Today we met this fine pelican. He lives on the grounds of the Marble Palace, where photography is not permitted, so this picture was taken surreptitiously.
Author: Dan Visel
We Are in Kolkata
We have gone to India because it’s really close to Bangkok. More soon.
Advanced Communication Methods
As you may know, Harriet has a nanny who speaks very little English – the theory is that she teaches Harriet Thai and Harriet teaches her English, but what’s ended up happening is effectively a Poto and Cabengo-type situation, so we use a message board to explain things that need to be explained. Here is how we explained that Harriet had to go to the doctor’s office at school this afternoon for some vaccinations:
Despite the fact that these pictures would appear to be impossible to decipher – for the record, they are meant to be a caduceus, a doctor, and a red cross – this worked & everyone successfully made it to the doctor’s. A triumph.
The Wat Next Door
Just downstream of the school is a small wat. We don’t usually spend much time on the river going downstream, as most of Bangkok is to the north of us. But the last time we were on the river we noticed the wat had an enormous reclining Buddha facing the river. So we went to go see. Here he is:
The wat also serves as dock for express boat service, albeit not one that’s used that often:
(It’s generally called Wat Chanyawat, as far as I can tell.) Like most wats on the river, there’s the opportunity to feed the catfish and/or pigeons:
There’s a lot going on at this wat: it hosts an immense number of massage parlors. There was also an old woman with an enormous sleeping pig.
Out of the Past
Just north of Saphan Put is the flower market, and just north of that is the electronics district, and just north of that is the Nightingale-Olympic:
The Nightingale-Olympic was founded in 1930 as Bangkok’s first department store. The current building dates from 1966, as does almost everything in it. It’s still very much open, and staffed by a number of ladies in pink polo shirts, but store appears to be frozen in amber.
Aside from the employees, there were no other customers. That’s fine, because there are plenty of mannequins.
Almost &nbasp; but not quite – everything is ancient. Here, for example, are some ancient games in glass cabinets:
It’s worth noting that this isn’t a museum: everything appears to be for sale, it’s just selling very slowly.
The prices, it’s worth noting, haven’t been frozen. These five-piece practice putting sets are going for 1750 baht, which is US$54. Vintage sets of golf clubs are going for 25,000 baht.
Upstairs is a wonderland of ancient musical instruments and exercise machinery:
“If you try one machine for five minutes,” the owner of the store explained to the Bangkok Post. “it is equal to riding a horse for five laps.”
The third floor, the stairway of which is seen below, is closed to the public, but you can see photos of the beauty salon here, and it features prominently in this music video. The owner again: “Any woman who stepped inside the Merle Norman Cosmetics Studio would turn out to be a beautiful lady.”
If you need a vibraphone in Bangkok, this is a fine place to buy one.
The good ladies running the store thought that my picture-taking was detracting from their retail efforts, and I was told not to take any more. I don’t think that was actually true, but I didn’t take any more pictures.
A Visit to the Pig Shrine
I know everyone wants to see our visit to the Crocodile Farm over the weekend, but the photos from that are on several phones and I need to get them all in one place. But! Yesterday I went to go visit the Pig Shrine, in Thai อนุสาวรีย์ หมู, which is pronounced Ànúsǎawárii Mǔu if you need to talk about this with a Thai who does not know the English words for “monument” and “pig,” respectively. We are not afraid to be helpful here! Here’s what the pig shrine looks like:
And here’s a closer view of the main pig, who’s been canopied, garlanded, and gilded:
This is what the sign tells you about the Pig Shrine – this is in all capitals, but I’ve spared you that particular idiosyncrasy:
The memorial was built in the year 1913, the year of Her Majesty the Queen Sri Phatcharinthra’s 50 birthday anniversary. It has another name as Sahachat Memorial, literally means the memorial of those who were born in the same year, which were Prince Narissara Nuwattiwong, Phraya Phipat Kosa (Celestino Xavier) and Phraya Ratcha Songkhram (Kon Hongsakun). All of the three had joinly built the memorial as a gesture of gratitude to the Queen. The memorial was made of metal cast in the pig sculpture, meaning Year of the Pig which was the Queen’s year of birth, as well as the 3 donors. The designer of the memorial was Prince Narissara Nuwattiwong.
The queen in question was one of the wives of Rama V, who was the mother of Ramas VI and VII. The Snake Farm is named after her. Prince Naritsara, the designer of the monument, was Rama V’s brother and important in Thai arts and crafts.
