PEARL'S ASHES: Bangkok...and a lot more

Today I continue my nostalgic Pearl's Ashes series, focusing on Bangkok.  But there will be a few informational detours, leading to a nightmarish journey to my hotel in Tokyo, and finishing with a hint of what will be my posting next Tuesday.

• I flew first class, and left Honolulu on 1March2011, 24 hours later arriving at my favorite hotel in Bangkok, the Sheraton Grande Sukhamvit.
• My philosophy when flying is, "if free, every drink not drunk is money wasted."  I'm not sure my body, and liver in particular, would agree, but it makes for an enjoyable flight.
• Go to my posting that day for the details, but I had 16 different alcoholic drinks getting from Honolulu to Bangkok.

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  I selected the Grand Palace for Pearl's Ashes #15.
• Here is a short video of this attraction.
• Official residence of the Kings of Siam, now Thailand, since 1782, until 1925.
• Over 8 million visitors/year.

One of Pearl's very favorite spots on Earth is the Grand Palace in Bangkok.  All the kings of Thailand lived here, except for the current ones and Chulalongkorn.  Just to get your history correct, King Chulalongkorn is the son of King Mongkut, who was the depicted king in the King and I.

• The most sacred attraction in Thailand is the Emerald Buddha.  
• There are signs all over the place NOT to take a photo.  But here is mine anyway.
• From the 15th century.
• It is 26 inches tall and 19 inches wide.
• So you say, what a piece of emerald.  But the truth is that the Emerald Buddha is made of jade.
• Here is photo of a fake emerald weighing 253 pounds.  Named Theodora, specialists think this is a white beryl dyed green.  However, a natural green beryl is NOT an emerald, which, confusingly, is type of beryl.  Huh?  Read this.

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  But the Emerald Buddha is bigger than that fake.  However, the world's biggest gem ever found (in 2001 in Brazil) in a single shard is the Bahia Emerald at 836 (or 794) pounds.  But as this photo shows, even though it is more than four feet tall, a shard is not a crystal.
• Said to be worth around a billion dollars (or only $300 million).  In other words, a lot of uncertainty.
• Lot of criminal history, as it was smuggled out of Brazil and stolen at least once.
• In 2024 a DC court determined that this gem should be returned to Brazil.
• As I've segued into this subject, let me end it with two more interesting bits of information.
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  The Cullinan Diamond from South Africa is the largest gem-quality diamond at 3,107 carats, weighing 1.4 pounds, although Sergio from Brazil is a rough diamond at 3,167 carats.  The Cullinan was cut into 9 major stones, with the Cullinan I, or Great Star of Africa, the largest at 530.2 carats, set at the top of the Sovereign's Sceptre with Cross.

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  The largest authenticated crystal of any type is a beryl from Madagascar, being 18 m in length, 3.5 m in diameter, having a volume estimated at 143 m³ and a mass approximately 380,000 kg, or 836,000 pounds.  Not exactly sure, though what this gemstone looks like, but I would imagine it would look similar to Mexico's Cave of Crystals in Naica, Chihuahua.  Those orange things are people.  A beryl from here is in second place.

• Okay, so where was I?  I dropped Pearl's ashes at this spot.

Let me continue my journey through the Orient, for a nightmare of a natural calamity soon follows that made this journey maybe my most adventurous.  After Thailand, I caught the Eastern and Oriental Express from Bangkok to Singapore.  Train stopped at the River Kwai, where there is a Death Railway Museum.

• You might have seen the movie, Bridge on the River Kwai (Rotten Tomatoes 96/93). but did you know that there were 100,000 deaths associated with building this railway?  16,000 prisoners of war, but more the local workers, who should have known better, but drank water from the River Kwai and caught cholera and other diseases.

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  I've never before seen such horror in any museum.  I felt uncomfortable that I was of Japanese descent.
• If you are any way feeble, don't take this train, for the train track is narrow, meaning that everything jerks left and right, so walking is a huge danger.
• Went through southern Thailand, where Islamic militants were a problem.
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  I stayed at the Marina Bay Sands.  To quote my posting of 2011:

The Marina Bay Sands is an $8 billion integrated resort which had its grand opening last month.  There are 2561 rooms, a major convention center, casino (500 tables and 1600 slot machines), seven celebrity chef restaurants and an Art and Science Museum, topped by a 1280 foot long Sky Park with a 492 foot long Infinity Pool over three towers.  I'm at the edge of Universe:  There is a pool at the top.

• While in Singapore:

A 7.2 earthquake struck 90 miles off Honshu in the Pacific and shook Tokyo, creating a 2 foot tsunami, but surprisingly causing little damage.  There has already been a 6.3 aftershock.  The truly worrisome speculation, though, is that there is a 70% chance that an 8.0 quake will crush Tokyo in 30 years.


• 
  It was here that I had my best Chinese lunch, ever, at Taste Paradise.
• Started with shark fin soup (this was a long time ago when this was not so controversial), Shanghai dumpling with foie gras and crackling pork belly, accompanied by Tiger Draft Beer and Johnny Walker Black Label Scotch. 
• Course #2 was braised abalone, seared foie gras, choy sum and sweet corn soup, with Kir Royale.
• Whole lunch, with tax an tip cost $84.
• Well, the really big one struck off Japan that day, so my posting was TSUNAMI COMING FROM JAPAN TO HAWAII.

