Gorgeous Thailand

Thailand never ceases to amaze me. Culturally, it has so much going for it. To us, it now seems to rival Singapore for its efficiency and modernity! Economically it is doing fantastically and even despite its recent coup things are progressing quite normally. We were there for the King's birthday (which is incidentally the same day as my brother's) and all his subjects were in full-honouring mode decked out in bright yellow shirts. We looked so out of place in the sea of yellow. We had been to Bangkok 5 years ago to attend my cousin Irma's wedding to her husband Art. The traffic was so terrible at the time and we stayed at a hotel where the air-con kept conking out. 5 years later, we were stunned by the progress of the city--fantastic flyovers and new highways that has reduced traffic significantly, the site of our old hotel (the Intercontinental I think) is now a blinging new luxury mall called the Paragon (which holds one of the nicest supermarkets I've ever seen anywhere!), and all around we saw signs of progress. I hope the Philippines can catch up! So here are some pix of BKK...better late than never!

Art and Irma took us to Ayuthaya, the old imperial city in Thailand where there are lots of gorgeous stupas and sights.


We were particularly impressed with this gigantic reclining Buddha. All the buddhas were clothed in shining orange cloth.


When we went to Chiang Mai we went trekking and visited some hill-tribes, including the Karen tribe! We also went to this cool waterfall where Kevin had a little shower.


We particularly loved the elephant ride. We tried to feed him loads of bananas since he looked so cute eating them.