A major clampdown on elephant/mahout activity in Bangkok has just been announced.  You could now be fined upto £200 for feeding an elephant.

That said, as sorry as you feel for the mahouts, it is commonsense not to support this activity anyway.

Elephants are emphatically not cuddly things out of Jungle Book.  Generally they are rather cantankerous and unpredictable. They become more moody, less predictable in inappropriate environments.

Traffic-filled, highly urbanised, Bangkok is certainly an inapproriate environment.  The elephants become unhealthy, particularly suffering respiratory diseases.  Sudden death is not unknown.

There has been a major incident in Bangkok, when an elephant ran amok.  Presumably smaller incidents are everyday occurrences.

If you want to help elephants and mahouts supporting elephant conservation and repatriation charities is the answer.  Also support elephant-focused tourism projects.

These projects are seen as the great hope in Government circles.  The elephants can’t stay in urban environments.  Their place, and that of their mahouts, in the logging industry is not going to come back.  The mahouts have to have an income.

All this said, I’ve been fairly uncomfortable with the touristic uses of elephants.  That, though, is not to say that elephant centres can’t be fun, with particularly good reports on the centre at Lampang.  People seem to love being a mahout for the day!

Mark Azavedo

Picture Copyright and by kind permission of Tourism Authority of Thailand.

A couple of weeks back I was railing about the lack of spatial understanding of Bangkok displayed by several of the major guidebooks.  The upshot of that, to my mind, is some rather weird recommendations as to where you should stay, places not necessarily well-placed to use either BTS or MRT rail systems.

That got me to thinking about relevant alternatives; and the canal ferry services came to mind.  Sure enough, although these are usually used by Bangkok commuters, they did rather hit the button for getting you around particularly the Klong Toey administrative area of the City.

Using the canal ferries also gives an additional dimension to your holiday, including that it is another way to meet ordinary Thais going about their everyday business:

Notes on Boat Service in Saen Saeb Canal
Piers: 27 Piers
Tickets: 5-15 baht by distance

1) Phan Fah Leelart (terminal, a bridge to Bangkok City Center)
2) Bo Bae (Garment market – second only Pratoo Nam and Pahurat [Bangkok Little India])
3) Wat Phraya Yang – (a temple near Yotse)
4) Saphan Charoen Phon (to Charoen Phon neighborhood)
5) Ban Krua (a Muslim community – the backbone of Jim Thomson’s silk business)
6) Saphan Hua Chang (with connection to National Stadium Skytrain Station)
7) Pratoonam (major BKK Garment Market, not far from Panthip and WTC, an interchange for Saensaeb Boat, used to have a water gate in the time of King Mongkut to feed the Royal lotus pond (the root of Pathumwan District), hence got the namesake from that thing)
8)Saphan Chidlom – near Central Chidlom, Siam City Bank HQ, Siam Commercial Bank (Phetburi Office)
9) Saphan Witthayu – near Vanich Building, in Wireless Road
10) Nana Nua – near Bumrungrat Hospital
11) International School – near Rueanruedee International School
12. Saphan Asok – near Japanese Embassy and Phetburi Station of Subway
13) Prasarn Mitr – in Sri Nakahrintharawiroj University (Prasarn Mitr Campus)
14) Watmai Chonglok – in New Phetburi Road
15) Phrom pak – a lane to Phrom Phong Station of Skytrain, and not far from  Thai-Italian Pier can be a substitute
16) Thon Lor – a road to Thong Lor Station – not far from RCA
17) Charn Issara – Charn Issara 2 Building
18) Saphn Klong Tan – near Klong Tan Intersection – used to be an interchange for Lad Phrao boat until 2000 (the year Boat service in Krung Kasem city moat and Lad Phrao canal went out of business)
19) The Mall 3 – (ram Khamhaeng Branch) near New Rama 9 intersection
20) Ram Khamhaeng 29 – near the defunct Welco
21) Wat Thep Leela – the main road from Ram Khamhaeng to Thai Cultural Centre
22) Ramkhamhaeng University – the biggest open university in Thailand
23) Saphan Mit Mahardthai – near Huamark Stadium – and can connect to Lad Phrao Road
24) Wat Klang
25) The Mall – the shopping center rival to Central (the main branch in Bang Kapi)
26) Bang Kapi – near bang Kapi district office, and Bang Kapi Market
27) Wat Sri Boonruean – terminal near NIDA

Mark Azavedo

http://www.2bangkok.com/ferries.shtml

Mari is in Bangkok at the moment; and e-mailed me about new tram services in the City:

Chinatown

There is a new free Chinatown Sightseeing Tram starting at Soi Porisapa by Hualamphong Railway Station, where you collect your ticket from the booth.

