Thailand video of greatness!

We took a whole day last week and whipped up a tribute movie documenting our time in Thailand. For our sake (and yours) it's only one song long, but we had enough video footage to make a much longer one. For that reason it's pretty fast-paced, so watch it a couple times ;) It shows the best of our time in Thailand! We also chose this song before it got popular in the U.S..that's annoying, but we used it anyway.

Eventually we'll catch up on all of the blog posts we've missed (...), but a movie is probably more exciting anyway. We sure miss Thailand and the adventures we had there every day, but we are happy to be home with family and friends and catching some summer before school starts up again. Be sure to catch up with us on our regular blog! just-an-adventure {dot} blogspot {dot} com.

Enjoy ^_^

A taste of old Siam

When we first started thinking about how to spend our vacation days, we really wanted to make a trip to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat, but the longer we’ve been here, and the more Baht we’ve spent, that dream has sort of fizzled out.  Luckily, our lonely planet Thailand book, provided us with a lot of tempting substitutes.  Siam has been around for hundreds of years, and hundreds of kings, until around fifty years ago when the name changed to Thailand.   Constantly at war with Burmese and Laotian armies, there are plenty of ancient strongholds, temples, ruins, and capitols.   One of the more recent capitols, Ayutthaya is conveniently one hour North of Bangkok, and when we started putting our itinerary together for the long weekend, this was at the top of our list!  Lucky for us, our hostel teamed up with a tour group and provided day-long tours to many of the surrounding tourist attractions, including Ayutthaya!  Tuesday morning we woke up at six, got ready, packed up our backpacks, ate a few pieces of toast, and loaded up in the tour van.  We were one of the first to be picked up, but over the next half hour we stopped be a lot of little guesthouses and boutique hotels, and our van filled up with Koreans and Europeans.  We’re still pretty sure we were the only ones on the trip who spoke English as our native language!  It was an amazing trip and a really meaningful cultural experience.  We made a bunch of stops at different ancient ruins, some original, some restored, and some still in use as Buddhist temples. 

First stop was Wat Phukhao Thong.  This temple was a little bit outside the city, and was built in 1357!  It had been restored at some point, but was still overgrown by plants, and looked like it was starting to lean to one side a bit.

Next stop was Wat Lokayasutha.  This temple had another giant reclining Buddha, but the rest of the structure was mostly destroyed.  Apparently the  architecture in this and a few of the other buildings in Ayutthaya shows the time period that Siam was a Hindu country, but then converted to Buddhism.

We don’t remember the name of the third stop…and we can’t exactly find it anywhere in our tour book, but it was also really cool! It’s still in use and we even saw some monks there being filmed by a film crew. The temple itself was wrapped in a HUGE piece of golden fabric, and every Buddha statue lining the outer wall around the temple was wore matching sashes. It was impressive to see so many Buddhas in one place! Our tour guide informed us that the hand position of these Buddhas represent victory.

Wat Phra Mahathat was a stark contrast from the stop before. The collection of buildings was located in front of the Grand Palace, which is interesting since we thought it reminded us of the temples at the Grand Palace in Bangkok! They were built in 1374 in the same Khmer style as the structures at Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Urge to see ruins fulfilled! The most striking detail of this place was the Buddha images. When Burma invaded the city, they set fire to the buildings and cut the heads off all the Buddha statues—ironic because all of the Buddhas here are in the victory pose. We couldn’t get over how impressive the sight was even now, and wished we could go back in time and see it in its prime. It would have been enormous; the ruins stretched on forever!

Another amazing sight was this Buddha head wrapped in the roots of a bodhi tree. No one really knows why this head was left when the Burmese invaded—perhaps it was abandoned or simply too heavy for the invaders to haul away. It’s a highly photographed monument in Thailand, and is commonly seen on postcards, partially because of the mystery surrounding it but also because Buddhism began after Buddha was enlightened under a bodhi tree. Pretty amazing how fitting it is! When photographing the Buddha head  you are not allowed to stand, because it is disrespectful for your head to be higher than Buddha’s. You’ll get yelled at if you try!

