Tales From a Female Traveller

“Love Mom” The Queen’s Birthday in Thailand

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Foreward: I originally wrote this on the actual day of the Queen’s Birthday, August 12 2006, but I have had little time to upload to the blog as many of you know. So now, exactly a month later I share this with you.


I arrived back in Bangkok after another wonderful all night bus trip except this time I came back more than just sleep deprived, I have a massive cold. So I am going to whine for the next line or two… here goes… my head hurts, my nose can’t make up its mind between being runny or blocked, my sinus’ are going mad with sneezing fits and I have an awful chesty cough… why does this always happen to me? I always seem to be the one getting sick. ARGH. B and I travelled through 4 different countries together and not once did he get sick, me on the otherhand, I got sick in every place we visited. Go figure.
Okay, so now that my "woe is me" moment has passed I’ve got my vitamin C tablets, my orange flavoured strepsils and some antihistamines and more importantly… WINE! Yes folks, that’s right… a glass of wonderful, tangy sweet red wine. I can already feel those antioxidants killing off those uninvited germs. Be GONE with you germs!!! **takes another swig from her glass**
So here I sit, in the first restaurant I ever ate at with B in Khao San, reflecting after a crap bus ride (I think I dribbled all over the place, but the woman next to me used me as a pillow for most of the ride, that’s okay with me, I was more worried about giving her my cold.) and a hard time finding somewhere to stay. At the moment I am in a placed called the Grand Palace or something with Grand in the title at least and it’s absolutely terrible. If you’ve seen the movie "The Beach" and remember the room Leo Dicaprio’s character stayed in, then you know exactly what I am talking about. My room is more like a sauna than a bedroom. It has two single beds, one of which my pack gets all to itself, it has a single tiny fan on the wall that faces the beds, the door barely locks and it’s positioned on the point of a Y-intersection of the corridors that lead to the communal bathrooms where the taps over the sinks don’t work. There are no actual closable windows, there are just holes in the walls on both sides of the corridors and they are blocked up with either wooden slats or the remains of what where the original glass slats, much like they use in those 70’s built fibro houses with outback dunnies… you know the one’s… you can take them right out of their slots!! The curtains are mouldy and they barely cover the length of the windows and there is constant traffic in the hallways on both sides… and this was the second room I chose. The first room had no slats in the windows at all, just some fly screen mesh and a board to two, so I requested to see a different room due to it "not being safe" (ha… what a joke) and this one is the best of a bad bunch. The good news is that I’m only paying for the one bed instead of a double room, so it’s costing me about 100 Baht. I think I have lost a few pounds just sweating my way through the night. Anyway, I had all these great aspirations of getting off the bus and getting a Tuk Tuk to Siam Square to stay, but it seems that my cold had other ideas and I barely made it off the bus without coughing my guts up, so off I trudged along Khao San and ended up at the Grand Palace because the place that B and I first stayed at was full.
I chose this restaurant because it is supposed to be showing Ladder 49 tonight and I thought I might get my fireman fix (for those of you who don’t know my fireman obsession goes back to childhood when I would have tantrums when I heard a firetruck if I wasn’t taken out to wave to it. So that childhood obsession has become, well… let’s just say you girls would understand… ha ha ha.) I don’t think the movie is actually going to be played however, even though I asked and was told it would be. The movie that was supposed to already be playing was not and instead I got to watch a documentary on Maradonna… yay… so I’m guessing that no movies are playing tonight. About halfway through the Maradonna docco the channel was changed and up came the main square in Bangkok filled with thousands of people and then I realised that it was a public holiday for Mother’s Day – The Queen’s Birthday.
As I was eating dinner, a nice chicken steak with French fries and salad, the festivities for the Queen’s Birthday started and I joined in by lighting a yellow Buddhist candle and humming along to the songs as best I could with the staff of the restaurant while we all watched the fireworks crackling and lighting up Khao San. The Queen, like the King, is so beloved by the Thai people that 90% of the population are wearing light blue T-shirts with "I love Mom" written on the front to celebrate her seventy sixth year. She is a beautiful woman even in her aged years; her hair has greyed and her face is fuller as is her figure, but that friendly smile and those warm eyes shine through. Like most royalty though, she is mainly depicted in her ideal state; young, thing and graceful and it’s the same way for the King. It’s a very traditional way for royalty to be depicted and even as far back as Ancient Egypt where most Kings and Queens were depicted in an idealistic way (with the exception of Egypt’s Akhenaten), so it is still quite common for the ideal to be the norm when presenting royalty to the public.
It’s nice to be included in the cultural events like I was here at the restaurant tonight. I have no idea what the songs I was humming to were about but I understood the feeling and the meaning of them. This is a time to celebrate the birth of the beloved Queen of Thailand and joining in is an experience to remember. As people chant things like "Long live the King and Queen of Thailand" I think about our own monarchy and how no loyal tributes could match the one’s going on here tonight. With a King and Queen so loved as the rulers of Thailand, it’s no wonder he is the longest reigning Monarch of the 20th century.
Afterward: I never got my fireman fix.

posted by Lucyspeak @ 11:55 pm