Snakes, Silks and Sky trains … Oh my

Day 36: Bangkok, Thailand

We used to say we know we have been in a city long enough if we make it to the zoo. We are going to add one more to that list – if we find ourselves on a field trip with kindergarteners, we really know we have made it to where the locals go.

The 5 year olds are even more excited than we are to see the snake venom extraction at the snake farm. Yes, that is a real sentence. Siri finds the place which is within walking distance. We find out in 1923 (!) the Queen (not all credit goes to the kings, more on that later) decided that too many people were dying from snake bites, the western anti-venom drugs weren’t working, so she helped bring it in house. For over 100 years, Thailand has been running a snake farm and creating their own anti-venom drugs.

The room goes quiet as the three handlers come in. The emcee narrates, first in English, then in Thai, what we are about to see. The first one opens the large plastic storage container and the king cobra rears it’s head, and you can see the hood sway as hisses angrily. The handler takes a hook on a wooden pole to carefully grab the tail, pulls the snake out onto the ground and waits till the head is down so he can hold it still with an inverted V shape on the other side of the pole. He gently, but firmly, places his bare hand around the snake’s neck and brings its mouth to the container to bite and release its venom into a beaker. He then quickly places it back in the container, They do this with five different snakes. We are all quiet and then clap enthusiastically when they are done. It is quite the show.

The handler has the king cobra and is about to have him bite down to release its venom into the beaker

The kids – and we – are on the edge of our seats during the show – and we can see a close up on a screen above

They hand the hook to the next handler to start the process all over again with the next snake

The room is full – mainly with small children

The venom that is collected will now be put into a horse to create anti-bodies, then be extracted to create anti-venom for humans and other animals. Fortunately, the horse is not hurt in this process.

I see what it would be like to be wrapped up by a snake

Hard to beat that, but we try. We head off to the Jim Thompson house, an American Entrepreneur in the 1950’s who helped revive the Thai silk weaving industry. A much longer history, like how did the local weavers do? We check out his traditional Thai house that he has moved to to this site along with his art collection. We do find the last remaining family weaver, which is across the canal, and have a good chat.

We try to find the actual weavers – have to cross a canal – with busy boat traffic

We finally eat up with Niphon – the last remaining owner of the family weaving business. Still working with traditional looms

After a full day out, we make it back to our hotel to cool off (shower and AC) and then head out once again on the search for special Thai ceramics. We take the sky train and the metro (subway). Not sure why people complain about traffic when we have only been using public transportation and missing it all. We see all the Christmas decorations and are getting a bit tired of the Christmas music that permeates every public space right now. We make it to a large shopping center that is purely dedicated to arts and antiques – amazing to be there. There are exhibitions going on, artist spaces, and a range of crafts we haven’t seen yet. We find the painted ceramics and purchase a couple small pieces that may fit in our luggage.

For dinner, we think about eating at the high end restaurants on the river, but in the end, we walk out behind the Sheraton and pull up a chair with the street vendors. A yummy Phad Thai, and basil chicken – a fitting end to our last day in Bangkok.