My Travel Adventures

I did not expect to go out on Sunday as it was supposed to be cloudy, and my impressions of the weather when I woke up seemed to confirm the forecast. As I sat at my desk, however, the sky kept getting bluer and bluer until I could no longer bear staying inside. Walking along the road, I thought I would stop a passing tuk-tuk, but the farther I walked the less inclined I felt to pay money to cover the remaining stretch. My first stop was San Chaopho Suea, a Chinese temple also known as the Tiger God Shrine. Relatively small and lacking an open courtyard, the place was hot and heaving, its thick trails of incense smoke assaulting the senses. In addition to the Tiger God, the Goddess Mazu, and other mainstays of the Chinese pantheon, I noticed that the temple had a large statue of the Monkey King Sun Wukong.     

Having figured out almost all the logistics of my long-term stay (including accommodation), I spent my second morning in Bangkok touring more monuments in my neighbourhood. For the next few months, I will be living and working in northeastern Phra Nakhon, a district that encompasses Rattanakosin Island, which was designated as the capital of Rattanakosin Kingdom by Phutthayotfa Chulalok (Rama I) in 1782.

After a few weeks working as a research assistant at Oxford, I had the good fortune of finding a job to bring me back to Asia. My position began online towards the beginning of the month, and my visa was approved shortly afterwards. I arrived in Bangkok on the 27 th of June. Careful as I am never to let myself form idealistic expectations of my travel destinations, I was surprised when – in the land of smiles – one of the guards at immigration hit me on the arm and pointed in front of me. He only spoke Thai, and the gesture meant to convey the simple and unnecessary instructions that I should move forward in the queue by about five centimetres. Thankfully, my carefulness not to form idealistic expectations of countries is matched by an equally strong resolution not to judge them by first impressions.  

Having left Vilnius this morning, I want to jot down a few notes on the differences I observed between the Baltic countries while they are still fresh in my mind. Firstly, the capital cities are very different architecturally. Tallinn does have quite a few imposing baroque and gothic buildings, but its alleyways, city walls, and towers give it a distinctly medieval feel. Riga, on the other hand, has a strong Hanseatic atmosphere thanks to its prominent brick gothic churches and its location on the wide Daugava River. Much of Riga’s urban fabric is also woven out of art nouveau. Finally, Vilnius is the quintessential baroque city, though it boasts a few neoclassical and gothic gems.

On my last full day in Lithuania and the Baltic states, I saw my friend Diana, and together we made a trip to Lithuania’s second largest city Kaunas. The modern history of Kaunas is quite interesting, as it briefly became the country’s capital during the interwar period. During the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921, Vilnius frequently changed hands between the Poles and the Russians. In 1920, the Soviets awarded the captured city to Lithuania, but Polish President Józef Piłsudski secretly ordered a mutiny to annex Vilnius. Kaunas, which had been Lithuania’s provisional capital during the unrest after WWI, thus remained its capital for twenty years until its return to Lithuania in 1939 by the USSR – which proceeded to annex Lithuania in the following year.

This morning was the first cloudy morning during my entire trip, and I was very thankful for it. While it meant my pictures would not be full of beautiful azure skies, it also stopped my bouncing from shade to shade like a desiccating frog. My first stop today was the Gate of Dawn, which houses a prominent icon of the Virgin Mary in a chapel facing the inner part of the city. When locals walk through it, they often turn around and cross themselves, sometimes adding a short prayer. Right in the vicinity are the Church of Saint Theresa and the colourful Orthodox Church of the Holy Spirit, and farther along the same road one can see the imposing baroque-era Church of Saint Casimir and the city’s neoclassical town hall.

My tourist itinerary for today was sparse, as I have already seen much of Riga and some of its environs. After checking out and leaving my bag at the hotel, I walked to the train station, where I bought tickets for the train to Jelgava. Jelgava is the largest town in Zemgale (Semigallia) and the erewhile capital of the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia. As many other places in Latvia, the origins of modern Jelgava reach back to the Livonian Order, which ruled the town until its fall in the late sixteenth century. The newly created Duchy of Courland and Semigallia was a vassal state of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from its inception, and it fell to Russia in the Third Partition of Poland.