Thai Food, Temples, Vehicles

Our venture into Thailand was mostly motivated by our love for Thai food and we get to enjoy some delicious dishes, particularly salads combining various fruit and seafood. But the culinary experience is not that different from the better Thai restaurants where we have eaten in other parts of the world. Most memorable is a fine dinner at a cosy, dimly lit back street restaurant, sitting on the floor amidst flowers: the spicy northern Thai sausage waters the mouth remembering it, the Snake Head Fish adds to our list of 50 animals eaten (sorry, Jano), and the vegetable and shrimp curry tastes fabulously. A discovery for me is the succulent Langsat fruit, and breakfast at the conveniently located Grand President hotel in Bangkok is the richest we have ever had. Yet, we will mostly remember the four days in Bangkok and Ayutthaya for the beautiful Buddhist temples and for the vehicles that move us between them: tuk-tuk (rather scary in rush hour traffic), taxis driven by a broad range of characters, mini buses and big tourist buses, ferries and cruise ships, the efficient sky train (the vehicle of choice in this city of eternal traffic jams), the subway - and not to forget our feet. Among the temples, the Grand Palace is certainly the most impressive, and its mural paintings are some of the finest classical art I have seen. Also, Siam Niramit, the fantastic show of Thai history and festivals at the Thai Cultural Center in Bangkok, done to perfection and including live elephants, tells us a lot about the country in a short time.