Thought it might be fun to upload a bunch of pictures from our recent geocaching adventure through Bangkok. We started with a visit to the shrine that was the target of the bombing that took place about a month ago, it was great to see it thriving and active.
After a quick visit and offering we continued on our way. We of had a great plan of getting burgers at the burger festival that was put on by the US Embassy here in Bangkok, which was a lot of fun, along with picking up a few geocaches.
I also got to meet a celebrity.
I love the attention to space and detail that takes place in Thai shops. This picture is from the green tea shop and cafe.
I also love how orchids are able to thrive here and are used to compliment any building or landscape.
Then again, there are other feature that always compliment an area as well...
Thanks to my friend Eddie, we have set out on weekly trips to try to tame the amount of hidden geocaches that are lurking in Bangkok, Thailand. So far, the task has gotten the best of us, but little-by-little we have been chipping away at the numbers.
First off, Bangkok has a TON of geocaches...
Each pin on the screen represents a geocache of some kind, the first trip we were able to knock out a good chunk on the west side of the city. Our legs were dead and our bodies were dehydrated but we managed to find 25 geocaches and change a small section of the city to smiling faces (meaning we had found that location).
This week we cleared another section of the city while we were exploring a few of the malls and checking out a burger festival put on by the US Embassy.
Hopefully next week we can keep up this trend and clean out another small section of Bangkok.
With our lovely "penis garden" find this week, I can only imagine what the future might hold.
Disclaimer: I did not intend to find this awesome phallic oasis today, it is one of those adventures that just happens and needs to be written about. Second Disclaimer: I had to look up the plural of penis. In my entire life, I have never had the chance nor need to write the plural of penis, let alone use the word plethora in the same sentence. Great alliterations should never be turned down. I think that this post needs to start off with how we wound up walking a half a kilometer down a small alley that led us to the Swissotel Nai Lert... My friend Eddie and I had been out geocaching all day, along with using our various models of fitbit to try to get in a certain amount of steps. Suddenly I remembered an item that had been on my "bucket list" for quite some time. I am not sure where I first caught wind of a penis shrine in Bangkok, but I for some reason the memory came back to me with a vengeance. We looked up the location, and we were within a few kilometers. What luck?!? We decided that we had no choice but to walk the streets of Bangkok in search of... a shrine. (I know what you thought I was going to write there... but that joke would have been way too easy). After finally wandering around the quite lovely Swissotel Nai Lert (no, that is not a typo, there really is no "h" in Swissotel), we asked a groundskeeper where the penises were. Thankfully we had a picture, as I don't think we know or ever wanted to know what the word "penis" is in Thai. He quickly escorted us off the grounds and pointed us in the right direction. As the hotel is quite expensive and features an exclusive resort, I have a feeling that we were just a bit unwelcome wandering around in the guest area looking for wooden phallus objects. I can only imagine that TripAdvisor comment: "Had a great stay at the Swissotel Nai Lert, except for the two random people who were wandering around searching for penises. Not sure if they were crazy or bored, but it put a damper on my ingesting gin and tonics while sitting by the poolside." While it was a bit awkward to walk around asking random people to show us where the penises were located, the eventual finding of the shrine was quite worth it. Needless to say, if you ever want a good laugh, walk up to someone in another country who speaks another language, while covered in sweat from walking around in a very humid and hot environment, and ask them where the penises are located. Trust me, quite funny. Now, the shrine itself is a dedicated to a Goddess of Fertility and as such, people bring lots, (yes, lots), of different penis offerings. Now, before you get all Lorena Bobbitt on someone to make yourself more fertile, the offering of a carved wooden, stone, or other artsy phallus is quite acceptable. Make your choice, but make it wisely. Most of the penises, (I still want to say something like penisi, like octopi), are pretty normal, just scaled up or scaled down version of their human counterpart. However, some look like an art project gone wrong. I was going to search a version of that on google, but decided against it as I really did not want to see any art projects of this type either beautifully done or gone wrong. Feel free to do that on your own if you so desire. Without further teasing and/or gratuitous use of the word penis, here are some of my better penis pictures.
A great feature for your backyard
Carved... Wooden...
Must be a connection
I am not going to pretend to explain this one...
I like how this blends into the tree
Be careful climbing the tree
A display case
No clue why they are red...
The ribbon is a nice touch
I like how this shot framed Eddie
Bucket List:
See a penis shrine
I am sure it is going to be hard to top this one, but don't worry my dear readers, I shall try. Until next time, be careful who you go up to in foreign countries asking to see penises.
Well, this blog post had more references to male genitalia than I have ever used before in paragraph form. A quick count has the direct references, not including photos at 16. The things I do for my readers at home...
For those of you who find yourself in Bangkok with a few hours to kill, here is the map of where you go to see this lovely feature for yourself. You know, because you are bored and want to be able to tell this story to your friends as well...
I thought I would offer a bit of insight on why I think monitor lizards are terrifying beasts. I was out for a run tonight and after settling in to a nice pace and hitting around six kilometers, I hear a rather expletive laced hissing noise near my feet. Anyone who knows me well knows that my response was laced with colorful words and some awesome acrobatic skills. I realize that monitor lizards are only about 4-6 feet in length when they are full grown but they blend. They blend in very well. They also hiss and move very fast. This one was no different. I also managed to take pictures of the whole process. It all started with me hearing the monitor lizard. As I did not have any camera out at the time, due to the fact that I was running and my phone was in my pocket, I have taken a touch of artistic liberty here. First image, me noticing the 5 foot monitor lizards in my immediate proximity:
Note that the image is as close to the real thing as I could find.
The next image would be me doing some amazing footwork while trying to not die from the massive reptile that was now almost underfoot.
