A Primer on Driving in Bangkok

For most of you reading this blog, my advice is to never, ever, ever even think about trying to drive in Bangkok.

One night, I jumped into the car and headed into town to meet a girlfriend for dinner at Biscotti, the Italian restaurant at the Four Seasons Hotel, my favorite hotel in Bangkok. It took me an hour and 45 mins to cover a distance of just over 6 miles. No weather, no accidents - just random Bangkok traffic.

During that excruciating drive time, I listened to the all-traffic radio station (the intersection by the hotel is at a complete standstill?! Oh great.) and mentally composed this blog.

Now, I actually learned how to drive in Bangkok, many years ago. However, I am now used to driving in a more rules-based orderly system - as opposed to the free-for-all, completely opportunistic way people drive in Thailand. The usual Thai traits of kindness, politeness and consideration all fly right out the window once they get behind the wheel of a car.

So here are a few rules of the road:

1. Any open space on a road must be filled up - if the space is too small for a car, it will be filled by a whole mess of motorcycles or some enterprising tuk-tuk with a fantastic turning radius.
2. Lane markers have no reason for existence.
3. When turning left or right from a three lane road, feel free to overtake all the losers waiting for their turn, and turn from the center lane.
4. Never start up immediately when your light turns green. There will be at least 5 red light runners speeding through the intersection. Do not get in their way.
5. When trying to make a lane change, no one will let you in unless you force your way in. Assume they will not hit you since your car is nicer than theirs.
6. Do not apply Rule #5 in front of a bus. They will hit you and those bus drivers are all crazy anyway.
7. A typical bus driver will pick up and drop off passengers at a stop, then veer out to the fast lane in heavy traffic. And veer back into the curbside lane to stop at their next stop. This whole exercise will have allowed them to pass 2-3 cars, but have them cutting off countless others with their veering back and forth.
8. There are a million taxis in Bangkok, all cruising slowly in the curbside lane looking for fares. If they find one, they will stop. No matter where they are or how inconvenient for other drivers. The most popular taxi color is a bright, neon pink.
9. Many of the main overpasses in town have lanes that can go either direction, depending on whether it's the inbound or outbound commute time. There are big lights above these lanes - red X or green arrow. Do not assume that those lights are correct. Do not head into an open lane on an overpass ever. Always follow someone else. That way, they will be the ones in the head-on collision, not you.
10. Getting out of the way for an ambulance is optional.

And there you have it. Go to Bangkok and check it out if you don't believe me.

I was 45 mins late for dinner. Thankfully, my girlfriend was 35 mins late - so I was only net 10 mins late. By Thai standards, that's perfectly acceptable. It took me 20 mins to get home later that night.

One last fit of gluttony

Sunday brunch here in Bangkok has become quite an institution in terms of the lavish hotel buffets. There is truly no comparison with anything in the U.S. - even the $75 Ritz Carlton Mother's Day buffet is paltry by Thai standards.

We do like to indulge while we're here. Last Sunday, we went to the buffet at the Shangri-la Hotel by the river. That's a very family-oriented buffet with entertainment for the kids, but also with foie gras for the parents.

Today we went to the distinctly more adult buffet at the Four Seasons, supposedly the most expensive brunch in Bangkok. This is due to the fact that there's an unlimited flow of alcohol throughout the brunch - from mimosas and bellinis, to beer and bloody marys.

It was a lovely way to spend 3 hours - and the foie gras here was better than last week. There was a full grill with steaks, lamb chops, lobster, large prawns & lots of other foods cooked to order. Sushi and sashimi were cut to order and I had some amazing unagi. The custom California Roll I ordered for older daughter was wonderful. Plus other stations for Thai grilled meats, pasta, omelets, waffles, schwarma carved to order.... the list goes on and on.

A beautiful Thai station.

A unique caviar and roe station located in their carp pond, with the server standing knee-deep in water during the whole buffet. The kids loved this one!

Great Indian food - where a nice man demonstrated making naan in the tandoor.

Thai desserts - alas, they look better than they taste in my book.

Three kinds of honey, with a dripping honeycomb display.

