Bangkok, an overwhelming city!

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  Bangkok, Thailand
Friday, November 14, 2008

Bangkok is noisy, crowded, beautiful, overwhelming, modern, and ancient. 
We arrived in Bangkok from the airport around midday and after checking into the hostel, and a quick lunch, decided to head over to Chinatown for the afternoon, figuring that at some point jetlag would catch up to us and we'd be ready to crash.  Outside the hostel was a tuk-tuk and the driver offered to show us around for an hour for a very small amount of money, "temple, shopping, city".  We said OK, but once in, I was concerned that the price was too good to be true.  The driver took us first to a crappy temple, where, once inside, the caretaker started asking us if we'd bought any jewelry yet, and explaining how cheap the jewelry was at the wholesale market, and how he himself was an attorney who was about to go to Harrods the next day to sell his jewelry... at this point we figured what was going on.  Outside we told the driver we just wanted to go to Chinatown

reclining buddha

.  "No, I take you shopping, to wholesale jewelry."  No, we remonstrated, we don't want to do that, just go to Chinatown.  "Then find your own way," he said, and drove off.  Well, that was our first lesson learned!  

The next day we took the skytrain to the river.  The skytrain is an elevated system like a metro.  It's incredibly modern, very well signed and easy to use.  We then took the river taxi up to various points in Bangkok, including Wat Pho, a gorgeous temple with beautiful buildings and an incredible massive golden reclining buddha; Chinatown, which was intricate, claustrophic and had excellent food (ah, to be able to buy fried tofu on a stick for a snack!); the Grand Palace, which unfortunately was closed because the royal princess is being cremated tomorrow.  Instead we saw some of the preparations, including the changing of the guards, who look exactly like the guards at Buckingham Palace, with their Busbys.  The whole country is in mourning for 3 days, everyone is wearing black, and there is no alcohol sold.
We have enjoyed what we've seen but are happy to move on to what should be a quieter, slower pace of life from here on.
The hostel we're staying at is great, very funky, modeled on an old teak house with wooden floors, shrines, etc.  Tomorrow we move on to Cambodia.

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feet of reclining buddha	wat arun	outside the Royal Palace	temple on river trip
boat on river trip

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