A Walk in Silom: Neilson Hays and the Lumpini Hawker Center

I had a morning off this week, so I took the MRT downtown to the Silom neighborhood just outside of Lumpini Park.

I called a MuvMi (an electric tuk-tuk) and was soon zipping along the busy streets of the busy business district to the peaceful oasis that is the Neilson-Hays Library. 

The Neilson Hays Library was established in 1896 as Thailand's first English library and the oldest non-profit in the country.

Originally established by 13 British and American women as the Bangkok Ladies' Library Association, the library had a very important purpose for early foreigners in the kingdom. According to the library's website:

"Life for early Western residents could be harsh. Devastating epidemics were frequent. Western luxuries such as books were treasured items; a precious connection with home. Until the opening of the Suez Canal, freight from Europe or America could take six months or more to arrive in the Kingdom of Siam."

The most influential member of the board was Jennie Neilson, a Danish-born American who came to Siam as a protestant missionary in 1884 and subsequently married Dr. Thomas Hays, the Chief of the Royal Thai Navy Hospital. The library is, of course, named after her.

By 1897 a full-time librarian meant that the library could be open six days a week, and in 1914, the association was able to purchase a small plot of land on Surawong Road. The current building was constructed in 1922. During the Second World War, it was occupied by the Japanese army who used it for housing soldiers. Needless to say, the history of the library is a long and storied one.

This week is the library's bi-annual book sale. Throughout the year, the library takes book donations and sells them during the book fair to help fund its programs, such as author talks, children's story time, and more. It's fun to visit and browse, but I didn't end up buying anything other than a coffee at the onsite cafe.

Even though I love the idea of an English library, and it's a beautiful space, it's a little bit far from where I live and inconvenient for me to get to. I've actually only visited it twice: once in my first or second year for a lecture about Thai spirit houses (hosted by none other than renowned English monk Phra Pandit) and once about ten years ago for the book sale.

It was starting to look like it might rain, but I decided to chance it and take a walk back to the station. Despite being a busy and popular neighborhood, I rarely make my way out this way, and Silom is still kind of a new area for me to explore.

I passed by Sri Maha Mariamman Temple, also known as "Wat Khaek".

The word "khaek" is a Thai term meaning "guest" and is used to refer to Indians the same way the term "farang" is used to refer Westerners. The word holds a respectful connotation, reflecting the high regard in which Thailand held India as the birthplace of Buddhism, and reflects the view of Indians visiting Thailand as honored guests.

The temple, built in 1879 by Vaithi Padayatchi, a wealthy Tamil merchant who has a street named after him in Bangkok, is the most important Hindu temple in Thailand.

I had never been to this temple before but decided to take off my shoes and step inside to look around. I'm pretty comfortable in Buddhist temples nowadays, but I've only visited a handful of Hindu temples in my life and don't really know what I'm doing. I find them extremely beautiful, though! The temple was super colorful and inside contained a dozen or so shrines to various Hindu deities (and even a shrine to Buddha!).

Photography was not allowed inside the temple's walls, which was understandable, though I wish I could have taken a few pictures to show how beautiful it was.

As I walked back towards the BTS station, I happened to pass St. Louis Hospital and the nearby St. Louis Catholic Church. A heavy gate caught my eye, and I discovered that the church was also the site of Bangkok's Embassy of the Holy See.

Vatican City is officially the smallest independent country in the world, but it as a state does not actually have any diplomatic relations. Instead, all Vatican diplomacy is carried out in the name of the Holy See via the Apostolic Nunciature, the Holy See’s highest-level diplomatic mission, which functions both as an embassy and the Pope's direct liaison to the local Catholic Church.

My walk ended back at the MRT station just outside the gates of Lumpini Park. As a matter of fact, the reason that I had come out to Silom in the first place was to visit the brand-new Lumpini Park Hawker Center.

Touted as Bangkok's very first Singapore-style hawker center (sort of like an open-air food court), the new construction just outside of the park was planned as a social initiative to improve the neighborhood and offer benefits to local people.

The center can accommodate more than 80 vendors and rent at one of the stalls is regulated by the city at 60 baht (around $2) per day, ensuring that it's affordable for everyone.

The food court isn't fully open yet, but even during the soft opening period, it was pretty popular. When it's fully up and running, it's going to be a really nice place to grab a bite to eat when out at Bangkok's most famous park.

I had a simple but delicious lunch of steamed vegetables, fried chicken, and a fried egg over rice before hopping back on the train and heading back home.

Checkle: the amazing Japanese study tool

The countdown to my first day at language school has begun, and I'm going to be working hard over the next two months to self-study level 1 so that I can jump directly into level 2. I'm a little bit anxious about it, since I don't actually think my Thai is good enough to skip an entire level of class. I have a pretty wide range of random vocabulary that works just fine in day-to-day situations, but my tones are really poor, and my grammar isn't so great.

Enter the Checkle Memorization Pen Set! This is the coolest little study tool that I found online. It's Japanese, and if there's one thing the Japanese are especially amazing at, it's designing simple, clever tools for various uses.

The Checkle consists of a thin piece of transparent red plastic and a double-sided pen with a teal highlighter on one end and an orange felt-tipped marker on the other. I also picked up an extra orange and blue pen at my local Muji.

When you put the red sheet over your notes, anything written in orange will disappear. This is a great way of quizzing yourself and testing your vocab recall.

