Bangkok

On the final day of Songkran, we travel to Bangkok as we were planning to go to the Canadian Embassy to collect and submit our electoral ballots. It was pouring rain that day, because we were staying in a hotel, and had already experienced the full frenzy of Songkran we were hopeful to avoid the water fights, which were supposedly winding down. To avoid the heavy rain, we visited Mah Boon Kron, MBK, an eight-story mall with over 2000 businesses. It is a famous in Bangkok as it contains shops, craft markets, food stalls, and areas of stall like you find in an outdoor market, but there is air conditioning and no pouring rain. The center was busy as the Songkran festival was in its final day meaning many people were off and clearly others had the same idea. Aiden was thrilled that there was a special Jujutsu, Kaisen Animation exhibit that had a temporary center in the mall for a few months. The entrance tickets were expensive, so Sophie and I volunteered to keep looking around the stalls while the boys enjoyed the special exhibit. When we were heading back to the hotel late in the evening, we elected to take a tuck tuck as the lineup for taxis was huge. Retrospectively, we understand why people were avoiding the tuck tucks as on our way home we were drenched with huge buckets of icy cold water by a group of teens, taking Songkran to the extreme!

The following morning, we woke up and walked to the Canadian Embassy. After an intense security check and waiting for quite a while we were able to cast our ballots. We then headed to the river city area of Bangkok to begin a tour of the famous Wat Phra Si Rattana temple with Emerald Buddha and the Grand Palace. We enjoyed the boat ride down the Chao Phraya River and a visit to the flower market on our way to the palace. To enter the sacred site, you had to follow a dress code, Alastair rented Thai elephant pants to enter. The area was very beautiful, ornate and colourful. It was incredibly hot, and we struggled to understand our guide as he shared some of the history of many of the buildings and statues. Despite advertising as an English tour, his English was very limited, he repeated simple facts many times and was hard to follow as he moved very quickly between sights. We were all happy that I had elected the two-hour tour, rather than the four-hour tour that covered two more famous temples. I was grateful that I had read online that our ticket included a visit to the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles. This provided an opportunity to cool down in the AC for everyone. Sophie and I really enjoyed the content of the museum which document a beautiful queens focus on making Thai textiles and fashion and important part of her life on the world stage, she promoted charity work and gender right in Thailand. Her husband King Bumibhol, Rama IX, passed away in 2016 after reign as Monarch for over 70 years. Thailand has been a constitutional monarchy since 1932. He was incredibly well revered, helping the poor, having a special interest in agriculture and rural Thailand, helped modernization of health care and education, and he was valued for building international relations and internal politics, helping the relationship between the democratic government and the Thai military (through many attempted coup). Portraits of the King and Queen are still seen everywhere, the current king, his son, took over the throne after his death. At age 63 he had already had a more controversial life and extensive military career.