The pig shrine is fairly popular! It is not an unfair generalization to say that Thais do love pigs, though mostly for eating. Here are a few secondary pigs:
The pig shrine is on the western side of Rattanakosin, the royal island in the center of Bangkok. It’s across a canal from the Ministry of the Interior and the Department of Provincial Administration; though there aren’t any more protests around here, there are still barricades on the bridges across the canal:
Okay, more soon.
Riding the Rides in Bandar Seri Begawan
The other thing there is to do in Brunei is to go on all the rides that they have at the mall. I don’t know if this is the country’s only mall – it’s possible, it’s the only mall we saw, but who knows. But they have a lot of rides. Here are some of them, again in a numbered list. Brunei is an orderly place.
- Massage-chairs. One thing about Brunei is that it is absolutely full of massage-chairs. You put in a dollar and they massage you. They do howl unmercifully if you attempt to sit in them without giving them a dollar. This kind of ride is also available in the Kuala Lampur airport, which is crazy enough to deserve its own post which I will not write yet.
- Some kind of car in front of a shoe store. The poor child has clearly inherited my lack of interest in driving.
- A horse. Maybe a little gaudy, but decent enough. Note the air of resignation in the poor horse’s eyes.
- Some kind of train. The trend in rides seems to be to put a screen in the front of them, which is basically just admitting that the ride isn’t very good in its own right. Clearly not as good as the horse.
- A rocking bowl. I can’t actually tell what this one is supposed to be. It doesn’t seem like a car should rock from side to side. A car should go up and down or forward and backwards. Side to side is unnatural. Obviously this is a terrible ride.
- A Santa Claus. I think the Santa Claus is pushing his sleigh? Good enough. I do wonder what will happen to Santa Claus under Sharia law. Maybe he can be re-painted so that he isn’t so obviously an infidel.
- A Happy Deer. Harriet systematically went through all of the deer on this thing. It was far and away her favorite. Because she was riding this over and over again, I did not get a video of her riding it when it decided to start playing “Yankee Doodle,” so you will have to imagine that for yourself.
And those are the rides that you can ride on in Brunei. They kept us busy for a while.
What There Is to Do in Brunei
We went to Brunei last weekend, or, more specifically, the capital, Bandar Seri Begawan. Brunei is a tiny county on the island of Borneo. You may be wondering: what is there to do in Brunei? Here is a helpfully numbered list, maybe with pictures.
- Don’t litter. Here is the thing about BSB: it’s really clean! Bangkok is basically constructed entirely of impacted trash, sometimes put together fetchingly, as is the case with Wat Arun. There is basically no trash in Brunei, which is because there are signs everywhere threatening a $1000 fine (that’s around $750 in U.S. dollars, but still) for your first offense littering. We were very careful not to litter.
- Drink Kickapoo Joy Juice. Kickapoo Joy Juice (see previously) appears to be Brunei’s national drink, so we had some more. There’s also a fine drink that has a rhinoceros on the can which I can only hope is not made of rhinoceroses. If you find this drink and your Malay is solid enough that you can ascertain that it is not made of rhinoceroses, you should try it, as it is delicious.
- Be careful what you say. Brunei is in the midst of changes, as the Sultan, faced with pressure from the lack of oil revenue, has decided to institute Sharia law, which takes hold in a month. The big excitement when we were there was that the limb-chopping machine had just arrived, which I guess you need to have is you’re going to punish thieves in a modern manner. The Borneo Bulletin on the day we arrived announced that certain words were forbidden to non-Muslims:
We were careful not to say any of them. The Borneo Bulletin, by the way, is an astonishing publication.
- Eat delicious food. Brunei is full of delicious food. We ate a lot of it. I didn’t take any pictures of it.
