Chinese Democracy

Today we were feelin’ it when we woke up and headed out after breakfast to tackle the Grand Palace and Wat Pho. After a 30 minute cab ride we arrived to the Grand Palace and got out and were immediately told that the Palace was closed until 2:30 for the New Year’s Thai holiday and were shuffled away. So we crossed the street and walked amongst the shops and stopped into a 7-11 for a Coke. There are more 7-11’s here then could be believed…. but no Slurpies. Mucho disappointing. We found a park square and cooled it for a minute watching the people, street traffic and pigeons mingle while questioning what we had been told about the Palace been closed. So after a couple we decided to head back to the entrance, low-and-behold, we walked right in.

I’m not sure what the dudes that told us we couldn’t get in had goin for them, since they didn’t try to sell us anything directly… kinda weird, but so far, par for the course.

The Grand Palace is the traditional home to the royal family and now houses the Princess of the royal family (the King lives in another palace in north Bangkok. Built in 1782 by King Rama I, the grounds are open to visitors and are generally used for official state occasions. It is home to the world’s longest single story mural that tells a story of a battle between humans and demons over an ancient princess, much like the Greek story of Troy, separated into 128 parts. There are ~715 marble slabs that tell the story in Thai song and is learned by all Thai children.

Our tour guide, Ken, was excellent (not really his Thai name, just what he introduced himself as to the group. Westerners have a hard time otherwise). He is a military officer (the military presence is quite fierce in the area with army barracks on premise and a navel station around the corner) with quite a strong grasp on English, though he apologized on more then one occasion for not being able to convey his meaning completely.

We learned a lot about the Palace grounds and Thai history, to include the coronation ceremony of the king. Details on some of the pictures we’ve uploaded: the large gold building is decorated with 1 inch x 1 inch pieces of gold imported from Italy; a replica model of the Angowat temple located in Cambodia that’s heavy stone was imported from there to make; statues of demons from the mural story that guard the Palace grounds and Emerald Buddha; images of monkey’s dressed as demons - monkeys helped man find the demons and tricked the demons by dressing and acting like them, though you can tell which is a monkey and which is a demon by there mouth and feet (monkey’s don’t wear shoes and have open mouths).

The Emerald Buddha that is located in the on-grounds temple is opulent, to the say the least, like most of the grounds. The Buddha here is switched out for the occasion - rainy season, summer and winter, its current form. Ken confirmed that there was no representation for spring and autumn since Thailand has only two seasons - warm and warmest.

Since photography was limited here we couldn’t get great shots from inside some of the houses, to include the home of the Emerald Buddha, but we did get a couple of shots from outside. The Buddha and surroundings is made from jade, gold, emeralds, sapphires, diamonds, rubies (,etc). I think John Malcovich was in a jewel heist movie about stealing them (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120601/).

We moved along to the Grand Palace that housed the former Kings and their residences. There is a fusion of British and French architecture from the Thai Kings that visited the European royal courts. You may notice the white clothed guards and the resemblance of Buckingham Palace in the Palace building, which was incorporated by King Rama V that visited London (and apparently loved it).

We saw some thrones made of gold and mother of pearl that was neat to see and some more buildings. We were also informed that Bangkok is just a shortened name for the city, and in fact, the full name is the world’s longest name for a capital city. It’s a mouthful and took Ken at least 25-35 seconds to finish saying. It was great to get the Thai history lesson.

We thanked Ken for the lovely tour and moved on our way Wat Pho, a Buddhist temple in the neighborhood. As we walked we stopped into a market and got some awesome curry chicken and beef with some Sangha beer. Please take notice of the G’n’f’in’R poster for Chinese Democracy next to the picture of the current Thai King. Awesome.

Wat Pho was incredible. It is home to the world’s largest laying Buddha. Also decorated with gold leaf, it was breathtaking. On the grounds were several other houses which we explored. Gold Buddha’s sitting, laying, laughing and chillin’ everywhere. We walked into another temple on the grounds that had an amazing ~50ft alter with gold Buddha and had quite the experience. There were monks praying to the left of us as we sat, moving through there chants. It’s difficult to describe, but it was a religious experience of sorts.

We ducked out and made a donation to the temple grounds to write on the back of a tile that will eventually be used to re-tile the roof.

We jumped in a cab to get back to our hotel and negotiated a set price of 200 Bhat, twice what we had paid to get there due to the afternoon rush-hour traffic. We’re quite the wheelers-n’-dealers. The traffic we insane and it took us an hour to reach the hotel, even though our driver took every winding street short-cut he could think of. Manhattan cross-town traffic has nothing on Bangkok rush-hour traffic. If I had to commute in this stuff, I would surely go postal worker on these people in less then a weak.
For the evening we went to the Suan Lum Night Bazaar, which is an active and happening market place filled with shops, beer-gardens and restaurants. We walked through the shops and found our way to sprawling beer-garden the size of a football field with a massive stage that had a band and singers crooning the audience. They belted out American pop favorites like Everlasting Love and Mickey interspersed with Thai chart toppers. I was considering going with mmm-bhat in honor of the Hanson Brother’s timeless hit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanson_(band)), inspired by the Thai band and the awesomeness of the exchange rate here.

We got some pork & chicken pad thai and an order of spring rolls, all full of simple Thai deliciousness. We ordered drinks… well Heather ordered drinks, I ordered one. It was a two-liter beer tap that postponed the writing of this post until the next morning. I promise to get another post or two in today before we go to bed tonight.

P.S. - I miss football

P.S.S. - (if you’ve heard rumblings of the UDD, clad in red shutting down the Parliament yesterday, then you heard right. No worries yet, we just learned from the newspaper this morning, so there has been little disruption.)

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