And a fully laded dessert table with lots of other desserts. My favorite was some crepes suzette served with fresh mango. But I had tastes of god-knows how many other things. My last order of a banana souffle did not arrive, which was probably a good thing considering how full I was!

Mother's Day in Thailand

I've always been lucky enough to have two mother's days each year - one in May in the U.S. and one in Thailand during our annual trip. Mother's Day in Thailand is the day of the Queen's Birthday - August 12. Alas, this year, we are heading home on August 11, so poor me - only one Mother's Day celebration this year!

It's fun to be here in the week leading up to Mother's Day though - all the major shopping centers have special decorations and exhibits, and most buildings are decorated with pale blue, the Queen's color.

Emporium, the shopping center in our building, has a beautiful floral display this year - of Siam Tulips. When I first saw the promotional posters, I was surprised, thinking they had imported tulips for the floral displays. Instead, they've actually just renamed a local Thai flower to be called the Siam Tulip! It's a pretty flower that often grows wild in rural Thailand and is now exported thoughout Asia.

It's a little strange to see the main concourse of the shopping center transformed into a lush garden, but pleasant nonetheless!

Love the beach!

We're spending a few days in Hua Hin, a sleepy beach town about 2.5 hours away from Bangkok. It's our usual routine - we eat at the same places and stay in the same hotel, the Hyatt. I actually usually try to get the same rooms every time but with mixed success. This time we were generously upgraded to a rather large suite. Well, since I've stayed here every year since it opened, maybe I'm just due ;)

It's been a good trip - the weather has been mostly overcast, which means it's not as stiflingly hot as usual. We've had lots of beach and pool time and the kids are not too sunburned for the most part - I consider that a success!

Nokia Ultra Screen Theatre

Two years ago, we discovered these ultra luxury theatres here in Bangkok. This year, we decided to revisit them to watch Harry Potter #6. This time, I remembered to bring my own camera to document the experience!

Here's a shot of the display seats in the lobby to entice theatre-goers in. As a reminder, these tickets are about $18 compared to $4 for a seat in the regular movie theatre (which is already nicer than the Century theaters we go to in California).
We went into the fancy lounge area to wait for the start of the movie. It's very plush with lots of chandeliers. We had drinks and snacks while we waited. Here are the girls using the ubiquitous hand-sanitizing gel (yes, there's a bit of a swine flu paranoia here in Thailand).
And finally, here's Mei relaxing in her leather recliner, just waiting for the movie to start.I was surprised that the theatre was almost full (capacity was 32 seats, 29 were occupied) given the relatively high price.

More food innovations

Last year, we found pizza in a cone here in Bangkok. This year, I found potato chips on a stick.


A small potato was sliced so it all came out in one long spiral. It was placed on a stick and then fried in a special machine. You could get them in all sorts of flavors. The most popular were cheese and BBQ. I opted for the plain and boring original flavor. Which was really just salt. There were also chocolate and tom yam flavors. We'll have to save those for next time! The original flavor was quite good.

And we found a great little local frozen yogurt place like Red Mango and Pinkberry, called Buddhi Belly. The logo was so cute, I wanted to get a t-shirt that said "I have a buddhi belly" - but alas, although the product was excellent, they hadn't quite figured out how to exploit all the merchandising as yet. Maybe I can talk them into selling me an employee t-shirt...

Back in Thailand

Goodness, I'm not quite sure where the summer went. We're in Thailand right now - it seems like a whirlwind since we came home from Spain and sent kids off to summer camp etc. There was a bit of a swine flu scare but since it's been resolved, I'll just leave it alone for now.

We were back in California for about a month and then left for Thailand. This is a pretty short trip for us - just 3 weeks, since we need to be in Oregon for a wedding in mid-August.

And Thailand is as wonderful as ever - we're on the 37th floor of our usual apartment building. Check out the sunset over the city skyline.

I dread to weigh myself when I get home, I've been eating everything in sight...

A Whirlwind Trip

I guess spending 4 days/5 nights in Bangkok is a rather short trip - lots of meals with relatives, a surprising amount of very successful shopping and an insane amount of food consumed. It seems to have passed by in the blink of an eye. I'm now sitting in the United lounge in Narita on my way home and am being entertained by a crowd of iPhone users around me who are discussing various ways of jailbreaking their phones.

