Chinese New Year in Bangkok

Trip Start Jan 28, 2013
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Trip End Mar 09, 2013


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Monday, February 11, 2013

Day 3 of Chinese New Year in Bangkok continued to be a holiday celebration! All shops and businesses owned by Chinese were closed, tourist places were filled to capacity, and traffic was snarled throughout the older part of the city. So... Our city tour of Bangkok was a certainly a memorable experience today.

We started with a subway ride, then a ride on the Sky Train, to the Jim Thompson Home for a tour of a traditional teak house built by an American turned silk merchant after World War II. Our next adventure was to hop on a local boat to speed down one of the canals (klongs) - very smelly, lots of sewage. Our bus picked us up and we slowly moved to Wat Po, the largest and oldest temple in Bangkok and home of the largest reclining Buddha, a 40 meter long gilded statue. Lunch was in a crowded local market along the river.

A bus ride through Chinatown brought us to Wat Trai Mit and the largest Buddha made of pure gold in the world. Many of the streets in Chinatown were open only for walkers, food stands, vendors. We merged with the crowds, walking down the boulevard and then to a boat landing on the river where we caught a local boat to the place where our rice barge picked us up for a farewell dinner cruise. Sunset on the river, a banquet of Thai dishes, the opportunity to see many of the temples we had visited in nighttime lights made it a very special evening.
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