Bangkok #2 this time with sleep


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February 11th 2013
Published: February 13th 2013
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2045 ICT

11 February 2013

Grand Hyatt Erawan, Bangkok



Bangkok is hot. For respect, in temples long sleeves and pants are required, some just long pants. Seeing that it was a temple visit day for me, the heat was murder. Bangkok is the hottest city on earth, with an average temperature of 28C. Other places may get hotter at some point, but others do not maintain the stifling heat year round. On top of that, in my hurry to leave the hotel since I lost the first day to sleep, I forgot my sun tan lotion.



I asked the conceigere how best to get to Wat Po, and he said a taxi would take about 30 minutes, and cost a little over 100 baht. He paused and said , or to take the skytrain from Ratchatevi, then the boat up the Chao Phraya river. I hopped the skytrain to the Saphan Taksin station where the tourist boats run. There was a massive line blocking the ticket office with confused tourists. A Thai guard said something about buying a ticket on the boat, and I hopped the line of paid ticket holders, made sure the backpack was on two straps and hopped onto the boat. Sure enough, 5 minutes into the ride I bought my ticket while giving the rope on the side of the boa a death grip.



Along the river, the buildings respesent an accurate sample of Bangkok. Resort hotels, temples, malls, and shacks assembled from rusty corrugated metal. Exiting onto the pier, everything smelled like grilled meat and fish sauce. Annoyed with the crowd, I pushed ahead determined to find a quicker way into Wat Po. Tourists be damned, I learned my lesson at the boats. Just keep moving, sort it out later. I ended up coming in the south side of the complex, indeed away from the massive crowds.



Wat Po was overwhelming. The scale of the temples in Bangkok is amazing, the statues and gilded walls and everything a true testament to the faith in this city. I am unsure whether both the crowds and those praying were due to the Chinese New Year but the faithful bowed to every statue they passed and in each temple treated it with reverence. Most westerners snapped photos and moved on, but I felt the need to pray in each place earnestly. Perhaps it was western-faux-cheesy-diet Buddhism but hey.



Walking to the Grand Palace is when I realized my face was sun burned. I pressed hard against my forehead and it stung. Shit, but I was still running behind. I the Grand Palace I will spend most of my time inside so no big deal. That thing is 56 acres. I tried to stay out of the sun as much as possible while darting between the Emerald Buddha, the mural of the Ramayana (biggest mural in the world), the King's throne, and the scores of other temples and buildings. I was definitely rushing to try and find sun block by the time I left. I felt on fire.



I applied to my face and arms, finally unzipped to shorts from my uber stylish cargo pants, and got back to walking. After getting to Wat Mahathat, I was walking by it, looking in, then at the last minute decided to walk in. I literally ran into someone approaching from the other direction. She instructed me to bow in respect to the statue of the first King of Siam. She asked where I was planning on going, and I said that I was going to walk over the bridge to the west side to Thronburi and eventually catch a boat back down to Wat Arun. She laughed and asked me to pull out my map. She told me it would take me over an hour to walk that, and asked me where I had been already. She circled a few things on the map and told me how much the tuktuk should cost. She then walked over to a tuktuk and negotiated my price for the rest of the day. Off I was to 3 more temples. The first was just off the river, and my driver took me back towards the river to feed fish for good luck. Then to Wat Benjamabophit, where I got my cheesy picture taken. I was trying to do a MySpace picture, not having any pictures of me yet. I did not know what to do when standing there, so I placed my hands in prayer. After he took mine all the other westerners started taking the same picture. I felt so lame.



Golden mount has a beautiful view. There are bells and gongs to ring in your way up the mountain, and it has a 360 degree view over Bangkok, and mist fans. Loved the mist fans. With my tuktuk driver done for the evening, I went to catch a bus back towards the hotel. With no bus in sight, I asked a tuktuk driver how much to go back to the Erawan Shrine, and he pointed into the canal and told me to take the boat, 10 baht. Just like the last boat, people just jumped on. The boat was waiting for no one. One guy in a suit kept slipping when trying to climb on, and the boat kept pulling away. He had a good hand on the rope so he made it but they really didn't care if he didn't. I hopped off near Jim Thompsons house, but it was closed for the day. I was starting to regret my day of slumber. So much left to do. I hit the food court at Siam Paragon and went back to watch TV and get to bed early to catch my train to Ayutthaya. I have to be the only person who has been in bed before 10pm every night in Bangkok.

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