Pakistan Journal: The Royal Bangkok Academy

When I was a little kid (6 or 7 years old) I was in a musical called the King and I. My brother and I played twins in a cast with several other little children who represented the children of a Buddhist King. All that I can remember from the musical was that we wore red outfits, crowns made from tuna cans spray-painted gold with wheel macarioni and sequins, and that we sang a song in which was the line, "The royal Bangkok Academy".

I never thought that one day I would end up in Bangkok.

(Pictured is the Thai flag with one of the largest Buddhist Temples that we came across behind it. This particular temple had golden statues telling the story of the life of the Buddha.)

Obviously Thailand wasn't our final destination, but since we had an eight hour layover, several of us decided to stretch our legs and see the city. You need to understand that the guys who decided to go on this adventure were not the type of men who wanted to jump in a car to see the downtown. No--we were the 10 adventurous ones that wanted to see the city for what it really is. Most specifically, we wanted to jump in the boats that you see on National Geographic and ride to the back canals of the city. I wanted to see where people of Bangkok actually lived and not where the tourists would be able to buy chinsey gifts to prove that they had been there.

Jeff and I took the lead to find a tour guide that could take care of us and get us to where we wanted to go. Before long, we had secured guides and had given up our passports for a couple of minutes (this made all of us a little nervous). We never let the guy with the passports out of our sight! They took great care of us and before we knew it, we were outside in the blazing heat of Bangkok.

I was excited to learn from our tour guide about the city, Buddhism, the canal system, food, etc. Little did I know that the tour guide that we got--we called him Mr. T by his desire--couldn't really speak a lick of English. The guy had to be 80 years old and spoke whatever language that he spoke very loud and slowly, hoping that we would understand. After about 10 minutes, we all gave up trying and proceeded to do a lot of smiling and nodding.

The tour was quite interesting. We saw where the King of Thailand lived and several Buddhist temples. On the back canals we did get to see river life and saw several little canoes filled with fruits and vegetables--kind of like a farmer's market in a boat. If you stayed in one place long enough, you could eat your fill of vegetables, fruits, breads, and assorted meats.

At one point, our guide pulled us up to a doc where he wanted all of us to pay $20 (I think) for a loaf of bread to throw into the water. As soon as bread hit the surface, thousands of catfish would surface and fight for it. Catfish aren't the most attractive fish and they were pretty aggressive. The tour guide got the biggest kick out of the deal but all of us were wierded out by the whole situation. It must have been some sort of offering because it was right in front of a huge Temple. I guess monks take every shape and form--they were usually wearing orange though.

For more on our canal tour, read my post "Greetings from Thailand".

By the time we got back to the airport, we had been traveling for more hours than any of us cared to think about and were ready to get to Pakistan. In a couple short hours we would board our final flight which would put us into Islamabad at 12:00am.

This was it--the last leg--next stop: Pakistan. Little did we know what was in store for us when we got there!