Busy week

Finally got a chance for an update. We are on our way from Chanthaburi to Bangkok via bus (a four hour, hot and sticky ride)
On Monday  we spent the day with staff of the National Natural History Museum about 50 km north of Bangkok. On the way we passt through some of the areas worst hit by last falls flooding. The area looks mostly cleaned up, the main evidence of the flooding is the huge amounts of flotsam in the canals and the high water marks on walls and houses.
The museum sits on ahuge science campus that is also home to the National Science museum, the national IT museum and a number of science ministries.  During the flood the site  was above water, but some of the staff were trapped by the flood and were there for a month liviving off of fish they caught. The museum is mainly focussed on biology and native wildlife with displays of the various classes of life and thai habitats. We also tuured their collections and prep areas where they were working on new taxidermy techniques.

On Tuesday we rented a van and drove to  the Chanthaburi campus of Burapha University and installed ourselves in the staff dormitories. The univerity has three specialities, marine studies, business and gemmology. Thecampus is situated on a tidal flat and is surrounded by experimental shrimp farms and salt harvesting pans. After aquick tour of the campus and thenew olympic swinning pool, the staff of the gemology department took us to a beach resort on the Gulf of Thailand for dinner. Of course the first thing the four of us did was to kick off our shoes and go for a walk on the beautiful beach. Supper was superb featuring all the seafood the area is famous for. Somehow all the Canadians ended up singing a song. Puala did her version of a Thai song about cracking crabs, Andy followed up with a classic about an itsy bitsy spider, Ralph performed an Acadian drinking song which included blowing raspberrys a part of the chorus (this was very popular). After much coaxing I did a very flat version of Four strong winds, not my best performance.

Wednesday was a very full day. Andy gave a talk on platinum group minerals, we dicussed Cambodian zircon locales with James and Surin, the heaad of the department took us to some local saphire operations to speak with the operators and see the concentration setup. We were also given some very nice research material by the owners of these mines, who were out there getting dirty with the rest of the workers. We were shown several spectacular star sapphires.

Thursday we drove to the Cambodian border to look at ruby deposits. We started by doing some panning in a stream running through a ruby deposit. Gem panning is not loke gold panning. For gold we use a steel pan an look at everything that comes out of the pan, so it can be a long process. For gems, the pan is acually a wicker pan with 0.5 cm mesh. Anything smaller than that is lost not of interest. None of us got any rubies but Surin founs two pinhead sized samples. On the way back to the campus, we stopped at two of the quarries from the previous day. At one quarry we were given some of the concentrate to look thrrough for zircons which are the reason for the trip but are not valued here. At a second quarry the very generous owner (Jabba the miner) showered us with zircons, spinels, garnets  and pyroxenes which are collected as curiosities here but are vital for our work. He also showed us a weeks production from his mine, which was a very good haul consisting mainly of black and blue star sapphires. On seeing how fascinated we were with the sapphires, he invited us to help ourself to some of the low grade stones (low grade but sapphires none-the-less). Just anothe friendly and generous Thai like all the rest. We got back to the campus and had a nice lunch at the local market where I sampled banana pancakes for the first but definitely not the last time.

Friday arrived too early (we all found out about Chang-overs, Chang being a Thai brew with agreat taste but notorious for headaches)
Chanthaburi has a world class gem market every Friday and Saturday. The Burapha Gemology department runs a gem  laboratory in the markets where buyers can identify and certify stones they have bought. We toured the lab and then were given an exclusive tour of a large sapphire cutting operation across the street. Watching the sorters and cutters at work with very simple tools made me appreciate just what was involved  in producing gems. The final cutting is actually done by employees working out of their homes (supposedly so  they can train the next generation of cutters)

We spent the rest of the day in the market watching traders and buyers from all over the world haggle over piles of gems on tables between them. The trade is essentially unregulated, with no records kept, no taxes paid and all transactions in cash.  The operations ranged from rooms full of traders, to independants siting at tables in the alleys. Buyers post notices on the windows saying what they want to buy and what they will pay for it. On a personal note, I purchased a really nice 1.6 ct deep blue sapphire that was mined at on of the mines I'd visited the day before and polished in Chanthaburi. It will make a very nice addition to my beloveds finger on her wedding ring (did you know I'm getting married?)

