Ayuthaya, finally

As the end draws nearer, I’m feeling I should start worrying about my top-ten things I want to do before I leave Bangkok. On top of my list was Ayuthaya, the ancient capital of Thailand, just one hour and half North of Bangkok.


So I traded my business suits for my good old explorator's attire, sunhat, sunshirt, sunglasses, suncream and the likes, settled for the lazy, hassle-free option of a guided tour with a group, and bravely set my alarm clock at 5:40 m (on a Sunday morning - ouch!)


Ayuthaya was the capital of Thailand plus a good chunk of Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar from the 14th to the 18th century. It was probably one of the largest cities of the world at that time, with about 1 million inhabitants, and European travelers who went there are came back with amazed stories of the riches they had seen. Unfortunately, the Burmese got jealous, besieged and took over the city, and burned it down to the bones in 1767. The general-soon-to-be the new king and the population fled down and made Bangkok the capital instead.


The Burmese made a point of beheading every Buddha

They also stole the largest Buddha image, 260 kg or so of pure gold, took it to Burma and melted it. These Burmese were an angry crowd.

So, well, there isn’t much left!


I was even a bit unimpressed at first by the piles of bricks and the few standing columns that reminded me more of Greek temples than of South-East Asian 14th century wonders.


Of course, with Angkor as the main comparison, it’s easy to become picky…

Also, there were attenuating circumstances:

One, I wasn’t exactly alone…

so much for the romantic atmosphere...

Two, we didn’t start by the most exciting stuff.


And three, our guide was unable to say anything besides “Ayuthaya was burnt down in 1767. Used to be very big city” which of course limits the excitement. How did they live? What did they trade? How was organized the society? What did they do for fun? What colors were all these palaces? I’m left to wonder…

But luckily I discovered the B&W function of my camera and had a bit of fun with that...




Very retro, isn’t it?


Hey, I’m an ancient ruin too!

So after a while I started enjoying it a lot, and the day got only better.
We spent the morning at what was the Royal palace, next to which was a temple and a giant golden buddha that had been restored recently


Then set off for a giant stupa (pagoda where they bury the ashes of their kings among others), Golden Mount quite in a Burmese style.


And rounded it up in the afternoon with what used to be wat (temples), but only the giant buddhas are left standing surrounded by open sky.

(the first picture of this entry is a portrait of this buddha)

Look at the little people on the side to imagine how huge this reclining Buddha is!



(nice nail paint!)

And the nicest part of the city, with the tree-buddha


and the best preserved ruins

Ceci n'est pas un poisson rouge

This is not a goldfish. This is a koi: a Japanese carp, much revered. According to the legend, if a koi succeeds in climbing the fall up to the point called Dragon Gate on the Yellow river, it will be transformed into a dragon.
Today koi is commonly used as a symbol of persistance, strength and determination.

As a more down-to-earth aside, it's the powerpoint background that I used for my progress report presentation on environmental policy in Asia tomorrow. You get the point - it's going to take a bit more efforts to save the planet...

But it does look like a goldfish - a pretty good illustration of myself in Bangkok (except that the water is dirtier). Or a symbolic representation of my office, with a fishbowl view of palm trees in the courtyard of the UN complex.

Sorry I don't have anything more exciting to post on this blog!

Drowning Bangkok

As I lay, the thin cotton sheet against my cheek
And my ear, dripping sweat, a faint smell of soap exuding
From the fabric, barely covering the humid scent of the blankets,
My inanimate fingers resting on the rugged wood,
I hear Bangkok slowly drowning.

Godless waters take over the streets,
pummeling tin and iron with furious fists,
Devouring every sound, pitiless, arrogant,
Thundering anger and disappointment.

Every pothole and stinky sewage
Slowly fills with moist and fear.
A dark ooze seeps from the pores of the city.

Street carts, choky buses and running children
Are quietly floated away
As sois convulse and eruct their clammy dirt.

Mosaics of submerged cars shine through
The yellow-tainted street-rivers
Anxious to carry away their sulfurous burden.

