A Thailand Adventure: Jim Thompson's house

January 19 2010

It was an early morning. We were abruptly awakened by our train service man with loud phrases of thanks for sleeping.

We arrived in Bangkok and got a ride from an overzealous young Thai who liked to drive his tuktuk entirely too fast for the wee hours of the morning. We found our hotel and began a nice morning nap. Later we prepared ourselves for our trek across Bangkok to go see our travel agent to set up plans for the last two weeks of our trip. The dilemma came in the form of two fantastic choices. 1. to go spend 3 days in the main city of Cambodia then go south, then BKK to home, or 2. go south then go back up north to Chiang Rai to see the golden triangle, back to BKK and home. We chose the latter of the two choices. Which, I think I am really happy about.
I know that Cambodia is going to hold a lot for me and I know i'd like to experience more than what 3 days in one city would allow. I also at some point want to go to accumulate a couple of ancient relics...something my thin budget definitely won't allow. In my heart, I know that at some point in the future I will be back for Cambodia, to do and see it the right way. Seeing as much of Thailand and getting one more hefty dose of traditional northern Thai culture before I leave...sounds wonderful.

We also went to go see Jim Thompson's house--which was incredible. At the end of the guided tour about his amazing life, I definitely felt a sweet affinity with him. One of the unique facts made about his disappearance was in regard to the horoscope that had been spun from a monk, saying that he should beware of the his 61 year, which also happened to be the year of his life he disappeared. And we learned during our tour that Thai's a severely superstitious, and Elena, who is somewhat superstitious, made a trek at the end of the tour to the gift shop to read about her horoscope... it was endearing.