From a Silk Purse to a Beggar's Bowl

Marilee had Monday off and was up for doing more in Bangkok – and I guess I wasn’t in a rush to get elsewhere in Thailand. We had Pad Thai for breakfast (there’s not what we would call breakfast food in Thailand – you eat the same thing for several meals a day)


and saw a travel agent to make plans to go away on Wednesday, which was also a day off for her. Then it was off to the Jim Thompson house. Jim Thompson was an American who had been in the OSS and is credited with reviving the Thai silk industry. His original designs are still seen in the fine and expensive silks sold in Jim Thompson boutiques. He disappeared while hiking in Malaysia’s Cameron Highlands and the mystery has never been solved. For his house in Bangkok he took seven traditional Thai teak houses and put them together, filling them with collections of porcelain, furnishings and art.



We had a nice tour and then a delicious lunch; the menu had options from various regions of the country (for example, some areas have more Indian influence, some more Malaysian – all delicious). And I bought a hat (cotton) and a cell phone case (silk) at the boutique.


Then we took a water taxi to another part of town – unlike the river boat, which seemed to be filled with tourists, this was all locals and us, speeding along a canal.


The route ended near the Golden Mount, a temple high on a hill – Marilee waited at the bottom while I climbed the steps to the temple and the magnificent panoramic view (the most exciting part of which, for me, was a newish cable-stay bridge – I may not have been a civil engineer for very long, but I do like a good bridge).




Then we took a walk to Chinatown, via Ban Baht, an area known for hand-made beggars’ bowls. Monks use these for their pre-dawn rounds, gathering food. They rely on food offerings and don’t cook on their own; they have to eat everything before noon. In Thai Buddhism there are a lot of ways to “make merit,” and one of them is giving food to monks. But – as with so much else, it seems – the art of hand-making the alms bowls is getting lost.



These are really just for tourists now; the monks themselves use factory-made (even imported!) bowls. I didn’t buy one a the time, but I kept thinking about it, and I did go back for one towards the end of my stay – and one for my sister, who joked that in this economy, it might come in handy! Chinatown was crowded and crazy, with a lot of stalls and shops – that is, Chinatown-like. We looked for a place to eat that Marilee knew of, but couldn’t find it, so opted for Vietnamese food near her house instead. We were close enough to the water that we took the river boat back to the Skytrain, and on the way home I took one of my favorite photos of the trip – one of four monks in the monks-only standing area (monks also get priority seating on public transportation).


After dinner, we had Thai foot massages at a fancy spa-like place (as compared to a storefront – but the massages were still the equivalent of about $10!). After the sensory overload of Chinatown – not to mention all the walking we did – that was great.