My husband and I took a trip to Thailand over the February 9 - 11 weekend. The main purpose of the trip was to attend a wedding party of a friend of my husband, who got married to a Thai woman.
Our flight to Bangkok was delayed due to much snow on February 9, which was the first time we had snow in our city during this winter, but we were glad to arrive in Bangkok safely.
We arrived at a hotel in Bangkok late at night. The hotel we stayed at was pretty nice and neat, which serves good breakfast at a nice terrace. It was mixture of Thai and Western food and we liked it.
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On Febrary 10, we went to see the city sights by ourselves, visiting Wat Phra Kaeo, a historical temple built in 1782, and China Town, where we saw a strong influence of Chinese culture. We found Wat Phra Kaeo pretty interesting and saw local Thai people of strong faith and many tourists from Western countries (maybe) there. By the way, we saw many TOYOTA cars on streets and got surprised to know that TOYOTA occupies a high share of the Thai market. Actually, a Taxi driver said to us that he thought TOYOTA was the best car.
We also stopped by at Siam Square, where we felt very comfortable with the contemporary and neat department stores. We found a strong influence of Western cultures, which we also find in many places in Japan.
Then we went to a beauty salon owned by Japanese to have my hair set for the wedding party. We liked the hairdo. The wedding party was held at Marriott Hotel in Bangkok and we enjoyed mixture of Western and Thai cultures at the party. I was wondering if the Thai bride would also wear a beautiful Thai traditional dress while she was very beautiful in a Western white dress.
During the party, a Japanese guest who used to be a superior to a groom gave a speech in Japanese and his coworker read its English translation. Another Japanese guest who had lived in Thailand for a long time and had known the groom well gave a speech both in Japanese and Thai language and many Thai guests enjoyed it. My husband was videotaping the couple and we had a great time during the party. There were no ceremony like "ohiraki" to end the party and that surprised us a little. Actually, Thai guests left the banquet room after they finished eating food... Then we went back to our hotel to sleep.
Our best wishes for future happiness together. It was a beautiful wedding!!
I must say things were very, very hectic on the day due to the extraordinary traffic jams on weekends. We got stuck in traffic jams many times and even decided to get off the taxi to run twice! Then again, we were very happy to have many interesting experiences in Bangkok.
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On 10th, we joined a tour to Ayutthaya, a world heritage site. It was very cozy tour with only two couples (including us) and a Thai guide who spoke Japanese well.
Ayutthaya is an acient capital city, originally founded in 1350 and conquered by the Burmese in 1767. We visited Bang Pa-In Palace, Japanese Settlement (Nihonjin Machi Ato), which has a statue of Nagamasa Yamada, Wat Yai Chai Mongkon, Wat Mahathat, and Wat Phara Sri Sanphet. I really liked them. The tour included lunch at a buffet restaurant. It was pretty good. Anyway, I think you have to visit Ayutthaya if you want to know something about the history of Thailand.
After the tour, we got an Aroma Therapy massage at a spa from a Thai woman in Bangkok and it was very nice. Then we hung out a short while to find a nice Thai drawing as our memory of this trip, and found a good one at Times Square.
The only thing that irritated us during this trip was two rude taxi drives who tried to rip us off, from the airport to downtown in Bangkok, and vice versa. We had to complain about it to avoid rip-offs and it turned out things worked out eventually.
Anyway, we are very, very satisfied with our trip to Thailand. Thanks, Morimo and very nice people in Thailand!! (´∀｀)
Posted by Kelly