Being a tourist
Trip Start
Jun 30, 2009
1
4
13
Trip End
Sep 30, 2009
Where I stayed
Bangkok, Thailand
Saturday, July 4, 2009
After a restless nights sleep we woke up late. To prepare ourselves for the busy day we had planned ahead we grab some breakfast in our hostel, banana pancakes with tea (for Alice) and coffee (pour moi). As an aside, the cups of tea over here have been pretty hit and miss, something Alice has mentioned many times. This tea though was quite nice she said.
Our planned day was to visit some of the tourist hotspots of Bangkok. We asked a tuk tuk driver to take us to the Grand Palace to which he replied mainly in Thai and hand movements directed at me, "Need more clothes, or no entry to temples". For many sacred places of worship legs and shoulders need to be covered, so we popped back to the market where I bought some fancy new slacks, then negociated a price to be taken to the Palace.
As we entered the beautiful courtyard leading up to the entrance, Alice became very excited. She informed me that her excitement was due to the film The King and I, which I haven't seen, and continued to shout we're "In Palace, in Palace"...! The buildings were impressively colourful and intricately designed, a stunning place of worship. We saw the Emerald Budda and walked around feeling very humbled.
Next, off to see the mahooosive reclining Buddha housed in Bangkok's oldest and largest temple, Wat Pho. What more can I say, it was a gigantic, shiny gold Buddha lying down (46m long and 15m high to be precise). I felt very small. On the way to see this big attraction we had walked past lot of street sellers as you would expect, one of which caught Alices eye. I had been looking for a cheap, disposable watch that I wouldn't mind losing/breaking, and we found a retro looking calculator watch which I managed to get for about £2. Ace! Or so I thought. The watch strap broke later that day, and I discovered it gains 5 minutes every hour. I think right now my watch is telling me it is already tomorrow. At least the calculator works. Just outside of Wat Pho was a large rock pool waterfall feature containing lots of fish and some terrapins. Alice was entranced by this and sat there for a good 5 minutes saying "look! there's a terrapin!" whilst behind her was a bloody great big feat of human engineering...
Tearing ourselves away from the waters edge we made our way south to Bangkok's Chinatown. It was mental, an undercover maze of person-wide alleyways lined with all the electrical goods one could ever desire, every possible space taken by someone selling something. Surprisingly though, most (I say most, I was just looking at PS3s) were more expensive than back in England.
We bought some kind of deep fried Thai snacks to eat, and headed back towards our hostel. On the way we walked past the Golden Mount, an oversimplified description being a temple on a hill. I am sure it is more impressive than that, but we were tired by this point and had been templed-out for the day.
Next after a short rest we found some more street food. This place stood out from the rest, the food was ace for the price and the old man and woman who owned it were absolutley lovely. After lining our stomachs we took a stroll around the shops and stopped off at a few bars around the Kao San Road, ending up at the Don Dea Moon bar. Twas a nice bar. We met two Americans and a Welsh guy who were all teaching English in the same Bangkok school. Had some deep conversations about world cultures and such matters, then turned in for the night.