We stopped for lunch at a local restaurant. We don’t have pictures because we were too hungry to document it..but it was amusing to see how differently we ate as compared to the other tourists with us who have probably only been in Thailand for two weeks at most. Most people didn’t even attempt to use the spoon, they were dousing their food in sweet chili sauce, and the girl across the table from us took two bites of rice and nothing else. We, on the other hand, ate like it was our last meal, enjoying the more mild version of these dishes that are more suited for tourist. So much for trying to dispel the myth that Americans eat a ton..

Wat Phra Si Sanphet served as the ancient palace for 117 years. Most of it was rubble, but three main chedi have been reconstructed to give a taste of what the whole collection of buildings would have looked like. The Viharn Phra Mongkol Bopi Buddha was in a nearby hall, and it’s one of the biggest bronze Buddhas in Thailand. For hundreds of years it was exposed to the elements after its temple was burnt down by the Burmese army, and it was further damaged by lightning after that. In 1955 the Burmese prime minister donated 200,000 baht to reconcile what his country did 200 years earlier.

We were quite exhausted after this historical view of Siam, so when we got back to Bangkok we wandered around a nearby market. 

We were doing pretty well at avoiding the vendors until we saw a sign for a foot fish massage. We paused for just long enough that their employee caught us and offered us a deal we couldn’t pass up. Next thing we knew our feet were washed and we were sticking our feet into GIANT tanks full of hundreds of little fishes waiting to nibble at our feet. It..was the tickliest thing in the world. The fish were supposedly eating the dead skin off our feet, and with so many of them chowing down it was as much as we could do to not laugh our heads off. They were thorough, getting in between our toes, around our heels, and even up our calves a little bit. Fifteen hilarious minutes later, our feet were admittedly smoother!

Needing to catch our bus soon, we checked out of the hostel, explored the market a little more, ate some red curry and mango sticky rice, and headed to the bus station. We took one last look at the city and went on our way!

Saying goodbye to our awesome hostel

Party bus on the ride home

After a weekend full of new sights, our familiar Northern Thailand mountains were a welcome sight! We had an awesome view from the front seats on the second story of our bus!!

One day in Bangkok

We woke up early to Skype our families for Father’s Day! We use the internet a lot out here and it does an amazing job at helping us feel connected, but this was one of those times that it really seemed like a miracle. We used Google + to do a giant Graf video chat from Thailand, New York, Arizona, Lindon, and even a car ride to Vail, Colorado! We’d seen the Google + ads featuring the group chat, but honestly, it was the coolest thing and really made us feel like we were all sitting around chatting on Father’s Day—a huge accomplishment considering we were eating breakfast at a hostel in Bangkok! We called the Lamb home, where every other member of the family just happened to have gathered earlier that day, and we felt like it was as good as it could be to get to video chat and be apart of it!

We started out with a plan to do a walking tour as set out by our Lonely Planet Discover Thailand book, so we walked to the historical sights from our hostel. Here we met our first overly helpful Thai stranger who offered to get us a tuk tuk, or motorized taxi cart, for really cheap to take us down to the harbor for a 900 baht boat tour (about $30). We somehow wiggled our way out of that one, but man, these guys are pretty good! It was the first of many “wily strangers” as the signs call them, and we got good at not letting them ask their questions and pull us in to whatever they want us to spend money on. Such a joke!

Where we intended to start our walking tour--the Grand Palace

The forementioned wily stranger told us that the Grand Palace was closed to non-Thai people until 1 pm, and although we weren’t sure if he was lying or not, we were on the opposite block from the entrance so we decided to start  with the temple structure of Wat Pho, most well-known for the reclining Buddha. Wat Pho is also the birthplace of Thai massage!

He's huge!

We never see American flags here! We had begun to feel unappreciated, so we were super excited to see this one.

