Bagel Day

Before we left Baylor, Professor Kay organized an informal Q&A orientation with two former English teachers, Jessica and Katie. Jessica taught in Thailand two years ago and now works in admissions at Baylor. Katie taught here last year, and extended her contract to stay on a second year. After meeting her, we were all very happy to have someone living and working with us who already knew how things worked at the school and in the city.

Katie was supposed to arrive back in Bangkok after a six week visit back to Texas (when we met her) on the 15th, several days before we were to arrive. She and Grant planned the "Welcome to Bangkok" party together. Unfortunately, due to passport issues, she kept getting delayed. She finally arrived yesterday (Sunday) morning.

She had invited us all out for bagels downtown the week before, but we weren't sure she would make it to Thailand in time. Lucky for us she did! Breakfast in Thailand is very different from breakfast back home. In general, restaurants will serve things like barbecue duck over rice or fried chicken for breakfast. The food stalls on the streets will serve some sort of gruel made up of yesterday's leftovers. There's a small bakery on campus, but it only really serves small pastries, not a full breakfast. I've been told that there are only two or three restaurants in Bangkok that serve a decent western style breakfast, and they're all very expensive. This is unfortunate because as you may know, I'm a guy who loves his breakfast food.

Erawan Shrine, downtown Bangkok

BKK Bagel is located in the nicer part of downtown Bangkok. It's in an area that really feels like New York. At BKK Bagel you can actually get a pretty awesome breakfast! It's expensive (by Bangkok standards), but I think we want to try to go downtown for bagels at least once a month when we really start craving bacon and eggs.

Just outside BKK Bagel is the Erawan Shrine. We saw it from a bridge at the Skytrain station on our way to the restaurant, and watched for a while. The shrine has musicians and traditional Thai dancers. Worshipers can make an offering, and the dancers will perform some sort of prayer-dance. Officially Erawan is a Hindu shrine, but the Hindu gods are revered in Buddhism as well, especially here in Thailand where Theravada Buddhism is mainly practiced. Theravada Buddhism is one of the oldest and more Orthodox forms of Buddhism, and is much closer to its Hindu roots than Mahayana or Zen. The deity worshiped at the shrine is Phra Phrom, a Thai incarnation of the Hindu god Brahma. The statue has four faces, each one pointing a different direction. Devout locals visit the shrine to pray for safe travels, and it has become popular with tourists and backpackers as well.