Thailand Annotated....Stop 1: Bangkok...

Here's some photos from Wat Pho, which is right next to the Grand Palace and not far from our hotel. You can see Dinah in front of the Chedi dedicated to the Fourth Rama of Thailand. (I had to force her to hold up four fingers so I could remember. Clever!)

The Wat is famous for two things:

1. The massage school inside where they try to get you to take a traditional Thai massage and

2. The Wat is the home of the world's largest Reclining Budha:

It always felt weird invading the Wats. It is custom for everyone to remove their shoes and at bigger Wats, like this one, there's a bottle-necking line to get in. Once inside, there's a lot going on. There's the worshippers, who are quietly burning incense, or praying or looking reverantly at whatever paintings are on the wall. Jumping in on that was sort of weird.

This was our first stop on the trip and the plan afterwards was to go to the Grand Palace, which is right up the road. As we were heading up to the main gate, we came across a man who told us the Palace was closed for the morning. He flashed an official-looking pin that made me, in my jet-lagged and trusting mindset, believe this to be true. He told us of a trade expo that was going on and what luck we had, because this year was the first year the government had openned it up to foreign tourists. We should stop and buy some jewels or a suit. He helped us get a tuk tuk and we were on our way. The tuk tuk driver first took us to a place to get suits.
It wasn't until after I picked out the material for my suit and had paid that I realized that maybe this was a scam. Yeah. I'm a quick one. But, it turned out okay. My suit came in this week and looks pretty good. I mean, it is a scam (the driver is supposed to get a cut of whatever sales he brings in), but it's a scam where I got what I wanted in the end and really, I still paid a lot less for it than I would've here, so.

Anyway, next he took us to a jewelry store, which we had no interest in. When we popped out of the store a little while later empty handed, the driver gave up on us and took us to the grand palace, which was suddenly open. We wanted to go eat though and felt a little put out by the whole thing. On the way to getting some food, I came across a bird-food lady who shook me down for some cash because I was an idiot.

Anyhoo. Then we got some food and decided to save the Palace for the next day. Instead we went to Wat Arun, which we could see from the window of our Room. Wat Arun was the steepest Wat we saw. The stairs (no kidding) were twice what any normal stair would be and I assume it was some badge of honor to be able to climb them.
For lunch that day we ate at the pier before taking a ferry over. This is apparently how most of the Thai eat. They sort of graze carts all day and don't necessarily ever sit down to big meals. This, I'm sure is one of the reasons why there were not a lot of fat Thai.

A note on the ferry. I think we paid 3 baht to get over (which coincidently or not is the same price they charge at many of the public men's rooms--women cost 5 baht), and they filled the boat. It wasn't a big boat, but it was definitely full. We only needed to get across the river so we pulled out, turned midstream and parked at the dock across the river as another boat performed the same move. I wouldn't call it a well-oiled system, but it was fun to see.

Also, from all the Wats and such you could tell that Budhist monks are revered in the culture. And on the ferry about 15 people gave up their seats for 2 young monks (like 10 years old) before taking them back after they sat down.
After that we walked around a bit and headed back to our room to get ready for dinner. We had dinner at the hotel again, but vowed we would go somewhere different tomorrow. We knew of only one resteraunt in our immediate area, so we'd try that. For tonight though, we were content to eat the same great food we'd had for dinner and breakfast.

The next day we started at the Palace, which was gorgeous. The grounds are huge and green and even though they're in the middle of the city, you feel like it's miles away. The palace is a mix of classical Thai style architecture and classic Greek influences. Pictures:

As we were coming in there was a group of soldiers marching. It was pretty cool.

One thing I loved about the palace was there were signs and labels. It was more like a museum than the Wats. Many of the Wats would have plaque out front stating the most general of infromation about them, but it never seemed to be enough. The palace (at least the parts we were allowed to see) gave a wealth of information about the jewels, the royal court, the royal family. Interesting stuff.



It was a really hot day, I think in the 90's. Humid too. But so beautiful. It's really hitting me how much sunlight they get in Thailand and how little we get by comparison.

But back to the Palace. It was so gorgeous. Unfortunately we couldn't take pictures inside, but they crown jewels and some of the artifacts were just gorgeous.
Despite the Grand Palace being right down the street, the Royal Family (which is still really popular in Thailand) has their own Wat on the grounds of the Palace. Here they house the Emerald Budha. After seeing the Reclining Budha and it's emensity, I was expecting a gigantic thing, but he's just a little guy. Of course, he's sitting on a huge altar of solid gold and they dress him in a gold in-laid outfit that corresponds with that season's needs (it was the cold season, so we saw him in a neat little shawl), so he's got that going for him. Which is good. You can't take pictures inside the Wat (because of it being a holy and sacred place and all), but you can kind of see him here:

Anyway, the Grand Palace was great. We sat down and had some ice cream at the Hagen Das they have there and that kind of seemed normal. Another odd couple of things about the Wats. We saw a lot more of them (and there will be more pictures!) but it seemed like they were making a lot of money off of them. Generally if there was an admission fee, it was either higher on foreigners or only for foreigners. It sort struck me as wrong, but not enough for me to really care. Just the principle of it, I guess. What I really thought was odd was that temples would have admission fees. I understand they are historic places and a lot of historic places the world over have admission fees, but something about the religious nature (and it was serious inside the temple for those who worshipped) nagged at me a bit. Still though, if there's money to be made, religions are generally the best at making it, so.

Also on the plan for the day was Jim Thompson house, which we were going to try to make before lunch. We decided to take a taxi, because we didn't want to repeat the problems of the day before. This was a mistake. We got in a cab knowing we shouldn't have to pay more than 60 - 70 baht for a cab ride. We ended up paying 100 and he wanted 140. This despite not getting us where we wanted to go. Not even close really. We were upset that in the two days we were in Bangkok we'd been hustled twice in pretty much the same way.

Dejected and upset, we turned to the only place that seemed like a reasonable refuge to wary travelers. BBQ Roadhouse. It wasn't good BBQ. It wasn't even passable, really. But I did enjoy my Coke. And we regrouped. We went to a place next door got directions and took the Sky Train to where we wanted to go.

The Thompson house is a traditional Thai-style home that's gorgeous.

After an afternoon of looking through the 8 buildings and learning about Thompson, we figured out how to take a water taxi and caught that to the Golden Mount, which is a temple built on the ruins of an older temple that was being built when it collapsed. The views at the top of the Mount are the best in all the city. Which meant a long walk up. Oh, and it was 5.00pm when we got there and it closed at 5.30pm.

This is one of the views from the Golden Mount. We got there a little bit before sunsent, but the light was so perfect. All along the path up, there are a series of bells that people would ring for good luck. The bells and the climbing and the jetlag and leftover frustration from the runaround made for a dizzying effect.

After walking down the mount, we decided to walk home. The plan was to stop at any resteraunt that looked good on the way home. On our way, we somewhat accidently walked by the Big Swing, which is one of Bangkok's most recognizable landmarks. We were looking for the Democracy Monument, but we'd gotten a bit turned around.

It was a long walk home and we walked by the one resteraunt we knew of, but it was closing. A lot of resteraunts, as we learned, were only open for lunch and early dinner. So for the last night in Bangkok we had dinner at our hotel again. To be fair though, it was good food, we never ordered the same thing twice and there were a lot of local people around.

The next morning we took a cab to the bus station (we had our hotel work it out so there wouldn't be any problems) and headed to Ayuthaya.