A Gift from Thailand

Strange and Lovely

I am often surprised to find something new as I walk around a city for a second or third or one-hundredth time. On Wednesday we were able to make it into Belém (thankfully, trains were running on schedule). I’ll write about the primary reason for our visit next week…but as we walked we spotted this.

At first, we were certain that we had walked through this park before. But then thought, how could we have possibly missed this? We instantly recalled the month we spent in Thailand and smiled. We were a bit younger then, I had just retired, and we carried large backpacks from town to town. We slept on overnight trains and in teak houses… we ate every night on the street. We visited so many temples and shrines, we couldn’t even keep track. So seeing this 22-foot Sala Thai (Thai Room) made us smile.

A placard to the right of the steps explained this was given by the Thai government in 2011 to celebrate 500 years of friendship. After being built in Bangkok, it was shipped over the same route first traveled by Portuguese explorers when they set foot in Thailand. It represents the oldest alliance between a European country and Thailand.

First: A huge thank you to everyone that contacted me via this site, email, or phone after last Wednesday’s post. You offered excellent suggestions and tremendous support. Muito obrigada!

And, Next Week: Somebody fed Denise and Nancy (again), the National Coach Museum and how well are we doing with learning Portuguese…it depends.