Keep to the Code

Today we visited the Grand Palace complex here in Bangkok.  The Thai people love their kings, past and present.  And I mean they LOVE their kings.  Did you know that it is offensive to the Thai people to point with your foot (considered the lowest and most unclean part of your body) in the direction of the king?  Or that speaking in any kind of unfavorable terms about the king can get you deported from Thailand faster than you can say “pad thai”?  And that someone was actually arrested for stepping on some paper money that they dropped to keep it from blowing away because Thai money has a picture of the king on it and they dared to touch something that bears his image with their lowly, unclean feet?  True story.  So these fun little facts give us the background for what happened in preparation for our tour of the Grand Palace complex today.  From the day we arrived in Thailand, Kit has been warning us that today and tomorrow are “serious” days, “very, very serious,”  and that we need to adhere to a very strict dress code.  We are going to one of the king’s palaces, and even though all we are going to do is walk around the grounds and look at the palace for five minutes from the outside, and the king isn’t even in the country because he is in Switzerland at the moment, we need to show respect and be appropriate in our dress.  The no-no list, which was repeated to us at least fifteen times over the course of a day and a half, is as follows:

No shorts

No capri pants

No sleeveless tops

No cap sleeves

No flip-flops

No sandals that don’t have a strap around the heel

No leggings

No spandex

No sheer fabric no matter how little or where it is on the garment, even if it is just a ruffle on the bottom of a long skirt

No bare shoulders

No exposed knees

Dresses and skirts must be below the knee

Pants must reach the ankle

Sleeves must be at least half way to the elbow

You cannot wear a scarf or shawl to cover your shoulders.  It’s appropriate sleeves or forget it.

Above all, keep to the code!  

Kind of makes the Vatican dress code look primitive, doesn’t it?  I mean, compared to this, the Vatican dress code is amateur hour!  You should have seen the look of panic on some of these people’s faces.  I mean, it is hot here and everyone packed accordingly so there were quite a few people wondering if they even had sleeves or pants or skirts/dresses long enough to satisfy the dress code.  Even Jill and I had a moment of panic, wondering if we had any tops that had short sleeves that were long enough to past muster.  And before you think, “Oh, they just say stuff like that but no one is going to say anything if you wear a tank top,” think again.  These people are serious!  Kit was stationed outside of the hotel restaurant this morning and literally inspected each and every one of us to make sure we had kept to the code.  At least one person got sent back upstairs to change, and I saw Kit tugging at one poor woman’s dress to see if she could get it to come down over her knees.  And when we arrived at the palace, there were armed guards at the entrance inspecting us all again, ready and willing to deny entrance to anyone disrespecting the king through inappropriate dress.  Apparently, if anyone in our group failed to pass dress code at the palace, the blowback on Kit would be pretty severe and could affect her job, so that’s why she was so concerned. 

After all that, the palace itself was wholly unimpressive.  I was expecting something to rival the Sleeping Beauty castle after all the trouble we went through to get here, but alas, it was not to be.  It turned out to be a very strange mash-up of classical western style and Thai style.  Apparently the fifth king of Thailand (son of the “The King and I” king)  decided he was going to be innovative and build himself a palace that was different from all the others, using classical western design.  The problem is that once the construction was halfway completed, he decided that he didn’t like the classical western style after all and switched to traditional Thai style.  The result is, to say the least, odd.  

This palace was lived in by Thai Kings 5, 6, 7 and 8.  King 9 found another palace for himself after King 8 was assasinated in his bed in this palace.  To this day, no one knows who did assasinated King 8.  The good news is that they didn’t have to take King 8 very far to prepare him for his funeral - the royal funeral parlor is right smack next door to the palace.  Like I said, the whole thing is just odd.

After the not-so-grand Grand Palace, we were off to take a boat ride along the Chaopraya River, which runs right through the middle of Bangkok.  Large buildings and skyscrapers line the banks of the main river, but as you turn down the smaller canals that branch off of the river, you get a little idea of how the people here live.  It was quite a mix of modest homes, fancier homes and rotting hovels.  There are many people living along the river who continue living in homes that look like they are ready to fall down because their family has lived in that home for many generations and they are keeping the tradition going.  Some people are just too poor to live anywhere else.  And then you have the rich and the people who are somewhere in between.  And interspersed every quarter mile or so all along the canals are Buddhist temples, one right after another.  They say that there are over 37,000 temples in this small country.  I think half of them must be in Bangkok.  When I was in Rome, I thought we could hardly walk twenty feet without seeing a church or religious statue.  Again, compared to this, Italy is amature hour.  This place is coming down with temples and statues!  

Here are some photos from our boat ride on the river and canals.

As we were sailing along the canal, our boat driver pulled over to the side of the canal for a moment and we noticed some large fish in the water.  Before long, the boat was being swarmed by catfish.  All I could think of is, “On this episode of River Monsters...” and the episode where Jeremy Wade goes hunting for the “gooch,” a giant, man-eating catfish that terrorized villages in Asia.  Were we about to get gooched?  Or was this an opportunity to reach down into the water and grab a free meal?  Thankfully, neither was the case, although Kit told us that these catfish can reach huge sizes.  These fishies were there looking for a handout, and our boat driver had just the thing - loaves of stale bread which were divided up between us so that we could feed the fish.  Evidently, the fish recognize the tourist boats that come down the canals and swarm them, hoping to be fed. 

Tomorrow we leave Bangkok and head for Ayutthaya, the second capital of the Kingdom of Siam (now Thailand) for over 400 years.  It’s another “serious” dress code day as we are going to visit the Summer Palace, so I’m gonna go get myself together, making sure that my bags are packed and my attire is keeping to the code.