Additionally, anything highlighted in blue or teal will be completely blacked out when covered with the Checkle.

It's super simple, but a really effective tool that helps me a ton with my notetaking.

The truth is, I've never been especially good at languages. I have an interest in them, and I've been a language teacher for over a decade, but foreign languages have always been a weakness of mine. This time, I'm taking advantage of every tool that I can to make my coursework successful.

And since I live in Thailand, I have no excuse not to immerse myself in the language, even when it's so much easier to be lazy and default to English.

Learning Thai (for real this time) - 1400th Post

Alright, it's been 13 years almost to the day since I arrived in Thailand, and the level that my language skills are at is getting embarrassing. It's at the point where I hate being asked if I can speak Thai, because I know that I should be so much better than I am.

It's not entirely my fault. When I first arrived in Thailand I worked as a teacher at an elite private school, and we were encouraged to speak only English to simulate an immersion environment for the benefit of the students. I used English all day long, and though I did study with my colleagues a bit in the office, but the time I got home I was usually pretty tired and ready to just veg out instead of intensely studying.

After that, COVID kept me locked indoors for a handful of years, and nowadays I'm just not in that many situations in which I actually need to speak Thai. Sure, I can read the alphabet (which actually gives me a huge leg up over many of the long-term expats here who can speak but never actually learned to read). I can order food, shop at a market, and direct a taxi. But my language abilities have really stalled out, and it's so easy to fall in the trap of never learning to speak Thai. You can pretty much live in Bangkok speaking exclusively English, and in those rare situations where English doesn't work, Google Translate is always there to step up.

However, it's time to make a change and get serious! Thailand is my home now. I'm the guest in this country, and it's not right for me not to be able to speak the language. I never wanted to be one of those farangs who has lived here for twenty years and can't speak a word of Thai.

After some debate and lots of research into the many, many Thai language schools in Bangkok, I settled on the well-regarded Duke Language School's Thai course. Besides the Intensive Thai program at Chulalongkorn University (where one course costs the same as 4 at Duke), it's probably the best and best respected language school in Thailand.

I took an online level test last week. I had to log on to Zoom and meet with a teacher for a casual conversation. She told me that I knew about 70% of the vocabulary for our conversation and could place somewhere between levels 1 and 2.

Part of me wanted to start as an absolute beginner to get my solid foundations, but the upcoming level 1 (called "Journey 1") course was already full up, so I decided to take a leap and sign up for Journey 2 with the promise that I would study independently between now and when my course begins in August.

This afternoon I took the train to Sukhumvit, where the school is located, to purchase my Journey 1 textbook. It's time to get serious about Thai language. I'm officially enrolled and have about 3 months to study hard and hopefully get myself up to the same level as my classmates. Wish me luck!

Sukhumvit Plaza - Lunch at K-Village

I don’t get over to Sukhumvit very often, but I’m about to be spending a lot more time there this year since I’ll be taking a language class in the area. It’s one of those parts of Bangkok that feels almost like its own world. It's a part of the city that's hugely popular with foreigners. Both expats and tourists seem to love the busy, international, and constantly in motion neighborhoods along Sukhumvit Road. Personally, I find it overcrowded, overpriced, and too full of tailor shops and tour guides trying to sell you things. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of things to do along Sukhumvit, and lots of great food as well. I'm just not super familiar with the area.

I had traveled down to Asoke Station a few days ago to pick up my Duke Language School textbook and decided to stop by at Sukhumvit Plaza for lunch.

Sukhumvit Plaza is sometimes nicknamed "K-Village". It's Bangkok's little Koreatown, but instead of a huge neighborhood like Chinatown, K-Village is really just an old multifloored semi-open air shopping mall filled with all sorts of Korean businesses - mainly restaurants.

There are about 20,000 Koreans in Bangkok, and most don't live in and around this neighborhood, so I'm not sure exactly how Sukhumvit Plaza shopping mall became a center of Korean culture, but somehow it has.

On this early afternoon, I had come here for one thing: Seoul Food.

I'm a huge fan of fusion cuisine. I love the idea of taking the best parts of two unique and interesting flavor profiles and combining them into something amazing and new. When I first heard about Seoul Food, a Korean-Mexican fusion taqueria, I made it my priority to visit next time I was in the area.

I ordered the beef bulgogi tacos, which were as amazing as they sound!

Beef bulgogi is a Korean sweet and savory marinated barbecue dish, and a taco is... well, you know what a taco is since the only people who read this blog are my family members and we all grew up in Texas!

The bulgogi tacos were served with a fresh slaw and two dipping sauces - one a sweet and spicy Korean sauce and the other a spicy salsa verde. Very delicious! Or, as the Mexican-Koreans would say, "muy masheetda"!

Ducal Arms

Just a short post today to show off my new coat of arms issued by the Westarctican College of Arms!

Over the past few weeks, I've been working with His Lordship the Count of Krigsvold, the current Ellsworth King of Arms (the chief herald of Westarctica) to design an updated coat of arms to go along with my new title of Duke of Gierloff.

The current arms, which I was granted when I was made Baron of Widich, have been incorporated onto the shield with an updated ducal coronet and two elephant supporters, one silver and one gold, representing my life in Thailand and my position as the first Consul-General of Westarctica to Southeast Asia.