You can stay on for the tour or get on and off with stops at Thianfa Foundation (Thianfa Foundation, Siang Gong Shrine, Wat Yuan Taladnoi), Old Market (Old Market, Bumpenchinprot Temple), Mangkorn Kamalawat Temple ( Wat Leng Noei Yi, Kanmatuyaram Temple, Leng Buai Yia Market), Kwong Siew Hospital (Guang Dong Shrine, Kanikaphol Temple, Da Feng Zu Shrine, Piangnarm Road), Traimit Temple-Ocean Circle (Wat Samchin, Yaowarat Road).

The Tram operates 11am-11pm weekends, with typically Thai confusion as to whether it also operates 5pm-11pm weekdays.

Rattanakosin Island

Information around the Rattanakosin tour tram is even less clear. It operates 10am-8pm, with tickets available from Democracy Monument and Sanam Luang (30 Baht). Tours, with multi-lingual commentary leave every 30 minutes from near the Grand Palace front gates.

The Tram loops around all the major attractions of the Island which is the Old Bangkok of the Bangkok Period. You cover such sights as the Grand Palace, San Luk Meung, The National Museum, National Gallery, Jurapong Mosque. and Pak Talong Flower Market.

To Hua Hin and Cha-Am

The new Southern Bus terminal is very far out of central Bangkok. This has led to new informal minibus services from Democracy Monument. There is huge confusion over this, but I’ve found the services fast and cheap.

The downside is very little information.  I’ve been told by a travel agent friend that they leave every half hour, or sooner when a bus is full.  There are no published timetables, so we don’t know when precisely the first and last buses depart.

Fare is 180Baht. They reserve the right to also charge for luggage, but I’ve never actually been asked to pay.

Departure is from an alleyway at the side of Century Mall/Plaza. All companies proved reliable. I remember one called 333.

Return from Hua Hin is from opposite the Esso petrol station.

Mark Azavedo

I guess Bangkok has the reputation for making you feel different about yourself through the surgical option. I found something cheaper than Bangkok’s bargain basement surgery rates. Something I could afford. Something I was more inclined to. Something equally effective. Bangkok tailoring.

That said, not any old Bangkok tailor, but Jesse and Victor Gulati, the father and son team of Rajawongse at 130 Sukhumvit, by the Landmark Hotel. Assuredly not tailors to the tourist trade. More tailors to the diplomatic community.

Jesse and Victor work very closely with the US Embassy, dressing ambassadors down to marine guards.

These have recommended the Gulati’s tailoring to visiting politicians, though the recommendation to George W Bush was from Dad, George Bush. Other famous names from the USA political community that have been dressed by Jesse and Victor include Sen.John Kerry, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and Nancy Reagan.

For Nancy Reagan they also produced a fabric backdrop for a television appearance that matched her dress and earrings.

She must have been one mightily persuasive lady. I don’t see Jesse and Victor often deviating from their brief of classic quality tailoring. They precisely give off an air of doing what they do best, doing it to perfection and in an atmosphere of measured calm (quite something in the freneticism of Sukhumvit).

Tailoring is a very serious issue at Rajawongse, though Jesse and Victor are happy to laugh and joke about other issues, discuss their travels, give recommendations. At all times you are addressed by your first name; and that is remembered.

When it is time for a measurement or fitting, a hush descends. The attentiveness made me feel good, the results even better. I literally felt different about myself. Silly really, as I hadn’t changed. Presumably the underlying thought was I can’t be so odd that I can’t be accommodated!

I had shirts made. For my big collar size, the arms are always too long. The body billows, unless I buy slimfit – then it’s too tight!

With Jesse and Victor I received perfection, and in the finest Egyptian cotton. Victor allowed himself a moment of wry humour at the fitting: “It could have been made for you, Mark”.

And the cost of perfection, of feeling good about myself, 1000Baht (approximately £18). A lot cheaper than surgery, even at Bangkok rates!

Mark Azavedo

http://dress-for-success.com/

Having spent the umpteenth hour of my life browsing in the food hall of Central Department Store, Chidlom, I decided it time to announce it as a tourist destination in its own right. The place is truly fantastic, an oriental Harrods food hall; and you can have an extraordinary self-service lunch there, very cheaply, too.

Alternatively, around the nearby Ploenchit/Wyatthu intersection, down Wyatthu and between Ploenchit and Chidlom there are many very good stalls for lunchtime street food. This is an office workers area.

