Happy (belated) Father’s Day to all you fathers!

Neil has a new hobby which is taking time-lapse photos of the river life and changing light. We’ve been enjoying the sunrise and sunset time-lapses. He’s uploaded a few to YouTube and we included the links for you to view if you would like. The video description is right below the clickable image.

River at Sunrise 30x Time-lapse (1:00)

This was taken from our 11th floor balcony. That fast colorful boat at the end is one of the Chao Phraya Express Boats, orange flag route. I love the quiet calm water of the early mornings. Watching a boat wake on glassy water is like looking at a Zen garden with moving ripples.

Fish Surfacing in the Chao Phraya River (0:17)

Fish were surfacing like this all along the Chao Phraya River in front of the hotel this morning. I asked what they were eating and the hotel staff said the fish were coming up for gulps of air because there’s not enough oxygen in the river water. Slow it down to 0.5 or 0.25 speed if you want a good look at the fish. Doing that, I identified them as Chao Phraya catfish. Apparently they are fun to catch and in the Gulf of Thailand some charter companies specialize in them. I wonder how the hotel staff would feel if I went fishing off the terrace while guests are having breakfast??? (If not for the pollution, they would probably put them on the evening’s menu, haha.)

Party Boats 30x Time-lapse on the Chao Phraya River, with Fireworks (0:41)

My first time-lapse of the colorful party boats unexpectedly included a fireworks display. The boats either have cover bands playing old favorites or else they have a DJ playing the karaoke version of the songs. Either way, they have a live singer belting out the lyrics for all she’s worth. Trouble is, every singer is terribly off-key and loud enough we hear them a kilometer away, no exaggeration. I’ll never be able to hear an ABBA song or YMCA again without fondly remembering this trip and those off-key lyrics reverberating off the nearby buildings up and down the river.

Sunset Glory with Boats 30x Time-lapse (1:54)

There was a storm rolling in from the west at sunset and the clouds were interesting to watch. If you look closely at the top edge of the clouds you can sometimes see the light defracting into rainbow colors. Downdraft from the cloudburst kicked up a brown dusty wind that preceded the rain. When the wind arrived I stopped recording because I didn’t want it to blow the camera over the balcony railing. A lightning show quietly continued until about 3 am. Sadly, lightning does not show up in time-lapse videos.

Dental work update: I waited until Wednesday, 4 days after the deep cleaning, to go in for them to start working on my teeth to receive new crowns. What I found out was that they needed the time to make the temporary crowns that I would wear for a week before getting the permanent crowns. Before he even started he took pictures of me from different angles with my mouth closed and also with teeth showing. This will help him design the new crowns to best to fit my mouth and give me the right bite. He numbed my whole mouth and then drilled off three existing crowns and then began making my teeth look like toothpicks as I call it. I was in the chair about 3 hours and he didn’t finish. He put temporary crowns on all of my teeth. On Friday I went in and had a root canal and one of the molars prepared for a root canal. There was a lot of decay so she had to remove that and then build it up a little. After 2 hours in the chair for the root canal, I then spent another four in a different chair while the primary dentist finished all the core work for my crowns and then took scans in order to prepare the permanent porcelain crowns. The old way of doing it was I used to bite into gel where they’d make an impression of all my teeth. Now they do it digitally and they have a metal plate that they put on each tooth that takes a picture of it. It was a long day. He would have rather taken the scans another day because my gums are still swollen from the deep cleaning and were bleeding a little bit. He had already asked me to extend our trip by 3 days to get all the work in. We’re now going home on Sunday the 23rd. This allows more time for them to make the permanent crowns. 

With all the core work done for the crowns, we could do the oral surgery to put in the implants. On Saturday, I got two implants on my left upper jaw and one on the right upper jaw. He needed to do the sinus lift on each side and I still look like a chipmunk. Neil has added a picture of us at breakfast that someone took for us yesterday and Neil said this is definitely going in the album because it shows my chipmunk cheeks. The dentist said one went in very firmly but the back ones on each side went into pretty soft bone. We need to wait at least 6 months before he can put a crown on the implant. So one more trip coming back to Bangkok next winter or spring to finish the work. I’m doing pretty well. I use a cold pack once in a while and have a headache a but no real pain in the jaw thankfully. I still think the headache is from taking antibiotics which run through Thursday. I’m always glad to have those done with. We stayed quiet all day Sunday, and I napped much of the day and still didn’t have any problems sleeping at night. But now I’m more energized.

Today (Tuesday afternoon), I went in for her to finish that root canal. Only an hour! 

After getting the root canal done today, I won’t go in until Friday when he will start putting on the permanent crowns. I’m hoping the swelling is reduced by then. Finally, Saturday will be my last appointment to finish any crowns and see if any sutures can come out. Otherwise they’ll dissolve on their own. 

We extended our stay at the hotel by 3 days and will be moving to an higher level floor for that experience. You can expect more photos to be added of the new view.! 

Sightseeing: While I was at the dentist all day Friday, Neil went on an adventure of taking the water taxi express boat all the way to the north end of the line up the river. He got off and explored the marketplace. He said he was the only non Thai person in the area.. The market was clean and neat and everyone was very friendly. He got some great photos of the sites along the shore. I haven’t felt like doing much touring myself but we might go out on Wednesday and Thursday to see a few more sites. 

Neil came with me Saturday to escort me home after the surgery. We rode the elevated trains to the pier to catch the hotel shuttle boat. It took about 45 minutes to get home and I was fine because of course I was still very numb, ha. We thought we would usually take taxis to or from the dental clinic but the street traffic is so horrendous, it is faster and easier to take the BTS SkyTrain. Neil laughed that he was a great help, because it was me showing him the route to and from the train platforms and where we change trains since I’ve taken it so many days I can do it while drugged up.

We did finally get rain one afternoon as we were just getting back to the hotel. I had to laugh because the shuttle van we were in didn’t seem to have working windshield wipers and the driver was leaning forward squinting through the window as the rain poured down the windshield. 

We’ve been enjoying the pool late afternoons. Neil even went down Sunday when I was sleeping all afternoon. I enjoy the view from the pool since it’s up on the 6th floor and you can sit at the edge of the ‘infinity’ pool and look out over the river. We did inspect a few other hotels when we were thinking of maybe moving to another one for three days. We didn’t like any of them as well as what we have. And the pools are ground level away from the river. I definitely think we’re getting spoiled. Also the staff here all know us because we’ve been here so long and are so happy to see us each morning when we come to breakfast and they take good care of us.

Thank you for following along with our travels and Adventures.