In addition to the ubiquitous temples and orange-clad monks, the entire country is plastered with images of the king, celebrating this year his 80th birthday and sixtieth anniversary of accession to the throne. During his long reign, King Rama IX, or Bhumibol Adulyadej, has cultivated a benign persona of caring kindness depicted in the various poses he strikes, (though he never smiles.) Photo-montages in various guises are affixed to every lamppost and billboard in the country.Thais really adore their king, who in reality is a mere figurehead. Yet he and his family are credited with some good deeds as well.

We were immediately struck by the similarity of the Thais' and our Hawaiian Filipinos' features. Both obviously come from the same genetic stock, despite the vast geographical spread. Our tour guide Panu Apasat who met us at Bangkok airport is part Chinese, and taller than most locals. He had spent a couple of years in the U.S. and is quite fluent. On our first day, we visited a temple (of course) and toured the flower and produce markets.

Both major cities - Bangkok in the south and Chiang Mai in the north - were like teeming anthills. It would seem that commerce is the life-blood of the Thais. Currency is the Baht, about 35 to the dollar. Every street is lined with shops and counters offering a dizzying array of goods, including authentic-looking knockoffs of any brand-name one can think of. I bought a pair of nice Birkenstocks (proudly stamped "Made in Germany") for $7, and Marion found a perfectly fitting pair of elegant sandals - for her a real rarity - for $5. The problem was that everyone was selling the same stuff - for which Panu instructed us to pay about half the asking price. There are entire city blocks or even neighborhoods devoted entirely to clothes, or lumber, hardware, auto parts or building materials. The lack of imagination is amazing. Certain streets in the cities we visited are designated as "night bazaars" - though "zoos" would be more appropriate to describe the hundreds upon hundreds of stalls taking up the entire width of the street and both sidewalks. A few are open most of the time, but the majority operate from dusk to past midnight. The goods offered are all the same - it makes no sense at all - and the heat, noise, crowding and jostling are pure bedlam. Bargains abound, but is it worth it?

Our hotels in Bangkok and Chiang Mai served Western-style meals with a local touch, but in the countryside, we were introduced to Thai cuisine. Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai restuarants in the US tailor their menus to American tastes, but the "real thing" here was an altogether different kettle of fish, which - despite some very artistic touches in the presentation of dishes - we did not like at all (and this even before we both - in spite of all precautions - became very sick. To be expected, really, since the entire countryside is an open sewer. More on this later). During the trip, we enjoyed some lovely lunches and dinners served aboard converted rice-barges on various rivers.

Brush and weeds are not cut here but burned. This is surprising in a country where rural areas are grindingly poor, and where pineapple leaves and elephant droppings are recycled into paper). The combined smoke from thousands of small fires (plus everyday pollution and a humid climate) create a pall of stinking smoke, resulting in blood-red sunrises and sunsets, with no visible horizon. Trash-cans do not exist, and plastic bags and other rubbish are everywhere.

We visited the (in)famous bridge on the Kwaii river. Here, the Australian authorities created two museums (much in the manner of the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem) depicting the living hell that their POWs were subjected to while building the railway through Burma. By their own admission, the Japanese concede that their prison camp guards were "not really fit for combat" - misfits and psychopaths good enough to inflict unspeakable, sadistic cruelty on half-dead prisoners. Over 100,000 mostly Aussies perished here, and several cemeteries are maintained. The Holocaust is never far from our minds, even if its enormity and ghastliness are beyond human grasp. In these museums, however, it's possible to come to grips with the daily, interminable misery that these poor bastards lived and died by. The historic old bridge had been replaced by a new all-metal one. A locomotive and passenger car run back and forth across the river, for tourists.

The various establishments we stopped at along the way were chosen to encourage purchases by members of the group. They responded enthusiastically, except of course when we stopped at a large teakwood furniture workshop, or a crocodile farm. Our tour company, Grand Circle, operates a foundation that benefits children in underdeveloped countries. We saw two: a grade school, and a Buddhist seminar of sorts - where a Buddhist teacher did his best for a whole hour to win us over. Neither was really a thrilling experience, and however noble, not the sort of thing we came all this way to see. In the complaint department - while we're on this track - tipping on such excursions is a truly major nuisance. The literature from the tour company devotes considerable space to the subject: so much per person, per day, payable to everyone from the tour guide to the bus driver's assistant and everyone else in between. Granted that overseas adventure tours are not for the financially disadvantaged, the bother of tipping all the time is unpleasant. ElderHostel tours include all tipping, so even if they're costlier, they avoid this distasteful aspect.

