean your door even has a lock on it if you don't want to be bugged!

They insist you shower twice a day - hold over from common practice in Thailand during the hot season. In the hospitals at home i couldn't even get a nurse to show me where the shower was! I think when you got ripe it was time ot leave the hospital.

One interesting curiosity is that when they take blood or take vital signs- they descend on you in droves-- 3- 8 peopel at a time all buzzing around and then out.
I haven't figured out whether its training or curiosity or mutual support. I do sorta look like Gulliver in the land of Lilliput. Average size of one of my nurses is about 5 feet even at a whopping 90 pounds. I think that's just my left leg!

I keep on noticing cultural differences that are not as unnerving as i thought they would be, and have developed a tangent post on cultural observations i will hang in here some where.

TO cap it off here are some other pictures of me getting vampired, These are pretty bad since hte picture taker didn't realize they were movies~!!