in and around Bangkok, Thailand

On December 13 we bid farewell to the Indian subcontinent and delved right into the center of South East Asia – Bangkok. And what better way to travel than with your wife as baggage handler. But to be honest we are traveling light.

Honestly – that's all our bags for one year – for both of us. That's all we've taken.

Anyway, Bangkok is a lot of fun with tons of things to see and experiences to have, but it's business first, and pleasure second, and the first order of business was to turn in our passports to the Chinese embassy to get tourist visas and just three days later we had them back.

I was in Thailand in 2001 or so, and it really seems to be doing well as a nation. The country seems quite modern and affluent. Things are organized, the cities are clean, there is a modern look to everything – in general it seems quite successful. One of the many reasons I love Thailand is the abundance of massage shops. But this was a new one to me: a “fish massage”.

That's right – massage by fish. There's a shallow pool filled with these little guys (maybe three centimeters long) and they scrape at your dead skin with their sharp teeth, but they never bite. Here's what they looked like around one of my feet.

How did it feel, you might ask? Maybe this pic will explain it a little

Or maybe that doesn't quite describe it. How about this short video. And sorry – but the camera was held at an angle while recording, and I don't have the ability to rotate it, so you'll just have to tilt your head. Anyway...

Well, all that action tires a guy out. Time to go for some good old “non-toxic” food.

I'm glad they were explicit about this section of the menu. I'd hate to accidentally order from the other part of the menu.

As I said, Thailand has a lot to do and see, and Bangkok is no exception. One of the first things we did was to go visit the 40 meter long reclining Buddha at Wat Pho. It's so long that it's difficult to fit him into a single picture.

Consistent with the clean and crisp look of Bangkok are the wonderfully restored temples at Wat Pho, the golden Buddha, the grand palace, etc. Here's a few colorful shots showing the splendor to be found in Bangkok....

While our passports were being processed for obtaining our Vietnam visas we decided to spend a few days touring outside of Bangkok. Our first stop was at the floating markets in the village of Damnoen Saduak where buyers and sellers move about in long thin boats making deals for everything from wood carvings to hot meals.

We carried on to the famous bridge over the river Kwai. This is a bridge constructed by Allied POWs interned by their Japanese captors. The POWs were charged with the task of building this bridge as part of the “death railway” to support Japan's world war II expansion into the Asian mainland. The railway was needed as their main supply line.

Nearby was a representative from a zoo showing off a baby leopard. For a donation to their zoo, you could feed the little guy and get a pic. Unfortunately, these cat's won't be re-introduced into the wild because the poachers will just continue to kill them (which is why they are protected in zoos in the area in the first place).

Next on our little tour of the area was a visit to an old age home for elephants. We got up early for the daily elephant washing. It was actually a lot more playing than washing, and that was fine with us.

And then we went to the Erawan falls – a UNESCO heritage site consisting of seven levels of water falls. The water is clean and warm, and you are welcome to swim in it – which we did, and it was great. But nobody warned us that it's full of the exact same nibbling fish that we experienced at the “fish massage” in Bangkok.

Not too far away is the the famous Tiger Temple. It came to exist almost accidentally when a secluded monastery agreed to take in a couple tiger cubs that were orphaned when their mother was poached. That tragic story was repeated, and before too long the monastery had quite a few tigers of various ages. They have since multiplied, while even more are brought to them. They now have more than 50 tigers. Again, these tigers will likely not be re-introduced as they would almost certainly be killed by poachers. So they live a glamorous movie star life in their habitat in the monastery.

It turns out that the monastery gained quite a reputation as a wildlife sanctuary and is now home to horses, deer, cows, wild boar, peacocks, lions, bears, and more. The less fierce of these animals have no cage or pen, and roam freely. They just choose to stay because life is easy for them there.

While spending these days touring these interesting sites we stayed at a little “floating hotel”. Well, it's not exactly a hotel in the normal sense of the word, but it's still a lot nicer than many of the places we stayed at in India.

On the last day of our little excursion we did an elephant walk through the jungle. That was really fun.

We learned that elephants in captivity can live to over 100 years. The big elephant here weighs over 8,000 kg, and eats about 300 kg of food a day. Want to buy one? It's only about $30,000 USD. We decided not to.

Finally we stopped at the hellfire canyon. This was one part of the “death railway” - so named for the 100,000 + people who died in laying this 415 km stretch of difficult track. The hellfire canyon is actually a man made cutout from the rock and was made by world war II allied POWs and local civilian labor to aid in the Japanese military campaign.

And when I say man made – that means no machines were used to remove the rock. This was forced labor, with shifts going 24 hours a day, and anyone who worked at this camp only had about a 50% chance of surviving. Just look at the volume of stone in this one gorge alone that was removed. Apparantly the Japanese engineers estimated that it would take about five years to lay these 415 km of track. But with an almost inexhaustible supply of free labor, the task was accomplished in about 1.5 years only (and at the cost of over 100,000 lives).

Not wanting to end on a dour note, I'll just sign off by saying Amanda and I are happy and healthy and are enjoying our trip. We're being sure to not avoid the difficult sites (such as the death railway, or the upcoming killing fields of Cambodia) because it's important to us to acknowledge the darker side of our collective history, but we are also taking advantage of the peaceful and fun things the world has to offer. Here we are enjoying Bangkok on the famous Khao San road.