Why not take your spoils to nearby Lumphini Park for a picnic lunch. Lumphini is one of the world’s great urban parks. Walk through to Silom , including walking on to Surawongse. These streets and the Sois between them are a major shopping area. You’ll also find the infamous Patpong here (boy do I hate that market – go to the real thing at Chatuchak at the weekend BTS Skytrain Sukhumvit Line Mo Chit). You can walk on down to the river.

A quick cut down to the river is by taking BTS Skytrain down to Saphan Taksin. If you are flush you’re hopefully staying at the (Mandarin) Oriental or the Peninsula. If not, it’s still a lovely area with OP Place my favourite place for a coffee and antiques browse. If you get off two stops before Saphan Taksin at Surasak, the Blue Elephant Restaurant and Cooking School is right there.

At the opposite extreme to all this loveliness, for a huge Tesco, available without a car, take BTS Skytrain Sukhumvit Line to On Nut. Why go to Tesco on your holiday? Well, truth is that it’s often massively cheaper than elsewhere. Also, you don’t have to haggle prices.

I know what prices should be but, frankly, can’t be bothered to haggle down to the minimum. I just go for a token first round to not look too stupid. It’s not that Thais are great at haggling either, it’s just that they can handle the heat. You’ll find being cool well worth the lack of negotiating effort.

If you use On Nut Tesco, there is a night market there too.

If my references to street food are not to your liking a very cheap restaurant, where you can eat for around £1 is Santa’s in MBK Centre BTS Skytrain National Stadium. Another cheap place I found recently, where the food is very good, worthy of dinner, is C Cup on Sukhumvit Soi 8. 

A suggestion for the Bangrak area (Silom, Surawongse, etc) is the basement of the Bangkok Gem and Jewellery Tower, 322 Surawongse (or Surawong) Road, again an extremely cheap place for all the local office workers, but not way off the tourist track.

In all this super-cheapness, don’t forget the sheer value of the lunchtime specials at the (Mandarin) Oriental.

Finally, in all this discussion of food and drink, a plea. I’ve noticed an increasing number of foreigners eating and drinking on BTS Skytrain. This is banned. Thais obey the ban, regarded rather quizzically at first. It is disrespectful to do differently. The superb condition of Skytrain 10 years on is testimony to the value of such rules.

PS: Suan Lum, Bangkok Night Market/Bazaar is still there, contrary to some reports. It is next to Lumphini MRT; and is, in fact, expanding.

Mark Azavedo

I’m in the pristine grounds of Nai Lert Park Hotel, close to the embassies of Wireless Road, miles from Patpong or Nana or any other of Bangkok’s fleshpots.

Note, those places are replete with stories of bar girls waving phalluses around in club doorways before the start of business to bring good fortune, a successful session.

Here it is Sunday afternoon. The gardens are quite famed botanical gardens. Young students take notes. Families photograph each other. A group of nuns take a constitutional amid the beautiful orchids. Scantily clad bathers laze by and in the pool. All a rather bizarre combination.

But nothing prepares you for the strange sight tucked behind the service entrance to the hotel, and next to a car park.

Here is something like a mushroom field of phalluses or lingams, spreading out under the branches of a ficus tree. There are lingams of all sizes, some upto several feet in length. Some are made of wood, some stone. In their midst is the Mae Tuptim Shrine, signified by a spirit house about which are offerings of fresh food and drink, all presided over by a plastic model or two of a Thai traditional dancer.

I’ve never seen anybody at the shrine, but certainly the offerings always appear to be newly placed. It is suggested that particularly women come here to pray for pregnancy.

For me being surrounded by phalluses is its own peculiar hell, for reasons I’m largely at a loss to explain. My only guess is that I’m offended by the redness of all about me.

Certainly, that the phalluses are mostly red has been a talking point. Thereagain, their presence at all has been a talking point, as has the whole question of who Mae Tuptim was. There’s also the matter of the relationship between Mae Tuptim and the phalluses.

Less of a question is how the Mae Tuptim Shrine came into being. It was likely built by Nai Lert as protection for his new hotel. Certainly there is a large concentration of shrines in another area of Bangkok, Rajaprasong, built by shop and hotel owners to protect their enterprises and bring well-being. These include Bangkok’s most famous shrine, the Erawan Shrine, associated with the hotel of the same name.

The peculiarity of all these shrines, in a Buddhist land, is that they are shrines to Hindu deities. Thereagain, animist elements are also in the mix for good measure.

