SUNDAY 25 | FEBRUARY 2018
>> Continued from Page 10
Adistinctive feature of this bay is the number of sheer limestone cliffs that vertically jut out of the emerald-green water. Here as well adventure sports are aplenty to lure the tourists. The cuisine was again the highlight with its delicious chicken, beef and fish dishes along with the long stretches of clean, white sandy beaches. I did search for exotic food like snakes, beetles etc but could not see anything there!
The next stop was, undoubtedly, Bangkok. If Krabi and Phuket were thriving tourist destinations, Bangkok was more of a city. Here again there were gems waiting to be discovered in the city that is predominantly Buddhist and deeply conservative. Buddhist temples are in large numbers, each more beautiful than the next with huge reclining Buddhas and gleaming floors that have not one speck of dust on them. We all spent time visiting the shrines. The tuk tuks, a popular mode of travel in Chinatown, or the floating markets accessed by long tail boats are also a charming tourist take-away.
The city offers a study in contrasts — there are street stalls that sell yummy food to haute cuisine, one can savour sitting in roof-top restaurants. There are high-end markets that stock every luxury brand to Saturday markets that sell goods at cheap fares but with good quality. Shopping, which men normally loathe, was one of my best experiences. Good leather goods and clothes come cheap and that was definitely what we hoarded. Shopping aside, the Safari Park experience with shows featuring animals and birds was absolutely a memory etched forever in my mind. We took in the orangutan show, fed giraffes, watched the lions and tigers in an open safari but somewhere my heart went heavy. Watching animals perform, I felt sad because these animals too are inheritors of this earth but for our selfish needs, we use them to entertain.
Bangkok also offered us an experience that we will not forget in a hurry. There is a huge maze there, which I have only seen in comic books, which is so very confusing. After being inside, finding the way out proved to be a huge challenge but one I thoroughly enjoyed. It is a game that can be imitated in our country too. We also visited the upside down house where the floor becomes the ceiling and all the furniture is topsy-turvy. The kids had a lot of fun there. I was curious about the red-light area and wanted to see how the much talked about area looked like but it was not possible this time due to lack of time. — The writer is a filmmaker (As told to Priya Sreekumar)