30: Tai Chi, Hymns and Elephants
After I arrived in Bangkok I was pretty knackered and I took my ime in the hotel to unpack a few things, have a shower and read a bit.
Eventually I went out for a walk, it was about 17:00 by then. As I was walking along Sukhumvit Road (the main road near the hotel) I noticed a park called Benjasiri Park. I decided to go in because there was a group of people practising Tai Chi near the entrance. At least I think it was Tai Chi. Some (dare I say chinese) music played and an istructor whoed the moves. It was quite nice to watch and rather relaxing so I sat down on a bench nearby and watched for a while.
Whilst looking around I noticed plenty of people excersising in the park. In particlar a lot of people running (jogging).
As I was sitting there watching the Tai Chi something strange happened.
A bell sounded and an everybody froze right away. The Tai Chi people stopped doing what they were doing, the joggers stopped right where they were at the time, folks that sat on benched stood up. The whole park looked like someone stopped time, nobody moved! Then some music was broadcast and I figured that this must be the national hymn. I decided I better stand up as well and felt rather silly standing there… The whole thing was very curious! I wonder if this happens
every evening (I will soon find out).
Well after everybody started moving again I left the park and kept walking. After a while I decided to look for a place to eat. I found a popular street restaurant in a little side road and decided to sit down. Easy enough to order since the menu had englisch translations and also pictures.
I didn’t want anything fancy so I ordered some Fried Rice with Prawns and some steamed vegetable with Oyster Sauce. The vegetables were called Morning Glory and looked interesting on the picture (thin dark green leafy veg). The rice was tasty but had more than prawns in it.. looked more like a fried rice with prawns, crabmeat and chicken. The veg were great hough the oyster sauce was not what I expected. It was rather hot (spicy) and the veg had lots of little whole red chilis mixed in. Of course plenty of garlic.. decided to leave the whole gloves on the plate 😉
Including drinks I paid 135 baht (maybe 2 pounds, 3 euros).
As I just about finished my meal an Elephant walked by my table. Seriously! It actually stopped and had a snack. Some guy was going around selling little bags of food to people so they could feed theElephant. A little girl did have fun doing this right in front of my table (no it was not smelly and did not put me off my meal 🙂
Not bad a few hours in Thailand 🙂
Tags: Bangkok, Thailand
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