Tomorrow we leave Bangkok by bus for Cambodia and the rest of our trip. My week and a half in Thailand has been a wonderful experience mainly due to the happy and generous people I have met and worked with.  I hope I can come back someday and see more of this beautiful place, meet more Thais and of course more Thai food.

On to Cambodia!

National Natural History Museum

Monday, January 9th
Today we spent the day at the Thai National Museum of Natural History in XXXXXXX about 50 km north of downtown Bangkok.
Along the way there we passed trough some of the areas that had seen the worst of the flooding.  The amin visible evidence of the flooding was the high water mark on buildings and fences and the wreckage and flotsam on the banks of the canals and in fields.  The museum itself escaped the flooding
but some of the staff were trapped there for over a month and had to supplement their food with fishing in the nearby canal. Many local people took refuge  there a well.
The  museum is part of a large science park with a computer museum and a science museum on campus. We toured the museum with the museums director of research and Cholawit a paleontologist and museum jack-of-all-trades

Bobae Market

Arrived at the Prince Palace towers hotel after a 248 baht (8$) cab ride. I'm really glad I dont have to drive in this town.
Paula booked all four of us a really great three bedroom suite with kitchen and living room for $70 a night. We're on the 27th floor and have great views.
We chilled for a while and then Paula and Ralph went out to get Paula's tattoo finished and Andy and I toured the Bobae clothing market across the street.
The market is a warren of small (six to 10 square meter ) stalls selling all kinds of clothes, mainly cheap no-name stuff from China and Viet Nam. Despite being across the street from a fairly major tourist hotel, Andy and I were te only farang there.  The aisle between the stalls is less than a meter wide and you don't want to stop in the middle. Everyone was very friendly and lots of lots of smiles and nods were recieved. We wandered around the central market for a while then crossed the street to look at even smaller stalls along the canal. We decided to cross the canal to see what was on the other side at which point we realized we were no longer in Kansas. This was a real Bangkok neighborhood, where people lived and did their business in little ground floor stall like apartments. Lots of small street restaurants, little appliance stores, ubiquitous 7-11's and even a small welding shop. The upper floors of the buildings seemed to be a higher end. In a place where we were obviously strangers we never felt any unease, a table of people who obviously thought we were lost even tried to help us ( we managed by dint of pointing and saying the hotel name to let them know we weren't lost). Eventually I reached the limits of my poor sense of direction and we turned around and relocated the hotel towers.
My jet lag isn't too bad, but I think I need a little nap.
See you all later

Khao San Road

Saturday night
Khao San road, also known as Backpacker Road is a couple of kilometers of restaurants, bars and street vendors filled with thousands of tourists.
We stopped a a stall selling fried insects (crickets, grasshoppers and caterpillers) . Wanted to try them but not before dinner.
Walked along the rod for a while, looked at all kinds of street merchandise, pipes, toys knicknacks and gewgaws. Lots of street stalls offering Thai massage too. Apparently a more brutal form of massage. We made Ralph try out a tank full of little fish that are supposed to exfoliate your skin by biting off the dead bits. Brian an icthyologist at the museum wanted one of us to try them out. None of us were too enthusiastic about putting our feet into a tank filled with other tourists dirty feet, but at the insistence of the manager Ralph stuck his hand in for a few minutes. Apparently his skin didn't taste very good, all the fish ran swam away from him.
We stopped in a restaurant for grilled red snapper, hot Thai chicken soup with noodles and quarts of Chang beer.  After dinner we walked down the road for a bit and sat outside Bangkoks only blues club listening to areally great version of Peter Gunn.

Tourism

Sunday January 8th
That was a long day!
Up at eight for breakfast at the hotel, nice Western breakfast for me. I don't know, I just don't see salad and fried noodles for breakfast, rice porridge maybe.
We walked and took a cab up to the Skytrain, which is an elevated train that covers a lot of central Bangkok. A really nice way to get a birdseye view of the city.
Our destination is Chatuchak market, one of the biggest outdoor markets in the world with 15,000 vendors in one or twoo square kilometers. If you can't find it in Chatuchak market, you don't need it, jewelry, antiques fabrics, plants, dogs, antique opium pipes, clocks, electronics, preserved insects, tools, farm implements, t-shirts. pirated CD's, you get the picture. We wandered around randomly for a few hours being tourists and the had a nice lunch of Tom yum gai soup and cokes.