The new Bangkok airport was a pleasure to depart from as usual. I leave you with a photo of Thai traditional motifs juxtaposed with the overwhelming Thai love of shopping :)

Related to half of Bangkok

I think I'm related to half of Bangkok - seriously. My parents each have 4 siblings and so I have around 20 first cousins alone (I lose count) - I'm one of the younger ones on my father's side but the oldest by a long shot on my mother's side.

My maternal grandfather had 9 siblings (from three different wives), each of whom seems to have procreated prolifically. I think my second cousin count tops 60. So wherever we go, my mother sees someone she knows, who I dutifully "wai". After the encounter, I always have to ask my mother who we just chatted with.

This is one of the many reasons why I can't dress like a slob in Thailand ;)

Ancestor Worship

My trip to Thailand has coincided with various dates for worshiping or praying to my great grandparents on my mother's side and to my grandparents on my father's side (coinciding with the days that they passed away).

The first worship took place at the Chinese temple - the little plaques all commemorate different people (remains are cremated), and when you arrive at the temple, you pull down the plaque of your ancestor and place it on the table. Along with candles, flowers and offerings of food and lucky money. We lit joss sticks and prayed, and then hung out for a while, since we had to do three rounds of the ritual. For 45 mins while we waited, my parents and my aunts spent the entire time discussing food - where the best type of a certain snack could be bought, news that a restauranteur's son had just opened up a new outpost of a particular favorite restaurant, debates on where the best fried noodles (lard-na) could be found etc. It's no wonder I have a food obsession!

After that, I helped my father burn the lucky money in a large barrel that was situated for just this purpose. This will provide my grandparents with more spending money in the afterlife - I'm sure they will put it to good use ;)

The second worship was very similar but took place here in the family compound. The nice benefit is that I get to see all my thousands (ok, I exaggerate, but really not by very much) of relations at one go - all of whom are shocked that I would fly all the way home just for a few days :)

I love being home

I sometimes think it's a bit of a stretch for me to call Thailand home since I never really lived here for any extended period of time, and my only schooling here was in preschool. However, I spent every single school holiday here up until I finished college and for an expat kid, it was the closest thing to home that I've ever had. Also home is, to a certain extent, wherever my parents are.

I'm blogging from a seat in the garden of my mother's family compound, a 8 or 9 acre property that was subdivided by my great-grandfather and doled out to his sons, who all built houses of various designs with shared gardens and a great pond stocked with a bazillion fish and one very old turtle (at least I think it's still there). My parents' house is a few miles away, and only has dial-up (yes, there are people in the world without broadband!) internet access so I'm happily using my tech savvy cousins' wifi right now. It's relatively cool, the fountains are burbling away and someone just brought me a glass of iced water :)

I love being back in Thailand, I switch into Thai very happily (although I find my Thai vocabulary to be somewhat limited at times). It's a bit of mess here right now - the country is just finishing up an extended period of mourning for the King's elder sister, and politicking is supposed to be suspended. However, the country is very divided on the political front - with people wearing red vs yellow shirts to show their support for two dueling political factions. Apparently, the other day, a Thai Airways captain refused to board three different Thai members of Parliament because he was on the opposing faction. Can you imagine that happening in the US?!

My last crazy day in Bangkok

On my last morning in Bangkok, my parents picked me up to go make merit on the 29th anniversary of my grandfather's death. The traffic was terrible because two major demonstrations were taking place in the heart of Bangkok. The first, which we were unfortunate enough to drive by, was a parade to the German Embassy to protest the sacking of the employee and union leader of a German corporation called Triumph. The second was a march on the British Embassy to urge the British government not to grant asylum to Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand's ex PM. The current political situation in Thailand is a bit of a mess and you can read more about it here. Now traffic in Bangkok is already legendary - throw a few hundred marching protestors into the mix and you have a disaster. This explains the concept of "Thai Time' - where Thai people treat a rendezvous time rather loosely ;)

As we were stuck at a major intersection, I saw a policeman pull a car over for god-knows-what infraction. At the same time, there was some sort of fashion shoot going on across the road by Lumpini Park - a rather scantily clad (for Thailand!) beautiful Indian girl was surrounded by people with umbrellas and holding large reflectors.

