The primary motivator for our visit to Thailand was to visit with Kyle who is stationed here for three months. His demanding 2pm to 2am work day is timed to worldwide financial markets and consistent with the long hours expected at a start up. He joined us for breakfast and then gave us a tour of his nearby apartment before heading to work on the back of a MotoTaxi.

Jeanine and I spent the rest of the day visiting some of the sights including a stroll through Lumpini Park where we encountered a five foot long monitor lizard out looking for lunch.

We then walked on to the Jim Thompson House which includes beautiful gardens and an eclectic art collection housed in a complex of six traditional Thai-style houses made of teak. Thompson, gained great wealth by developing the Thai silk industry. He disappeared while trekking in the Malaysian jungle and to this day much mystery surrounds his death. Photography is not permitted within the complex but I did get a photo of two Thai dancers that were performing in the courtyard.

Bangkok features many canals which support water taxis of all manner.  There is scarcely room for two to pass each other and yet they do so at incredible speeds sending waves spilling over the banks of the narrow waterways. The canal shown below is directly behind the Jim Thompson house.

We then hopped into a “tuk-tuk” (three wheeled motorcycle with covered seating for two passengers) which took us to the Chao Phraya River where we hired a “long-tail” boat (long narrow boat with a pivoting V8 engine connected to a long shaft with a propellor at the end) for a tour of the canals and passage to the Wat Arun temple.

There are over 31,200 Buddhist temples spread around Thailand. Wat Arun or the Temple of Dawn, is named after Aruna, the Indian God of Dawn and is regarded as one of the most striking riverside landmarks of Thailand. It is an architectural representation of Mount Meru, the center of the world in Buddhist cosmology. In the mythology of Tibetan Buddhism, Mount Meru is a place that simultaneously represents the center of the universe and the single-pointedness of mind sought by adepts. Thousands of miles in height, Meru is located somewhere beyond the physical plane of reality, in a realm of perfection and transcendence. The four-corner prang of Wat Arun, which house images of the guardian gods of the four directions, reinforces this mystical symbolism.

After completing our boat tour we walked past the Ministry of Defense before returning to our hotel by taxi.