After lunch we asked a cab driver to take us to a wat ( Bhuddist temple) where we could catch a water taxi on the Chao Phraya river. Due to some linguistic issues we ended up at the wrong wat. We didn't realize this immediately and wandered around a bit looking at the ornate buildings, which we soon realized was a crematorium. Paula was quite taken aback to realize that the figure in the glass case on one side of the courtyard was actually a preserved monk. At this point we (well Paula, as the rest of us had no clue where we were) realized we couldn't get to the water taxi from here.
This was followed by a rather long walk, consisting of forays in the direction of the river which were blocked by giant home renovation centres, chain link fences and conversations in mixtures of broken Thai and english with confusing results . At one point in our wanderings we found a sign pointing down a street indicating the pier for the water taxi. Success! In the end though we realized that the little girl playing ball in the street was  not yelling at us in Thai but was yelling "no boat, no boat"! Back up to the main road and more wandering. Eventually we did find  the pier and amused ourselves while waiting by watching Thais feed bread to the huge schools of river catfish which were swarming around the pier in huge numbers.

Travelling on the river is a great way to see Bangkok, lots of different water taxis, and fantail boats.  Fantails aver very  gracefull looking boats about 40 feet long and six feet wide with truck engines mountel like outboard motors on the back. The propellers are at the end of 20 ft long shafts. The boats are working boats designed to travel through very shallow water.  We passed under the Rama IX bridge which is a huge single pier suspension bridge. After a couple of stops in the taxi we took a a shuttle across the river to the east bank to see  Wat Arun (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wat_Arun ) . Wat Arun is one of the more famous wats in Bangkok, with several very large stupas ( towers whose spires represent Buddha's ascent into heaven) All the stupas at Arun are covered in fine stonedwork (corniches, sacred figures etc) which is faces with pieces and fragments of fine chinese pottery. The whole effect is very strinking  and makes you appreciated how much work must have gone into their construction. We were able to walk two thirds of the way up the largest stupas via some of the steepest and narrowest steps i have ever seen. At the top there are great views of the whole city and you can get some idea of how big the city really is.  After a rather rexhilerating walk back down the stairs, we had a coffee and got off our feet ffor a while. (I'm getting used to Bangkok prices, I thought three dollars was an outrageous price to pay for a coffee)

We  crossed back over the river to Wat Pho ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wat_Pho) . Some of you may have seen this wat, its the location of the famous reclining budda. I'll have to let the pictures speak for themselves, it was pretty awe inspiring, even though it has the strangest toes I've ever seen.  The building itself iss pretty amazing too, the inside walls are all handpainted sacred images.

We decided at this point we were too tired to walk any more, so after some tough negotiations we got a tuk-tuk ride to a pad thai restaurant for traditional pad-thai, cooked over a really hot stove on the side walk. It was amazing, especially after all the walking and climbing.

A very memorable day, thanks to our intrepid tour guide Paula

Bangkok Day 1

Sawasdee kup
Well, the jetlag is not too bad. arrived at the Best Western Amaranth at 10:30 after a 2.5 hr flight from Hong Kong. worst part of that trip was the 15 degree AC in the shuttle bus from the terminal.
First thing that tells you you're not in Canada any more (apart from the temperature and the fact that white faces are a huge minority) is the smell. Its a mix of wet vegetation, mold and burning wood. Doesn't ssound it but its actually very nice.
The hotel is a very modern western style hotel, but the llobby is full of display cases of feng-shui rocks which hamonize the aura and bring "superluck". Actually its pretty in teresting geologically too.
Had a very nice norther Thai meal  and beer in a little open air restaurant for 10$ for all four of us. Back to the hotel and slept like a log. Still feeling a bit jet lagged, but not too bad. Nice swin in thr hotel pool, (the sun is hot at eight in the morning, going to be brutal in the afternoon).
We're just getting readyto move to another hotel closer to downtown where we'll stay for a few days while we work with colleagues from the national natural history museum. We'll go see some very large outdoor markets and temples today.
Talk t you all later

Glenn

Day 1

Ralph and Paula enjoy a preflight beverage at YOW,
we're on our way!
Last glimpse of snow for five weeks!