Bangkok, Thailand
Friday, January 2, 2009
We wanted to see the Vinanmek Teakwood Palace and Dusit area, which we missed on our first visit to
Bangkok. For the first time we had difficulty to get a taxi, as when we said the address the drivers just nodded their heads negatively and drove on. It was very strange, as they didn't even bargain. In the end we just got in one taxi and told him to put the meter on and drive. At first he didn't get the address either, and when we gave him the map, he just turned it around with an expression of confusion. It then dawned to us that we obviously did not pronounce the name of the place correctly and they couldn't read the map in English. So I tried to read out the names of the boulevards which crossed at the Palace and made a cross sign with my arms. With relief, we saw the guy smile and nod affirmatively, finally he understood where we were going. We finally reached the place, only to find it was closed. We wandered down the streets towards Chao Praya river and bumped into a nice small wat, where a monk told us that the walls were painted by an Italian artist. Trying to get to the pier, we passed by some narrow side streets along the canals and saw some very dilapidated houses, right next to the big government buildings and beautiful wats. We took an express boat down Chao Praya to the Oriental hotel and discovered the
Bangkok gems district - a street lined up with small jewelry shops selling coulourful gems. None of us was much into gems, so we just enjoyed the displays, without entering into browsing and bargaining. When we saw however a small Bata shoes shop, selling sandals and slippers at ridiculous prices of less than 10 usd, we couldn't resist and all of us walked out with a new pair. We didn't feel much more like sightseeing for the day, so we ended in the Central World mall, which turned out to be huge and could take days to walk around.
The web's original travel blog
76,334 travel experiences shared this week!
