All decked out in green we set out to experience St. Patrick's Day in Bangkok!! It would not be right to start without some history of St. patrick! St. Patrick was born in Wales in about 385 AD. He is the patron saint of Ireland. In his lifetime he waas successful in converting many pagans to Christianity. He died on March 17, 461 AD and that day has been commemorated as St. Patrick's Day ever since. The folklore about St. patrick is that he raised people from the dead and that he drove the snakes out of Ireland. Of course, snakes have never been native to Ireland, so some people think this is a metaphor for the conversion of the pagans. Regardless of your beliefs, we wear green so we don't get pinches, instead we get kisses!! So here we go... Our first stop was the Thai home of Jim Thompson. He waas an American born in Delaware in 1906. He was an architect before WWII, then joined the service. He was in Europe and Asia. He arrrived in Bangkok as a military intelligence officer. After leaving the service, he decided to return to Thailand and live there permanently. The hand weaving of silk and cotton industry had been long neglected and captured Jim Thompson's attention. Highly skilled in design, he single handidly returned Thailand to the silk industry glory it once knew. His most unusual house was opened to the public with any proceeds of tours going to Thai charities. On March 26th, 1967, Jim Thompson diappeared while on a visit to the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia. Not a single clue has turned up as to what might have happened to him. It is still an unsolved mystery. His glorious home and gardens are still enjoyed by visitors and a new museum has been built since our last trip here.
Here we are in green outside Jim Thompson's house. Nicholas had to get a close up look at the spirit house out front. The Buddists believe you must have one of these outside your house to keep evil spirits away. The flowers you see are offerings to keep those eveil spirits away. It worked, we didn't see any. Outside the house in the gardens, there is a pond of sorts with big fish and a huge string ray swimming around.
Inside the museum, there is a lifelike of Jim Thompson in wax that looks amazingly real.
Next stop, a boat ride over to get some good karma!! This is Mary Pat and Jay Silberman. They felt like they needed good karma too so they opted to go.Unfortunately, getting over to the temple where you can get good karma consists of a James Bondlike boat ride and the boat is hard to get in and out of!! How do you get good karma? You let eels go into the river, setting them free!! This gives you good health, almost immediately we all were feeling very healty!! Kathleen did not love carrying her bucket of eels, as hers were more like the size of snakes and they were trying to get out of her bucket!! We all had buckets of eels and headed to the river with them!!EELS, EELS, EELS!!!!!
Kathleen met a cute friend. She is the one that would not smile until we smiled really big and pointed to our teeth! She finally understood and gave us a big smile. She was adorable! Thai people are really pretty.
EEK! EELS!!!
We all took turns getting our karma from the eels!
This is "City" our guide.
Another way to get good karma is to let birds free. We found the bird man, he even had on a green shirt, and he enabled us all to let birds go free out of paper sacks. This ensures that you will always be free, never go to jail, or be in confined spaces!! It freaked us all out when the birds flew out but we all were happy to know we won't end up in prison!
A St. Patrick's Day photo in green!
We had a wonderful Thai lunch on the riverbank a a very nice restaurant. We had a glorious day and felt really good about our karma. We had to go back to the hotel and catch our shuttle for a 2 hhour ride back to the ship. We knew we were having an Irish Pub party at the ship!! Those pictures will be on the next posting.
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