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  The Huffington Post e-mailed me to again (I wrote for them an article, HAWAII TSUNAMI? on 27February2010 when I was in Amsterdam, and they thought I was in Hawaii) of the incoming tsunami to Hawaii.  So again, I accommodated them, watching CNN in Bangkok.  It was published the day of the earthquake, 11March2011, Hawaii Tsunami, Again.

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  My flight to Narita, Tokyo was early the next morning.  
• After the earthquake, Narita Airport closed down.
• A year ago when I was in Bangkok, there were red and yellow shirt protests at the Bangkok Airport, so I almost couldn't leave.
• This time, my calls and that of the hotel concierge came to a conclusion that I could take a chance, and if the flight was allowed, take it.  So I did.
• Here is my blog of that fateful day:  

                    MY PEAK OF LIFE:  THE CALM BEFORE THE CALAMITY.

• It started out great.

I got confirmation at 4:30AM of my Thai Air flight to Narita at 8AM.  So I packed and made it to the airport by 6AM, paying the taxi driver 500 Baht (about $17…a bit high, I thought, but the hotel limousine would have cost $70).  Checking in at Thai Royal First Class is extraordinary.  First, you don’t stand in line but sit in a lounge area.  Then, a staff member accompanies you through immigration and arranges for a Segway type device with driver to take you to their first class room.  The ride was quite lengthy.  There might have been five passengers for a room that could easily hold a hundred or two, and a staff of a dozen and more.

Various dim sums, soups, rice dishes, etc.  I asked for a chicken fried rice with an egg, which they prepared in a kitchen, and ordered a Bloody Mary and Singha Beer.  Yes, 7AM, but it was already afternoon in Honolulu.  The flight was delayed an hour, so I had a chance to spruce up my Huffington Post Hawaii Tsunami, Again article, and field a few concerned e-mails.

• On the flight:

It frankly occurred to me at this point, notwithstanding the immediate above, of my real life fantasy that, while drumming my feet on the floor to the beat of Ravel’s Bolero, I was at the peak of my life.  One wonders when this will be, sort of like Peak Oil, but, no doubt, this was it. Things can only go downhill from here, and certainly will when I land in the chaos of Narita.  But it was an incredible ride and I still think I was (am, yet?) the luckiest person in the history of Humankind.  Finally, I felt a kind of euphoria traveling at the speed of a bullet at 33,000 feet, maybe akin to a prisoner on death row having his last breakfast.  I was mentally prepared for the next stage of my life, the calmness before the catastrophe.

• I landed at Narita.  To again quote from my 2011 posting:

My plane landed at around 4PM after a flight of five hours from Bangkok.  I had four bags with me, one very large, for I'm on a six week trip in hot and cold countries.  After the customs check I looked around for the usual sign with my name.  Saw none, so walked around with my bags and asked questions.  Half an hour later after determining that there were no taxis, no airport limousines, no NEX, and no Tokyo Westin pickup, I tried to call the Westin, but failed.  There was only one option, the slowest JR trains from Narita to Tokyo.

a.  I wasn't allowed to take the cart down the escalator, so that became a problem. After somehow getting my bags down one floor,  I stood in line for perhaps an hour to buy the ticket, but not being able to read nor speak Japanese, I wasn't sure what I was doing.  

b.  I finally figured out that I needed to find an elevator to go one floor down.  

c.  Half an hour later, I boarded the train.  But try getting four bags on.  

d.  After an hour or so, everyone got off the train at some obscure stop, so I lugged everything off, only to stand in line for another train.  

e.  Finally this second train got me to the Nippori Station for the Yamanote Line to Ebesu.  

f.  However, both the elevators and escalators were not functioning.  Amazingly, a nice man and a college student helped me carry my bags down.  She had just flown in from Brazil, and in conversation I found out that I should have used a delivery service to send my bags to the Westin.  I wish someone had told me that earlier.  I struggled on to the Yamanote train.  

g.  I've now been standing or in line for more than four hours.  Ah, there was an escalator to take me up to the walkway through Ebesu Garden Place, a path I have been  using for more than ten years.  

h.  Oh no, they now have this blocked off.  I asked, and they said take the escalator back down to the street level and walk to the Tokyo Westin.  

i.  The sidewalk was dark and bumpy, but, luckily, I was able to find a taxi for the final few hundred yards.  

I finally arrived at the Westin at almost 9PM.  It took me as long to fly from Thailand to Japan as to travel from Narita to the Tokyo Westin.  What an ordeal!

Read my Huffington Post article on The Great Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami: The Aftermath.  For the next month I tried to avoid the approaching radiation of the Fukushima nuclear fallout by first flying to China, then when the danger subsided a bit, waited in Seoul, before returning again to Japan.  But then the damaged nuclear reactors acted up, so I took the bullet train to Fukuoka, then gingerly moved up towards Tokyo over the next two weeks, finally getting the nerve to train through the Fukushima area all the way to Sapporo.  I returned to Tokyo on 7April2011 and got shaken by a 7.1 earthquake.  So, anyway, details next week.

Got these in my e-mail today:

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