Tragedy in bangkok
Trip Start
Aug 07, 2008
1
46
79
Trip End
Ongoing
Bangkok,
Thailand
Thursday, November 27, 2008
we arrived in bangkok hunched over with the anticipation of my sister-in-law, janice and her husband, min, meeting us there for a 10 week romp through the gulf of thailand islands. we had been looking forward to these two weeks for SO long. the plan was to check out some sights in bangkok, then head down to Koh Tao to get our PADI open water SCUBA certifications and do a couple more dives before janice and min head back home and we part from them for New Zealand. well, this was not to be... some of you might have heard over the news or read in the newspapers that there have been some civil unrest in Thailand and especially in Bangkok. well, people had organized and were protesting against the current government. i'm not sure of the exact details, but the basic demands was that the current prime minister resign. huge demand, eh? well, it escalated to the point that the demonstrators, dressed in all yellow, took over the Bangkok international airport, and shut it down for just over a week or so. now, Bangkok is one of the busiest airports in the world... its the gateway into asia and a huge transit hub for getting to the states and europe across asia. good move, protesters. sadly, this strategic move caused quite a bit of commotion eventually leading to the ousting of the prime minister...
now, how did it affect us? well, first and worst, janice and min didn't even get to leave LA. also, a lot of a friends we've met traveling were stuck in bangkok... some even took a 24 hour train to singapore and flew out from there... others trying to get into bangkok could not... our friend kathy even canceled her trip...
eunice and i walked around depressed for a couple days after that... every time we did something like get massages or check out the floating market or go to the weekend mother of all markets, we though of how min/janice would have loved it or hated it... we still think about how fun it would have been to hang out with them... sadness...
but, we must persevere and continue on.... we spend a couple days in bangkok doing some of the activities we had set aside to do with janice/min.
first, the floating market... you see this in movies sometimes. i think it was in one of the mission impossibles with tom cruise and maybe one of the tomb raiders with angelina jolie.. bascially, it is a market place on a river... all the vendors float around in boats selling and buying... cool sight, but not as dramatic as i expected... check out the pics...
next, we went to the mother of all markets, the Chatuchak Weekend market to do a bit of shopping.... imagine the largest swapmeet back home and triple it in size... yes... it is THAT big...
so our second stint in bangkok was alright... basically checked off a few more things from the "to do" list... off to Koh Tao now to get SCUBA'd!