After a bit more work, I managed to escape. Someday, Mr. Lizard, we shall meet again on the field of running/battle.
So, basically when you take off the fear imagination factor, it looked a lot more like this:
This was after my string of curse words and the damn thing had run for cover. The next shot is me being just a touch braver...
Always check your slippers for lizard tails before putting them on...
The next image was after I decided to assert the dominance that is my God-given right on being an apex predator who was scared shitless by an animal that is much much smaller.
I decided to curse at it as it ran for the water. I really showed it who was boss!
Only after taking the photo, did I notice the man standing in the background laughing at me. You win buddy, you win...
Well, at least the sunset was beautiful!
I shot the second photo only a few minutes later...
A good friend of mine and I decided to have a bit of an impromptu trip into Bangkok today to find a fewgeocaches. Of course, sometimes our goals and dreams are not realized, but today we surged past our idea of finding a "few" and ended up walking about 11 miles while searching high and low for geocaches around the city. As we both have recently gotten new fitbits, we thought it might be fun to have a bit of a step goal. We were able to reach that goal just a little too fast, so we upped the ante, perhaps just a bit too much. I am sore and sunburned, but all-in-all, a very good day. The whole thing started out with our wanting to walk out on a few of the bridges over the river in Bangkok. I must admit that the bridges are usually quite beautiful, and standing over the water offers a bit of a reprieve from the oppressive stagnant heat of the city. The view is stunning. Absolutely stunning.
Plus, there is always a bit of an added bonus when you get to interact with some unexpected wildlife. I was walking back after a rather unsuccessful search for the geocache with Eddie, and saw this:
I decided to slowly carry him back to the shoreline and place him on a gardenia. Needless to say, I am pretty sure that I have found a new best friend. After a bit of meandering, we came across this amazingly beautiful carved lion. Apparently this was left here as a marker, after serving a tour of duty as a ballast stone for a ship. Quite a cool and random find while on our geocache trail.
Yes, that is a huge cut of meat in the lower left corner of the shot.
We eventually found our way onto an amazing piece of architecture known as Rama VIII bridge. There is something about the fact that it is not the typical bridge, but has a very asymmetrical design that makes it both eye-catching and very appealing. We found the geocache in the middle of the bridge, and then continued on with our journey.
Now, if you notice, one of the key colors of the bridge is yellow-gold, with the other being grey. With the bridge being a rather key landmark, there is of course some military security. I am aware that camouflage is not always the easiest thing to create and maintain, but this is one of the points where I wonder if they are even trying...
Yeah, they blend in really well. I love the olive-drab camouflage netting mixed in with the ultra-urban look of the bridge and skyline.
We then decided to ditch the bridge scene and work our way up one of the canal/rivers that divide Bangkok into many smaller flood-zones and drainage areas.
We made our way to the cache that is actually located in this picture, (although I did not notice it at the time, because I was thoroughly enthralled by the massive fish that I will mention again soon).
The area where the currents from the rivers swirl is completely choked with these water plants, and the boats just slowly push them out of the way as they motor through them. I am not sure how they are actually able to keep them out of the propellers, but hey, not my problem...
Now, on to the fish. These things are huge, and there are more of them than you can imagine. The stalls near the waterfront sold massive bags of bread and fish food for about 50-75 cents and it seems the fish always knew when a person had made a purchase.
That is all fish. The entire surface is covered with fish.
It is both a bit awesome and terrifying at the same time.
I want to point out that there are so many fish that some of them actually have to fight to get back into the water when they breach. Pretty soon they are just going to phone in a bread order and then send one or two onto the land to pick up the bag. Terrifying.
In a rather Kurtzian decision, we decided to head upriver.
Geocache after Geocache dot the river, usually on or near the small bridges that allow pedestrians to make it from one side to another without being devoured by those terrifying monsters seen only a paragraph ago.
After about a mile or so, just when you think you are safe, you realize they are still in the water. Like little packs of velociraptors. Also there are monitor lizards in this water. Something about Thailand seems like a bad movie where everything wants to eat you.
The canal slowly transitions from the tourist area to the actual market area. Not the market where you can buy guady pants that have elephants on them, or pot leaf shirts, but an actual market.
You know, live eels, cats sneaking bits of meat that have not seen refrigeration in more than a few hours, chili peppers that will probably cause internal hemorrhaging, etc.
A real market.
I love these markets. They are an interesting mix of noise and smells. I know that you might think that they smell terrible, but they actually have an interesting mix of produce smells, spices, and a few scents that you wish were not mixed in with the potpourri. It gives it a scent that seems almost "alive" in nature.
Eventually we made our way to a rather glamorous area of town and wandered around all of the official government buildings while searching for our elusive geocaches. Thankfully there were not many people out today besides the ever-present tuk-tuk drivers who saw rather large dollar signs over our heads.
Anyone who wants to go into sales in an country could learn a thing or two from these guys. They do not ever take no for an answer. They know all about closing the deal.
I am pretty sure that this is how they train tuk-tuk drivers before they set them loose on tourists.
They sure do know how to build the government buildings though. Wow, beautiful!
Finally, and mercifully after about 25,000 steps on our fitbits we made it back to the wharf for a nice cruise back to the car.
Now, for the funnier bits. The first prize goes to this amazing marketing ploy. Talk about taking a logo and running with it! In your face coffee-yuppies!
The second prize goes to this interesting choice on local and decor.
I just looked this up online, apparently that is the old location of a gay barbershop.
Not sure why we would need to specify it is a gay barbershop, but according to Facebook they have great reviews. I am hoping those reviews are for the new location across town because they really need to hire a decorator, if it is still at this location...
The third prize goes to this statue that would be an obvious talking piece in any yard.
That image can never be cleaned from your mind. You are welcome.