Another day we drove (in 8-passenger pickup trucks - the road being too narrow for our bus) -miles and miles up into two hill-tribe villages. The people there are so poor that they would gratefully accept any kind of food, we were told. Not just kids and old women, but able-bodied men as well. Electricity had only recently been brought in, but does not appear to be widely used in this extremely primitive area.

Thailand's most popular mode of transportation are small motorcycles - one rarely sees any bicycles - and in the cities, the Tuktuk reigns supreme: these are three-wheeled, covered motorcycles with a seat for two in back, most of them designated as taxis. Conventional taxis also abound, but Panu warned us to stay away from any who do not display "Meter" in addition to "Taxi'. Such bandits, he said, are liable to take you around in circles. A never-ending mass of assorted vehicles - motorbikes, tuktuks, taxis, busses and trucks - drive on the left side of the road, all rushing to make the traffic light - and crossing any city street is very hazardous.

Thailand is anything but an arid land. It is fed by several large rivers, that even during the current drought were still running at normal level. The water table is high, and houses have their own shallow wells. But this water is not drinkable - everyone drinks bottled water only. We were warned to not even rinse toothbrushes under tap water. Public toilets are a nationwide major "industry". Most are of the hole-in-the-ground variety - offered by such "businesses" for a mere 5 baht (about 15 cents) - but some are stand-alone enterprises - one sees them everywhere, even advertising "Western toilets". Enter at your peril. In smaller communities, sewers ran alongside the road, covered with perforated flagstones. Pipes running from shops and restaurants fed into these via aboveground conduits. A week or so into the trip, the bug hit us, so we decided to start taking the antibiotic (Cipro) that Marion had wisely prepared for. In addition to the "usual" Turista symptoms, the Thai bug also took away what little appetite we had left, and we went for days barely able to take any nourishment.

The high point of the trip - riding an elephant - turned out to be almost anticlimactic. We arrived at the largest of several elephant parks, and with little ceremony were ushered onto a large platform above what looked liked a bus terminal - except that our "busses" were saddled elephants. Without further ado, we were pushed into the two-person saddle, and told to hang on to the bar that was lowered across in front of us. The Mahout urged the elephant forward with grunts and by digging in of his toes behind the beast's huge ears - and we were off! Ours was a single-tusked female, with a little youngster in tow. She moved very ponderously, and on downward inclines, we had to push hard against the bar so as not to slide under it. Along the ride - which lasted about half an hour - several small platforms were "womaned" by ladies offering banana bunches (20 baht) for the elephants, who swallowed them whole. Food intake for the average elephant is several hundred pounds a day, only half of which is digested. This results in an abundance of good-sized turds, natural mines that dot the landscape.

The cutest ones were of course the babies - our mount had her youngster trailing along with us. After the ride came the show, featuring young pachiderms of various ages, trained to perform a variety of tricks (Asian elephants live to about 70, we were told). I would not like to be on the receiving end of a football kicked in my direction by a 5-ton elephant! While to my mind these trciks are really a form of cruelty, one of them - elephant art - was truly amazing. Here, easels were placed in front of three specially trained youngsters, with their human assistants handing them paintbrushes of differing colors which they picked up with their amazing trunks, and actually drew pictures! Cute, but predictable - with one exception. While two of the animals doodled abstractions, the third - a six-year-old - proceeded to make a distinctly recognizable outline of an elephant with its trunk raised high, then went on to add a bunch of multicolored flowers (trees?) alongside it. Following each step, the young artist turned to the audience and bobbed its head to acknowldge the applause. (Back home in Honolulu, we have a pet lizard that lives among the flowerpots on our patio, and whom we've trained to come to the kitchen door whenever we have an insect to feed it. If a reptile can be trained, then why not a higher mammal?)

The tail end of our trip included a morning spent at the royal palace grounds. This is really a city within Bangkok, consisting of palaces, temples and opulent splendor to rival Versailles or any other European majestic ostentation. In fact, Siam's former kings had travelled to Europe and brought back these delusions of grandeur, each succeeding monarch attempting to outdo his predecessor. On the way back to the hotel, all traffic was stopped for half an hour. The reason: the princess had moved to her residence (in the heart of downtown), so everything had to grind to a halt to allow her and her heavy police escort free passage (and the people be damned). Yet no one appeared to be upset. They love their royal family, their temples and their monks and would not have it any other way.