Common scene in Bangkok

One of the things that I noticed about Thailand is the amount of electrical wires everywhere. Hanging overhead, some buzzing with that electrical sound and some low hanging ones. One needs to watch out when crossing a pedestrian bridge or your head might get caught in the web of cables! 

And the people repairing these cables are probably endangering themselves to do so, balancing their ladders on the poles and sometimes on a bunch of cables themselves. Hope they have insurance. 

It just made me feel more grateful for the small things we take for granted in KL. You don't see this scene very often anymore. 

30,000 monks in Bangkok

A day in March is the Makha Bucha Day. But this year is a special year, marking the 2,600th anniversary of Buddha's enlightenment day. So, there were a series of alms giving ceremonies around Bangkok. On March 24th, I went to witness the one in Chinatown where there were estimated about 30,000 monks gathered to receive alms from Buddhists. Had to wake up early as it starts at 6.30 am, but it was worth it. Here are some pictures.

Remembering those who fell in Kanchanaburi

A recent trip to Kanchanaburi was for a workshop, but we had time off one evening to go to the museum, the cemetery and the popular bridge (i.e. bridge over the River Kwai – also a movie).
During World War II, the Japanese invaded South East Asia and brought many POWs to Kanchanaburi to build a railroad that joins Thailand to Myanmar.

The museum had a lot of information on the building of this bridge and train line. Also a lot of focus on the sufferings of British, Australian and Dutch POWs (and a few Canadians and New Zealanders). In a smaller corner of this museum, they had the statistics of the actual number of POWs – guess what, most of those are from Malaysia! There was about 180,000 Asian POWs (most from Malaysia!) and more than half of those died in Kanchanaburi (as compared to 60,000 POWs from western countries, and about 15% died).
Anyway, this is still a very moving place to be.


At last, a small monument to remember at least the Chinese that fell on this place. 

Dragonfly

Dragonflies are everywhere, especially near bodies of water – a pond, lake or river. Take a trip on one of Bangkok’s floating market and you’ll come across lots of dragonflies.
They’re one of the hardest to photograph because they move so fast and so small that you actually would do better with a macro lens. But with some help of the crop tool and after a million photos, I finally got a nice one. (well, could do better with the composition, but happy that this turned out pretty sharp).
Here it is.

5-star hospital

Medical tourism is a big thing in Bangkok. So, you get a lot of posh hospitals around. Bangkok Hospital is one of them.

 

A fountain greets you when you arrive at the hospital. And you go straight to the International reception where they speak all sorts of language. And there’s even special section that caters for foreigners – like the whole Japanese section (even the TV is playing Japanese shows).

Bell boys help you to carry your luggage.

If you don’t have enough cash, don’t worry, ATMs are available everywhere.

Cafeteria never looked so good.

And if you don’t like cafeteria food, no worries. There’s Starbucks.

Its so big, you may need a tour to see the place.

And if you’re still bored, there’s always other things – museums, art gallery, or even live entertainment!

And if that doesn’t suit you, maybe you can do some exercise and count how many calories you’ve burnt.

 

Wat Po

If you enter into Wat Po, there’s a little counter where you can donate money and write your name/wish/message on a tile that they would use for renovating this temple.

You write it down with pencil that they provide on the table.

But then, you walk a little bit, around the tree, and you see this guy doing this…

Uh huh! He’s washing the tiles so that they can use it again! Seesh, at least take some effort to hide it somewhere further away from the table lah. But that aside, Wat Po is still worth visiting.

Red Shirt rally around Bangkok

The red shirts are doing a rally around Bangkok today.

Map taken from here.

Part of the route passes by near where I live. Rallies in Thailand are normally peaceful (even attended by kids). So, I thought this would be an interesting event to watch and photograph.

There are still many supporters of the red shirts. People rushing to the streets, dressed in red or carrying a red handkerchief to wave to the passing rally.

People of all ages were at the rally. Its sort of like a family outing. Even foreigners and dogs joined.

   

The train station had to close temporarily.

 

Police were around, of course.

Some people even take advantage of this to make some money.

More photos of the rally:

 

  

But, though it is a lot of people, just go back one alley and things feel normal again.