Waters at last invade my last refuge
Merrily rushing in, eager to lick the hard wood
To conquest the graying blankets and to ridicule the puddles of sweat.
Futile agitation, helpless buckets, vain barricading
Subside as a liquid peace extends over the last scrap
Of drowned Bangkok.

I drift away.

Pathaya

Pathaya is so ugly and obnoxious that it’s almost fun. But… not quite though. It’s a city composed exclusively of hotels, red light bars (they all literally glow red) and tourist shops. Quite logically, it is also exclusively populated by tourists, prostitutes and street sellers. The tourists fall in 2 categories: the 40-60 year-old white males holding the hand of a 20-year old girlfriend (or sometimes wife and toddler), and the grapes of 20-40 all-coloured males looking for a girlfriend – or cheap sex.

I can hardly describe how ugly, charmless, bleak the long alignment of budget hotels and international chain restaurants is.




But honestly, these pictures don’t do justice to the dreary atmosphere by night. Cheap massage parlors (“happy ending for you sir…”), bars offering naked women shows and German travel agencies are everywhere in the soi. Some of the street crowd I find plainly disgusting. By the glares I got from some Indian and Middle-Eastern guys - insistent and inquisitive - Thai women are probably not the only ones resorting to prostitution. Makes me feel like a piece of meat.

In a clueless search for entertainment that did not involve buying human flesh, I walked into a second-hand bookstore: I forgot it would necessarily be a reflection of the Pathaya crowd. Most of the books were in German, except for 10 copies of Dan Brown and a couple of Crichton. I thought movies would do as an alternative, but got slightly discouraged by the choice between "the return of Superman" and "Pirates of the Caribbeans 2"...


By the way, don’t mind the procession on the side of the first picture: the Thai never run out of energy when it comes to relentlessly celebrating their beloved king.



Although some seem to get a bit tired of parading…

Yet, quite unexpectedly, I found a quiet hotel with a charming pool bearing the unlikely name of ‘Ma Maison’ (home sweet home). And even a bookstore with a good selection, and a DVD to watch in bed. But I'm still going back to Bangkok tomorrow.

On the Road Again

Even I thought I was done with out crazy fit of traveling. Too busy dealing with my jetlag, trying to settle my stomach and mourning Brian’s departure, I had kind of overlooked the fact that I was leaving, again. Not very far or for very long, but packing again, adjusting to an unknown place again – and I might actually get a bit tired of that.

The positive side of it is that I’ll have stuff to write in this blog, instead of the “welcome to my daily routine” that I was going to feed you, something like:
Sunday: Brian packing. Sick and depressed all day.
Monday: Brian leaves. Still sick and depressed all day. Exciting news of the day: found a yoga place round the corner from where I live.
Tuesday: Bored at work. Met new intern: at least I won’t be alone in the office in August.
etc.

Actually, I should probably rename this blog “Emilie in Thailand without Brian” ☹




Instead of that, here I am with no time to get bored or moan because I have to pack and get going. I am going to Pathaya for the next 4 days. The organization I work for is holding a regional meeting to get feedback on the first draft of a major report it publishes every five years. It’s absolutely unrelated to what I do for my internship, but I figured it would be fun to check a big international conference, learn stuff about the state of environment in Asia, and possibly meet interesting people. .

Pathaya is a place we had put on top on our list of “where NOT to go” places with Brian. It’s the closest beach to Bangkok, but it’s also the cheapest and tackiest large-scale tourist resort of the area and a major hub for prostitution: not exactly where I'd want to spend my vacations. But the hotel is a bit outside of town, so I haven’t seen anything so far.

The hotel itself is quite something. Big modern building… but, boy! What a pool!


Yet still not enough to comfort me from being here alone in my cold hotel room (you can call me Cosette).

Paris!