Free water! And boy do tourists need it in Bangkok. We managed to go our entire trip without buying any--a huge accomplishment!

At this point we realized we were hungry, so we sat down on a bench to consult our tourist book, when all of the sudden another helpful stranger latched onto us and started asking the same questions. Where are you going? Where are you from? Have you been to the Grand Palace? Do you need a tour? These people are relentless! We told him we were looking for a place to eat and he pointed around the corner. We managed to shake him down the street, and what do you know, he was actually right about finding food around the corner! One rule we try to follow in any situation is to not eat at restaurants who don’t have customers, but here in Thailand we try not to eat at restaurants who don’t have any Thai customers. It’s a way to spot and avoid the really touristy, overpriced food! We passed up a restaurant with plenty of white people for a restaurant where the tables and chairs were literally on the sidewalk. We had delicious Chinese style noodles and Pad Thai, and were content with the fact that we had found ourselves food so quickly for so cheap, and had to give the wily stranger some credit for helping us.

Eating on the sidewalk

Delicious!

After lunch we set off to find Wat Arun, a temple that was built when the capitol of Siam was moved to Bangkok. We knew we had to take a ferry across a river to get there, but we hadn’t found any more details than that. We walked down an alley way full of hilarious sights--boxes of dried fish and squid, cartoon massages, and ESL at its finest--to get to the ferry entrance.

Turns out the ferry cost a whopping 3 baht (10 cents) to go across. We get charged that much for the bathroom sometimes! The ride across the river took all of a whole minute, and we were soon on our way.

Waiting to board

Riding across the river

Sometimes, you just can’t help but be a tourist. Sometimes you have to completely be aware of what you are doing and how over-the-top or showy it is, but you just smile and go along with it. And then you pay money to have someone dress you up in Siamese royalty outfits and take pictures of you. And you never regret a second of it!

Finally we made it to the Grand Palace, where lucky Justin got to rent some pants to cover past his knees. The history of this place is awesome.  Everything is so incredibly ornate and detailed, they just put their best in for the royalty! Nat told us that the best of everything in Thailand is found in the Grand Palace, and we could see what he meant! In one of the temples, we saw an artist touching up the gold paint on one of thousands of murals on the wall.  Another cool thing about this place: a lot of the Gold really was gold, not just the colored paint you see on most of the temples around here.  The palace is where the Royal family lived until the former king was assassinated there.  The temples on ground were the most stunning things we saw on our trip, and they house the Emerald Buddha- the symbol of Thai Buddhism.

We've been wanting a good picture of Thai Buddhist monks since we got here.  This one was perfect!

You're not supposed to take a picture of the Emerald Buddha, but we sneakily tried to get this one. Too bad  Asians are professional photo-bombers.

After the grand palace, we caught a tuk tuk from a persistant driver who offered us a deal we couldn’t pass up, and we went on what felt like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride through the city to the mall, darting in and out of traffic, changing lanes, and accelerating towards red lights. It was exciting, to say the least.

The Siam Paragon mall is HUGE, with seven floors, a movie theater, an aquarium, and a supermarket. We explored a bit and then saw Madagascar 3 (loved it!! Laughed our heads off, we highly recommend it), which was really fun since we haven’t seen a movie in the theater since the Hunger Games, I think. It felt so normal to buy movie tickets and popcorn! We settled into our seats and laughed at the over-dramatized previews for orange-flavored milk and collagen drink for your skin. One preview in particular started and before we knew it, everyone in the theater stood up so we hurried and followed suit. It was a tribute to the king! There were many pictures and videos showing his goodness and the service he has rendered for Thailand, with a children’s choir playing in the background. It was quite touching to see that the reverence and respect they have for their king even permeates non-political things like seeing a movie! The movie started, and I know what you’re thinking: no the movie was not in Thai! It was in English and there were Thai subtitles. We saw it in 3D and the subtitles even stood out a little..it was a nice touch haha.

We were too exhausted to fight our taxi driver about using the meter to calculate the price on the way home, so we over-paid but it was worth it to get home and hit the sack again!

Good morning, Bangkok

Near 5 am the sky started to get lighter and we noticed the sights outside were changing. The pavement got more smooth, the street lights were more regular, and we were driving on an actual highway. We knew we were getting close! After an hour we finally arrived at a huge, overwhelming bus station where our country director Nat and his dad were waiting to drive us to his house. We were grateful to be saved from all the taxi drivers (we started referring to them as vultures), and we rode in Nat’s family’s van back to their house. I didn’t really get any pictures of the house, but it was the nicest place we’ve been in Thailand! Decorated beautifully in a gorgeous gated community—with access to a private lake! We took a spin around the lake in a paddle boat before an awesome breakfast of rice with cilantro, fish balls, garlic, and spices all mixed in to our individual liking. Nat’s driver took us to the nearest LDS chapel where we were able to attend sacrament meeting. We didn’t have the time to make a trip all the way downtown to an English ward so yet again we listened through a Thai meeting and sang the hymns in what probably sounds way off to everyone in the congregation, but we really loved the experience to worship with the Thai saints in such a big city!

After church we set out to see the city. We started in a very crowded area where vendors block the sidewalk and you feel like anyone around you could be pickpocketing you—a pretty overwhelming first taste of the city! We stopped at a small restaurant with a lot of character for lunch. Big cities have so much character.

Deep in menu comtemplation 

Light bulb light art

 Dog art

Next we walked to the major attraction of Bangkok, the Grand Palace. Every visitor must have their shoulders and knees covered, so while we waited for some people in our group to rent pants, a family approached Justin and asked him if their son could ask him a couple questions for a class..so random! The son was so shy and his mom ended up asking all the questions, and we could tell he felt awkward, so the whole thing was just too funny. For the first time since we’ve been in Thailand, someone made a Justin Timberlake reference before a Justin Bieber one. Sad how refreshing that was!

Surrounded by Thai people

This kid is obviously having the time of his life..more like he's embarrassed of his mom!

No one in our group wanted to pay to go inside the palace, so we had them take a picture of us in front of it and promised eachother we’d be back the next morning. Nat compared it to what the Colusseum is to Italy, so we didn’t want to miss it!

Next stop was the Golden Mount, which used to be the highest structure in Bangkok before it was modernized. It’s basically this dome-shaped building with a staircase winding around it up to the top with a great view of the city around it.

Gong ringing, a model of the Golden Mount, beautiful views of the city

(Trying our hand at collages so we don't suffocate you with vacation photos..be patient while we figure it out!)

Next we visited the oldest university in Thailand. People who study there are the ones who end up working for the king or in government, so it’s a pretty big deal. Also, most Thai royalty studies abroad, but current king’s daughter was the first person of the royal family to graduate from a Thai university, and she graduated from this one! Graduation is coming up, so there were groups of graduates in fancy robes having photo shoots all around the university grounds. It was pretty entertaining to watch!

 Paparazzi picture of this guy's photoshoot

Beautiful architecture at the university 

Justin's a cutie

 Hunger Games-themed new student orientation. May the salamander be ever in your favor!

We ended our evening with noodle night at Nat’s house. We were glad to be there on Sunday evening for it! We slurped delicious noodle soup while watching Thailand’s Got Talent (click here for a taste—hilarious!). It was a great experience for us to hang out and we’re grateful for Nat’s family for taking us in for the day, driving us around everywhere, feeding us a delicious dinner, and helping us find our hostel. We haven’t experienced Thai hospitality to that degree yet!

Elephant tusks at Nat's house. They're enormous!

Nat and his dad drove us through the confusing one way streets and highways, and navigated us to our hostel at about eight. We were ready to settle in, since we didn’t exactly have the most restful sleep on the bus the night before. The city could wait until we were ready for it!