All of a sudden, a swarm of other policemen appear to converge on the one hapless car and at the same time, the Indian girl and the man next to her start doing the bhangra in unison very vigorously by the side of the road. If you're not familiar with that, it's basically the Bollywood style of dancing - screw the lightbulb, pat the dog (to quote "Bride & Prejudice"). I had to laugh - the chaos of Bangkok!

We finally made it to the hall at Chulalongkorn Hospital where most of my extended family on my mother's side were congregated. We had ten monks chant blessings for my grandfather and then we offered them various items of food, drink and three kinds of dessert for lunch.

It was a fitting end to my long stay in Bangkok.

Ice Ice Baby

I've mentioned iBerry in the past, our favorite local ice cream place. They have a number of outlets throughout Bangkok and we visited a different (and larger) one after dinner last night.


We ordered the Ice Ice Baby selection - 5 mini cones that you can select 5 different flavors for. I don't think it's the most economical selection, but it sure is cute!


And my younger daughter, who doesn't usually care much for ice cream, finally found a flavor she likes - Orange Sherbet! Two days before we leave Thailand :(

Eating Chinese in Bangkok

If you're used to the standard Chinese restaurant in the US or Europe, you have to come to Asia to experience high-style Chinese dining in many of the top hotels in Bangkok, Hong Kong and Singapore - with service and atmosphere as nice as any French restaurant.

We went to Liu at the Conrad in Bangkok for a dim sum lunch on Saturday. I first came to Liu about 5-6 years ago when the hotel first opened, and thought it was one of the prettiest Chinese restaurants I had been to.

We had an overabundance of food for lunch (of course!) since it turned out to be an all-you-can-eat menu. They did the standards quite well (bbq pork bun, har gao, siu mai etc) and also had a handful of creative dim sum.

They had also set up their moon cake stand in front of the restaurant. The Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival takes place in Sept and moon cakes are a staple throughout Bangkok as Sept approaches. This was always one of my favorite festivals growing up - not only could I eat moon cakes to my heart's delight, but as a child, I also got to pick out a lantern every year and go out on the night of the full moon to parade around with all the other kids.

Back in the day (god, I sound old!), moon cakes came in either lotus or red bean flavors. These days, the flavors seem to be limitless. Even Starbucks gets in on the action with a coffee-flavored version (yes, it's as gross as it sounds!). The stand at Liu offered 8 different kinds of moon cakes to sample, including durian, custard, ginko. And sample we did!

Making Batik Handkerchiefs

There's a small Camp Hyatt at our resort in Hua Hin which is fairly underutilized. They have a cute selection of crafts that are fairly unusual and have a good Thai flavor - and we usually stop by every year to do one or two things. I have noticed that they're not really introducing any new crafts, but this does not seem to dismay my kids.


This year they chose to paint batik handkerchiefs. They first pick up the picture they want to do, then the instructor uses hot wax to outline the picture on the cotton fabric that's stretched on a wooden frame. After the wax has cooled, the kids use special water-based paints to color in the picture. The paint and the fabric ensure that colors can be blended very naturally in the right sections, while the wax border ensures that colors don't bleed into different sections.

After they're done painting, the fabric is allowed to dry naturally and is soaked overnight in some sort of solution that sets the paint. Then the staff nicely iron the pieces and we pick them up the next day.

This year, the kids both picked florals. I think they did quite a nice job!

To the beach at Hua Hin

Every year for the past 5 years or so, we've made the 2.5 hour drive out of Bangkok to Hua Hin, a beach resort popular with Thais and other locals, and a long-time retreat for the Thai royal family. I particularly like Hua Hin because it's very low key and has a very low proportion of foreign tourists - most foreigners are travelling in families and many are expatriates based somewhere in Asia.

