Golden Mount (Phu Khao Thong) is an artificial hill inside of Wat Saket. It’s composed of the dirt that used to fill some of the canals; once it was the tallest structure in Bangkok, but that hasn’t been true for years. But it’s a pleasant walk to the top, where you can see the whole city, and back down again:
Also there are bells to ring:
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Somewhere in the enormous mess that is MBK is a fake version of IKEA. I don’t know how good the products are, but the names are certainly better than those of the real IKEA:
I just ate the bulk of one-kilo bag of these. They are plumper and sweeter than the passion fruit I’m used to, not to mention cheaper. (The going rate is about $1.25 for a large bag.)
Came with its own denture popsicle. The lemonade came from IceDea, a conceptual ice cream shop at the Bangkok Art & Culture Center. I’m pretty sure the dentures and the accompanying pink drink were made with Hale’s Blue Boy red sala syrup, a common sight at the many iced drink carts around town. It was delicious, though eating teeth (even in popsicle form) is a bit creepy!
Very poorly! Though it looks like he was up for another try:
Also poorly photographed was our visit to the snake farm. The snake farm is in the middle of Bangkok; it’s run by the Thai Red Cross and named after Queen Saovabha. They breed poisonous snakes so that their venom can be used to create antivenom; if you arrive in the morning, you can see them milking the snakes, but we didn’t get there in time to see that. They do have a wide variety of snakes (both venomous and not) on view, and Harriet was initially pleased to see them all:
After the snake-handling show, which is fairly impressive – they let king cobras wander around – they let the visitors get their pictures taken with a Burmese python. Harriet was initially extremely pleased about this prospect, but then remembered that she hates to be photographed:
After that we went into the museum, where this exhibit explains how to beat snakebite victims with sticks. That did not help him.
Somehow we didn’t get many photos of the Erawan Museum over the weekend despite its being one of the most obviously photographable things we’ve visited yet. It’s in Samut Prakan, the province immediately south of Bangkok; Samut Prakan also contains Ancient Siam, an enormous park containing replicas of the wonders of Thailand for people to wander around; we have not visited this yet. Like the Erawan Museum, Ancient Siam was constructed by Lek Viriyaphant, who seems to have had a lot of money and grand ideas, though this was not explained to my satisfaction at the Erawan Museum, which is an enormous building shaped like the three-headed elephant Erawan, who figures in the Hindu cosmos:
Inside the building is a shrine and filled with religious art, both old and new: the structure is of relatively recent construction, and you can climb all the way up into the elephants. The grounds are beautiful and make for a nice escape from Bangkok. After this we went to the Bang Nam Pheung floating market, a journey partially accomplished on a rickety speed boat, but we didn’t take many pictures of that so you’ll have imagine how idyllic that was.
So that I can figure out exactly what’s going on here:
…on our way to the Erawan Museum. The dog was either wearing a toupee or had an elaborate mohawk dye job. Impressive either way.
Arthur is doing very well living on the balcony:
