The Return From The Motherland part III

Click here for part II.


The beginning of the second leg of our trip started off nicely. My uncle (aka “The Thai Tycoon” or Triple T for short) had purchased breakfast at the resort for us during our entire stay. Sweet! It was wonderful every morning to start the day eating good food and having a nice time talking to my amazing wife. However, that was probably the only relaxing part of our time. As I mentioned before, we did everything at high speed in order to squeeze every minute of everyday like we were making real orange juice.

The Floating Market

It was also a pleasure to see my other uncle (aka The Administrator), who works as an administrator for Toyota overseeing major accounts in major parts of the world not in the United States. Do you know how I know he’s big time? He’s required to play golf with the other bigwigs in the company. Sweet! For a couple days, he brought his wife (auntie Kanda – who speaks five languages fluently) and two boys (my cousins) to go sightseeing. First stop, The Floating Market. It’s a big tourist attraction in Bangkok although the locals hardly ever go. It makes sense. Why would they want to go to a market on the water when they could go to a regular market on land? Whereas the foreigners would say, “We don’t have anything like this at home, lets go to a market that’s actually on water.”

Yes, it is literally a market on different boats, each with different items ranging from fruits, food, and other merchandise that tourists may be interested in. Before we got into the boats we decided to have breakfast, which was a bowl of noodles (or a couple bowls in my case) eaten by the river. Katie even enjoyed the bowl of noodles, until she saw the ladies who served us washing the dishes in the dirty river after we ate (minor detail). I just laughed it off and told her since I’m Thai I was immune to any diseases in Thailand and she’s also immune by virtue of marrying a Thai guy. That’s just how it works.

Once on board the driver (or is it sailor?) had to navigate through narrow lanes of water going from store to store and boat to boat. If there was anything we wanted at either the store or another boat, we simply signaled the driver to stop and then could make our purchase. After some time, more boats started piling up and then traffic jams began to occur. Since there are no traffic lights or road rules to abide by, it was the “every man for myself” mentality. I lost count of how many times I thought we were going to tip over and fall into the dirty river due to crashing into other boats. Furthermore, I couldn’t believe that no matter where we are at, whether by land or sea, we ran into traffic! I HATE traffic!

(Side note: When I came back home I was talking to my brother-in-law, Mike, about the trip and he mentioned seeing the pictures of The Floating Market and recalled seeing the movie Anaconda. He decided he wasn’t about to visit the Floating Market because it looked too similar to where the Anacondas were in the movie. I assured him there were no Anacondas but only crocodiles and most of them weren’t giant crocodiles. They only have those in the Philippines.)

The Old City

Afterwards, my uncle (aka The Administrator) and aunt (aka The Linguist) took us to The Old City north of Bangkok. It’s a place in Bangkok where there are still remnants of . . . you guessed it . . . The Old City. Since I was Thai I was only charged the Thai price. However, foreigners get a price hike at around 500%. You could probably have guessed that it was difficult for my wife to pass as a Thai person.

We took a lot photos and simply enjoyed the sights. Or at least my wife did. I was busy pretending to be in a Mortal Kombat movie and reenacting all the scenes and quoting the video game lines, “Get over here!” “Finish him!” It’s not everyday you get to wander around century old cities and pretend you’re a ninja with superpowers.



Riding Elephants

Now if you’re at The Old City, you simply can’t leave without riding an elephant. Katie’s never rode an elephant before so she was pretty excited about it. As we were waiting in line we noted how cute the elephant looked and wondered how they would make as pets, until we saw the wheelbarrows of elephant feces they hauled off. I don’t think I’ll complain about picking up the dog feces for a while.

Finally, it was our turn, and we climbed up to ride the elephant. Of course we got a block down the road and the driver was already asking for a tip. Really? One block and that requires a tip? No doubt he was thinking, “Hey, this guy is married to a white woman. He MUST be rich.” The cool thing was the elephant extended his truck and grabbed the bill and gave it to his trainer. Smart animal. Why can’t the dogs do this at home?

I felt privileged that I took my wife on her first elephant ride. Now if anything were to happen to me, and my wife remarries, her new (and much less handsome) husband wouldn’t be able to say that. Yes, it was I. I took her across the world and we rode a freakin’ elephant! Going horseback riding isn’t half as exotic. And horses don’t have trunks, so I win.





The Crocodile Farm

The next place we visited was the crocodile farm. The crocodile farm doesn’t only have crocodiles but also tigers and elephants. Mainly, though, it was a farm full of crocodiles. We had an opportunity while we were there to see a show where elephants reenacted ancient war scenes and played soccer. (Interesting combination, I know.)

As we watched the show, I thought to myself, “If elephants can play soccer should we really consider it a sport? I don’t see any elephants dunking a basketball.” After the show you could overpay to feed the elephants sugar sticks, you know, the very sugar sticks that the trainer gives them for free after we’re all gone. Admittedly though, feeding the elephants was fun but not nearly as fun as feeding the crocodiles raw chicken meat while standing on a platform about three feet high directly over them. I know if we were in the States there would probably have been a hundred safety violations. But this isn’t the States, it’s Thailand and that’s how Thai people roll. If there’s money to be made, safety be da****!

You know when you’re at a pond and you throw little pieces of bread to watch the fishes come biting? And when you start throwing bigger pieces they come swarming and start fighting each other over the food? Well, just imagine that but with crocodiles. It was pretty sweet. It was like watching the nature channel but being there live. I wanted to throw a dear in there just to see what would happen. I know I’m horrible.

Believe it or not, we did all that in ONE DAY. So you could imagine by the time Katie and I got to the hotel we didn’t say much to each other and simply crashed. I had dreams of riding a war elephant and fighting giant crocodiles that night, and I didn’t even drink. What a vacation!!! If you think we’re done you’d be wrong . . . more on The Return From the Motherland in the days ahead. Stay tuned.