We always stay at the Hyatt Regency resort there - it has (to quote my kids) "the best pool in the world". Now I have to admit the experience was not up to par this time (it started with being kept waiting with little explanation for 2 hrs 30 mins before our suite was ready and went downhill from there). I did let my irritation go however and we had a nice 4 days there with lots of pool time (we really don't do anything else!) and the reemergence of Shamu.


Shamu appears every summer and I am much fonder of him now that we've figured out that the pool attendants at the Hyatt can take him away and inflate him for us!

Watching the Olympics in Thailand

The Olympics are a huge event here and the entire country is rooting for its top athletes to bring home some medals, as well as also being proud that such an event is being mounted in Asia. We watched the Opening Ceremonies live on Friday night - sadly for Sean and the kids, all the commentary is in Thai.

The graphics and production are much less slick than what we usually see on the US networks, which I find very charming and entertaining - although I do wish they'd pop up the standings a little more often. It's sometimes hard to keep track.

We're also seeing a lot more of sports that matter to Thailand - a lot of weightlifting, boxing, badminton and judo!

Today Thailand won it's first gold medal, in women's 53kg weightlifting. I've been told that the gold medalist will receive 10 million Thai baht (~ 300k USD) as her reward.

The country is fiercely proud and everyone is celebrating the medal!

Is food the center of my existence?

I was reading my friend Leslie's blog and noted her very funny, but oh-so-true comment that "Not only do we eat, we talk about our next meal while we're eating the current meal."

This has always been the case with my family and I'm just beginning to realize that this is not normal behavior for most other people in the world.

Let me enumerate my dining highlights of the past week:

- Sunday: massively indulgent Sunday Brunch buffet at the Sukhothai Hotel

- Monday: lovely meal at Savoury, a little cafe in Siam Paragon (the most high end shopping center in Bangkok)

- Tuesday: "modern asian" meal at Breeze, outdoor dining on the 54th floor of a high rise building (made much more exciting when the entire restaurant had to move indoors when it started raining at 8 pm - a task accomplished by the staff in record time)

- Wednesday: afternoon tea in the Four Seasons lobby, surrounded by Thai police and very obvious Secret Service personnel (preparing for W's entrance that evening)

- Thursday: lunch at the Deck on the Chao Praya river, across from Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn

- Friday: nouveau Japanese at Ginger, a new restaurant on the 24th floor of the Centara Grand Hotel where I fell in love with Yuzu-flavored salt

- Saturday: dinner at Youreaguan, a simple Korean restaurant on Sukhumvit Soi 59 (the wait staff was oh-so-nice)

- Sunday: dinner at Indochine, a lovely Vietnamese place in an old house

Yo Yo Land

There are high end Western shopping centers in Bangkok (like Emporium, which is the one I live right above) and there are local malls frequented almost exclusively by Thais, usually located in the suburbs.

One huge example of a local mall is Seacon Square, which is neither on the Skytrain nor the subway route. However, we make a trek over there every year because of Yo Yo Land.

Now all shopping centers in Bangkok will have a children's play area. They range from the small area in Emporium which runs heavily to video games, to Yo Yo Land, which is a full-fledged mini theme park located on the 6th floor of Seacon Square.

Not only are there a plethora of video games, there is a train, bumper cars, a flume ride, carousels, a labyrinth, mini ferris wheel, a ghost house (which we've always avoided) and numerous other little themed rides.

Plus lots of other games, including the Thai version of paint-your-own pottery.

We could spend the whole afternoon here - the kids just love it!

I could get used to this very easily...

Today we spent a most pleasurable 3 hours in the Mandara Spa at the Four Seasons Hotel in Bangkok. The spa suite was beautiful.

I had an aromatherapy bath, a Thai herbal compress followed by a massage and finally a rejuvenating facial (during which I fell fast asleep). The service throughout was marvelous and my attendant, although quite petite, was remarkably strong and gave me a very deep massage.


Afterwards, we hit the lobby for a snack and saw a multitude of Thai policemen and Secret Service agents wandering around. We correctly deduced that President Bush was going to be staying there - he's scheduled to arrive for a quick visit to Bangkok before he goes up to Beijing for the Opening Ceremonies.