Mae Tuptim shrine, or worship at it, embodies a similar multiplicity of strands. That said, of course, motives come down to the individual worshipper. In the face of dozen upon dozen lingams about the shrine, the obvious thought, “fertility”, may well be the truth for most worshippers.

There is a simple folklorist story supporting this that a woman came to the shrine wishing to become pregnant. She prayed and her wish was granted. To celebrate the birth of her child she returned to the shrine with an offering of a lingam. As they say, “the rest is history”, as others emulated her.

Equally, still keeping things simple, it isn’t such a jump from the idea of fertility to general good fortune.

The trouble is that for the Mae Tuptim shrine lingams and association with fertility may equally come out of Thai animist traditions.

The belief here is in spirits. These spirits may be appeased to create good. More specifically procedures are available through which the spirits will do your bidding.

The bright red of most lingams at Mae Tuptim Shrine has alternately been associated with pomegranate juice or menstrual blood.

The association with pomegranate juice sees Tuptim as a corruption of Taptim, Thai for pomegranate. The relationship with menstrual blood relies upon the Tantric belief that the most powerful time for sexual intercourse is during menstruation.

There is plenty of room for thought here, including what of the prominent virginal white lingam?

Whatever, remember that, having taxed your brain and camera, maybe improved your fertility or fortune, there is the beautiful orchid collection to see. Also, the Mai Lert Park does the meanest fruit juice cocktail!

Mark Azavedo

My relationship with Thailand goes back a long way. I have worked and holidayed there often.

At first, I used to feel like a GI from Vietnam on R & R. I remember “Let it Be” blurting out under the old whirring fans of the Ambassador Food Court (sadly, now long gone) and fake Rolexes for sale on every street corner.

My friend, Julie, always insisted on eating out at Thai Room. It was the old Peace Corps hang out; and, assuredly, had not been decorated since the Vietnam days. Julie liked the full-on Bangkok experience, but would only “go for it” when either Keith or I was around. In those days Patpong wasn’t quite the place for a lone western woman.

Fast forward to Bangkok now. A lone western woman wouldn’t be noticed. Western businesspeople are everywhere. A tide of concrete has hit Bangkok, not to mention Skytrain, an underground system, a new airport and a new airport link. There are fabulous new shopping malls and department stores.

An awful lot of concrete. But Bangkok is the same city, in many ways a better city. What dilapidation was there where the fabulous OJ Place trades upscale antiques and offers a wonderful place to have a quiet coffee or fruit juice? What of the fantastic “colonial” house that is now Spa 1930? Did the Oriental look as good as it does now?

And, above all, if any city in this world is made of people, not places, it’s Bangkok. Not without reason has the Land of Smiles earned that sobriquet – not that “earned” is quite the right word. Charm, graciousness and half-full glasses come effortlessly to Thais.

Not that Thais are without an eye to the main chance. Changes in Western lifestyles and interests have been well understood to produce a range of holiday add-ons unheard of only a few years ago.

The internationally acclaimed Oriental and Blue Elephant Cooking Schools offer day courses in Thai Cookery, starting with a trip to market to buy ingredients, ending by dining on the meal you have cooked. Even at these highly upscale establishments, prices are only in the range of around £50 to £70.

There are cheaper well-established day courses, again hands-on, at such places as Baipai Thai Cooking School and Silom Thai Cooking School. Prices range from about £18 to £32.

Several establishments offer massage courses, be that traditional Thai or oil-based massage. The benchmark is the well-known Wat Po School of Massage and Traditional Thai Medicine. 5 Day courses range from £117 to £153, depending on school of massage followed.

Another developing area is medical and dental tourism. You may develop immediate “pass on that” images of cosmetic surgery. But what of simple teeth whitening, taking around an hour by laser, and costing a fraction of Western rates?

And , failing all this new stuff, there is still the unmissable old stuff, such as Wat Phra Keo, Wat Arun, Wat Po, The Royal Palace, The Royal Barge Sheds, Erawan Shrine, Jim Thompson’s House (also a great place for coffee or a fruit juice by the pond, not to mention the fabulous silks shop), and Chatuchak Market.

Finally, a plea to frequent the Cabbages and Condoms restaurant off Sukhumvit (10, Sukhumvit Soi 12). All profits go to support a brilliant sexual health and development charity. The food is good and sensibly priced. Go upstairs if the weather is good.

Our knowledge of Bangkok in particular and Thailand in general is unparalleled. Do contact us on 02089852161 or get booking from our fantastic accommodation bank – button on home page of this site!

Mark Azavedo