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-105- 

look much alike, as the Siamese country woman has close-cropped hair, and her sarong is tucked up between her legs to give an effect of baggy trousers.

July 20 - 

While we were having breakfast we had a glimpse of the sea, and learned that we were at Hua Hin, a famous seaside resort. Later in the morning we stopped for some minutes at Petchaburi, long enough to see the temples high on the hills above the town, and to notice the curious bicycle-rickshaws that furnished transportation.

The Siamese countryside is a land of spires - the rocky hills, the temples, even the huge termite nests have a similarity to each [[strikethrough]] other [[/strikethrough]] to the other.

And always and always there are rice fields, where men and women toil under huge hats that look like inverted wastepaper baskets. Egrets, marabou storks, and brilliant fairy blue birds fly over the flooded sawahs.

It was just noon when we pulled into Bangkok. From pictures, I had imagined the whole city to be one of spires, and from the railroad Bangkok is a disappointment, for one sees nothing but one-story wooden shacks, some of them thatched, but many with the inevitable corrugated iron roofs. The American charge d'affaires met us at the station, as did a half dozen newspaper photographers. How funny to have one's picture in a Siamese paper, with that curious language making square-cut decorations above and  beneath it that are illegible to us!

We drove to the Oriental Hotel, which has the most unprepossessing approach of any hotel I have ever seen. One turns off New Road, which for the Main Street of Bangkok is singularly unattractive, down a narrow gravel road called a lane, and stops at the hotel door before one can even see the hotel, so hemmed in by lumber yards and silver smiths is it. The hotel itself is large, airy, and opening onto a green lawn that runs to the river's edge. Upstaris a wide verandah runs completely around the building, and the big, high-ceilinged rooms open off this - a cool and pleasant arrangement.

Lunch at the Legation took a long time, and was very nice. The Chapmans are most hospitable, and offered to do anything they could for us. After we had left them we called at the shop of P. Siah, a taxidermist, who has a few animals in his back yard, one monkey, a few birds, and quite a number of snakes, including two huge pythons, a king cobra, and an albino cobra.

Mr. Minnigerode, the Consul, came in to call about six o'clock, and took us out to the Sports Club for dinks - a big, old fashioned building, with a beautiful swimming pool and a cool lawn where we lay back in rattan chairs and drank gin slings and wondered how people ever settled down to life at home after being spoiled to death in the East.