- Visit the stilt village.. BSB is a modern city, but most of the people in it live in a village across the river constructed on stilts, called Kampong Ayer. You can get a motorboat for $1 who will ferry you across the river and you can wander around the village. It’s supposedly been in the same place for 900 years, though most of the houses are newer. Here’s one edge of it, looking back across the river to the main city:
- Attempt to visit the mosque. They have a fine mosque, which has its own lagoon and an enormous decorative boat in it:
Unfortunately we first tried to visit on Friday, when the mosque is not open to non-worshippers, and then we tried to visit on Sunday, when the Sultan was attending special services to prepare for National Day, which was on Sunday. So we couldn’t go in. The mosque looks very nice from outside, and it lights up green at night. We did our best. - Admire the fish. The food courts have large numbers of live fish for the hungry visitor to admire. These ones – I think they’re snakeheads? – were the best:
- Attempt to see the monkeys and crocodiles. You can get a boat to take you down river to see the colonies of proboscis monkeys and crocodiles that live there. The boats are small and fast so this is pretty exciting:
That said, you will note that there are no pictures of proboscis monkeys or crocodiles here. I did see one crocodile – a big one! – but he went underwater as soon as I saw him. Our poor guide kept stopping our boat at the places in the swamps where the monkeys live:
He would expertly call the monkeys – I wish I’d recorded his hooting, it sounded extremely authentic – but the monkeys did not seem to want to be bothered. Perhaps this is because every other tourist to Brunei is also in a boat going to see the monkeys, and the novelty has worn off for them. Who could blame them? That said, the river was extremely pleasant. We did see some water monitors, so it wasn’t a complete write-off. Also that crocodile.
- Visit the Royal Regalia Building. The Royal Regalia Building is a museum consisting of all the things that have been given to the Sultan, as well as the various paraphernalia involved in being in charge of a small state – swords, coaches, umbrellas. They don’t let you take photos in there, so you can’t see what we saw. The best thing they have there is a display of how the agreement with the British that made Brunei a country was done – they have the actual table and pictures of the people involved, and if you press the right buttons their faces light up. It is maybe an underwhelming museum.
- Other monkeys. We did see a monkey at the market, and some up in the jungle when we climbed a hill behind our hotel. They were not proboscis monkeys, so we were a little disappointed in them. But still: monkeys.
- Inspect the cats. Brunei is full of cats. Some of them live in the stilt village:
In general, they are friendlier than the cats of Bangkok.
So yes. That’s what there is to do in Brunei. I hope this list has been helpful to you.
We Were in Brunei
We are back in Bangkok now. More on this soon, there’s a lot going on here that I have to catch up on first. Here is how things are in Brunei:
Important Cat Café Update
It turns out that there is a brand new cat café right down the street from us, maybe a twenty minute walk. They are building an enormous and insane shopping complex (this is what they do in Bangkok) on Chan Road; it is still heavily under construction though they claimed it would open in December. The complex is named (in English) Vanilla Moon, and I cannot for the life of me imagine what that is meant to convey except perhaps a perfume ad.
But Vanilla Moon is not important. The only establishment in Vanilla Moon that is open is the cat café, which is named Cara Meow Cat Cafe. As you can tell from the name, it is Italian themed. It has a slogan, which is “All About ‘Meow'”. This makes slightly more sense than Vanilla Moon, so I won’t worry about it.
Since we are exciting people leading exciting lives, we went to visit Cara Meow on Saturday night. Well. The first thing about this cat café is that it’s in the basement, which maybe makes sense? The cats aren’t tempted by birds, as was the case at the other place. The second thing about this cat café is that it’s smaller and generally less splendid than the other cat café. It is extremely difficult to count up the number of cats they have at a cat café, but they seemed to have about a dozen, maybe half what they have at the other place. Also less cat paraphernalia but who cares about that.
What matters, of course, is the quality of the cats. The cats here are considerably less fluffy than the cats at the other place, being as they are mostly of the short-haired persuasion. Some are of the variety that have stubby ears. I was not sure about the pedigrees of the cats but I was assured they were very fancy indeed. I am not an expert. These cats did generally seem smaller. They were also a bit more skittish: probably because being cats at a cat café is new to them and it takes time to grow into the position. Harriet seemed reasonably pleased with them. There were not threats of thousand-baht fines for picking the cats up, which made me worry less.
The distinguishing feature of this cat café would appear to be that it allows you to bring your own cats. Wikipedia has nothing to say about this, but I expect if someone were to subscribe us to Cat Fancy we would learn that all the up and coming cat cafés are doing this. Some people brought in a pair of astonishing beasts. One was a gray long-haired cat who had been given a lion cut with a fluffy tail – I’m sure there’s a technical name for this haircut but I am not a cat groomer so I don’t know – and the other was white and with a roughly similar haircut, though it was wearing a Christmas sweater and may in fact have been a ferret. They appeared to get along with the other cats. I was not quite sure of the ethics of taking pictures of someone else’s cat in a cat café but here is a picture of one of them:
The cat in the foreground is one of the regular cats. And here is a picture of the rest of the cat café:
Also they serve Italian food because it is an Italian cat café. Harriet was extremely pleased with her spaghetti carbonara, which the cats did not appear to be interested in.