Chulalongkorn Day greetings

Today was a public holiday - Chulalongkorn Day - commemorating the Death of King Rama V in 1910. Rama V is revered in part for his social reforms but mostly for his role in ensuring that Thailand was not colonised. Thai people are very proud - perhaps justifably - about not being a colony - but at the same time it did suit the French and English to have a buffer zone of neutrality between French Indo China and British India (which included Burma). Brief digression - I have been teaching the Anglo Burmese war which is very interesting - I had no idea the British in Burma were so harsh in establishing control.

Anyhow, to celebrate the occasion I slept in till 8.30. We have to be at school at 7 on ordinary days and my alarm is set for 5.30. A 3 hour sleep in after several late nights was much appreciated. I read some of my book of the moment - Tournamant of Shadows - about 18/19 century imperialism in central Asia and then decided to catch a bus to somewhere.

I am still getting the hang of the buses - there are sooooo many. The routes are so varied, and I have still no idea about interchange places for the times when changing buses is necessary. I have a map book that I have started writing bus routes onto and a map of bus numbers that is helpful, but not big enough to show individual routes well.

Today I walked across the street and got onto the 173. I told the woman selling tickets on teh bus where I wanted to go. She had a look of consternation an d I realised I had caught the bus in the wrong direction.... hmmm...
I crossed the road, failed to hail 2 of the 173 - which doesn't run frequently. Evidently I looked perplexed as someone stopped and asked me if I was OK. He told me I had been on the right bus and the ticket seller must have misunderstood....grrr... not much to misunderstand in a place name....

I decided to catch a bus into Chinatown - Yaowarat St - instead. The buses take so.... long .. but it's interesting to see how places fit together. Chinatown was good - the gold jewellery shops were packed. Deciding that soupy noodles probably suited my budget better than a gold chain, I found a vendor doing pork and green vegetables (not gailan, and not bok choy but something similar) soupy noodles. Not 10/10 but not bad. I followed it with papaya and pineapple bought ready sliced from a street vendor, (sliced while you wait).

Not especially eventful, but quite refreshing.