After a few days of family fun by the swimming pool, we flew back to Paris, to visit Emilie’s friends and colleagues, and for Brian to begin to see Paris through Emilie’s eyes. It was Brian’s first visit to Paris since age eighteen, and Emilie’s first visit in six months. We were there for 72 hours. For both of us, it was much too short.

We stayed at Emilie’s parents’ apartment, at the corner of Rue du Bac and Rue de Varenne, in the 7th arrondissement. Here’s the building, the apartment is on the fourth/fifth floor (depending on American or French floor counting).


Look closely and you’ll notice a couple of military looking blokes on the corner – that’s some of the nationaal police that are stationed on that and several other corners and who along with the Gendarmerie patrolled the neighborhood because of the high concentration of ministeries and embassies in the area. In fact, just half a block down Rue de Varenne, and within easy sniper range, I mean view, of Emilie’s parents’ apartment is the Hotel de Matignon, the Prime Minister’s (Currently Dominique de Villepin) residence and office, and one of the “Talking Buildings” of the world (e.g. newspapers report “Today Matignon said…”)

I didn’t take any photos of them too close, but the cops carried machine guns. I hate that.

Since it was Brian's first visit with Emilie, we took the opportunity to be introduced to Paris through her eyes - her eyes at age five, fifteen, and twenty-five.

That is, we visited the apartment that she lived in between the ages of five and twenty-two (no good photos, sorry, though by the legends of her friends and family it was a warm, welcoming, and wonderful place, off of Boulevard Montparnasse in the 14th.)

We also visited the school (Ecole Alsaciennes) where she attended from kindergarten through high school (Baccalaureate). It’s a very compact school in a warren of classrooms, playgrounds and gardens stuffed into a Paris block on Rue Notre-Dame des Champs just down the street from her parents’ former apartment. We relived schoolyard antics…

And met some of the people that used to look after her and her siblings…


And the Jardin du Luxembourg, where Emilie’s grand-mere would take her on Wednesday afternoons. Paris is such a dense city, the city parks are as crowded with children on holiday as a foie gras farm at feeding time, such as these, spearing rings on the carousel with their grand-parents looking on as Emilie did twenty years ago…


We also visited the Grand Ecole (a top university) that she attended, the Institut d’Etudes Politiques, aka “Science Po” for short. We unfortunately missed crashing a class being taught by her friend Cecilia, but we roamed the halls and off-campus bars where the students hang out. Here’s a photo of current students discussing weighty matters of politics and governance (and not just who has the best weekend plans, I’m sure) in the courtyard…


Finally, we visited where Emilie was working at age 25, the Hotel de Ville (or City Hall) of Paris, for the Mayor’s Office. Again, we missed crashing an actual committee hearing or anything, so we visited the reception rooms, and their over-the-top elegance. Remember when Wille Brown got so much grief for wanting to gild the dome of San Francisco City Hall? Well check this out…


(setting up for a reception)


(France! Glorious France!)

Besides touring Emilie’s old haunts, our other goal was to meet old friends. We went out to dinner (for couscous, apparently a de facto new addition to the dear national cuisine) with Anne, a Green Party representative in the Regional Assembly.


On the way, we stopped to watch a bit of the end-of-first-round World Cup match between France and Spain.

France won, and there were fireworks and festivity in the streets till dawn.

(Now they just won the quarterfinals (against Brazil!) and are in the semi-finals with Portugal. Allez Les Bleus!)

Bretagne-style crepes with Emilie’s 20+ year-friend Emilie and her partner Max…

An essential culinary and cultural staple, all the better with flambé!


And then on our last full night, we went out with half a dozen friends to the canal-side in the 19th arrondissement, where seemingly a few hundreds of paris young people, petanque balls (a.k.a. bowls in England or Bocci Ball in Italy) and guitars, and of course plenty of vin et fromage…



Emilie and Cecilia and Delphine…


And hilarity late into the night… (with Cecile, Cecilia, Janaina and Delphine, Emilie's friends from college)

Lastly, during more interesting and culture-laden travels, we happened to pass a couple of sights that are also somewhat well-known and make good photos…