Asiatique

Bangkok is among the world's top tourist destinations. In fact, it is named the most visited city in MasterCard's Global Destination Cities Index, and has been named "World's Best City" for four consecutive years by Travel + Leisure magazine. And the nice part about living in such a large metro city of over 14 million is that it doesn't take long to play the tourist... just hop on the light-rail system (BTS) and head to another part of town!

That's exactly what a few of us did after school this week on the eve of a four day long weekend. I love heading down to the river to catch a "river taxi". It's a fun way to get to areas such as Chinatown, the All Night Flower Market, any number of ornate temples and other city landmarks. When I'm on the river, I often envision what Bangkok must have been like hundreds of years ago when trading ships traversed the waters en route to trading posts at various ports.

From the pier on the Chao Phraya River, our group boarded a river taxi and headed to Asiatique. I learned this property along the riverfront was once a Danish trading post and, fortunately for us, many of the original buildings were restored and remain today.

I highly recommend this beautiful market area to visitors of Bangkok. It's much like a high-class night bazaar complete with restaurants, shops, waterfront activity, entertainment (such as puppet show and dancing fountain), and even a Ferris wheel in the amusement area. Needless to say, this place really comes alive in the evening hours!

Have you ever seen so many cracked eggs as at this food stand?

Snow Days (modified)

As a child I used to look forward to winter days when there was so much snow that the powers-that-be had to cancel school. We understood it was difficult to travel the snow-laden streets and operate school in such conditions but did we care? Nope. It was a chance to get our snowsuit on, build snow tunnels, organize the neighborhood kids for snowball fights, toboggan down the nearest hill and create snow angels in the yard.

Well, this week I experienced my first Thai equivalent to a Canadian Snow Day. Our school was closed for four days and we called them Smoke Days. Yes sir, apparently the city of Bangkok decides to burn trash in landfill sites around this time every year. Turns out this year, however, one of the fires got a bit out of control and we are still reaping the effects. Even though the fire in our neighboring district was technically 'put out', the smoke hung around for days.

Here are some pictures from the Bangkok Post showing the extent of burn area (similar to the size of a small city) and what it can look like at street level.

A couple years ago I experienced the hazy days at this time of year in Chiang Mai (north Thailand) when farmers burn and prepare their rice fields. That is crop burning but this is trash burning -- quite a different story! Needless to say, we look to stay inside as much as possible when the wind moves in our direction.

This brought me back to my days in Korea when we would experience Yellow Wind days (see March 2008 post). Wind would pick up sand from the Gobi Desert, add pollution from Beijing as it traveled across China and then drop on us in South Korea, Japan and (from what I heard) sometimes across the Pacific Ocean to the west coast of Canada and America.

Obviously snow days are healthier and more fun. Trouble is, though, a person has to put up with months of winter weather for those sporadic snow days. Some might say it's worth it but I think I'll put up with a few smoke days and then be back in the clear.