Chinese New Year

Yesterday in less than two hours, we went from the small Luang Prabang airport, to the new, modern Bankgok International airport, quite a cultural shift! That was only the beginning...

This is Jim's drink of ( not ) choice right now, in an attempt to cure traveler's tummy, which we have both succumbed to. It seems to be almost an inevitability when traveling how, and where we have been. Or maybe I just jinxed us by congratulating myself on the fact that we had gone for almost a month with no illness( other than really bad colds!). 

Anyhoo, I told Jim that I felt we needed to get some R&R in Bangkok and get well before we dive back into tough travel. But it is no fun to be here among delicious Thai food and only eat white rice.

But we have a nice place to stay, and they upgraded us to a suite. Plus, there is a small rooftop pool, so it feels quite luxurious. I could stay a while.

Now, on to Chinatown! 

That was the reason that we left Laos to come here. It seemed a shame to be in Asia and miss out on Chinese New Year. Laos does not celebrate Lunar New Year now, but they have a big celebration in May where they release zillions of the sky lanterns like Jim and I got to light on Valentines day. What a sight that would be! Jim, ever the good sport, told me to figure out where we should go, and I picked Bangkok since it is supposed to be the best Chinese New Year celebration outside of China. It turnes out that 25% of the population here is Chinese. 

And it feels like they are all in Bangkok today...

I have never seen so many people wearing red in one place! People were dressed in all manner of tee shirts, Chinese jackets, and silky red cheongsam, or Chinese style dresses. We walked into one restaurant, where everyone was dressed in red and all eyes turned to us, the fareng ." Full" , they said. 

"Ok"we said, and went back to the throngs in the street. 

My personal favorite outfit! 

Kinda warm for the Bangkok heat...he specialized in looking tough. 

Fortunately, we started out at the temple area, where people were making all kinds of floral, and money offerings. It was good to see the spiritual side before we became engulfed in the more commercial side.

There were the lion dances, some by this very young, sweaty troupe

Noodle making demos, Chinese paper cutting and calligraphy demos were fun to see.

Then there were the food booths. There was no end of really unusual stuff on sticks, fried bits and who knows what all? 

But the cacaphony was hard to take. Imagine , oh heck, you can't even imagine the noise! 

So, the heat,noise, and crowds finally got to us and we had to head back to the cool confines of our hotel. A long tuk tuk ride later( no shopping this time), we were finally home.