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Published: August 8th 2007
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Well it is the first day of our tour which also happens to coincide with my birthday. Because, when you're travelling, you loose touch with the reality of every day life at home, it wasn't until I got out of the shower that morning that I actually remembered it was my birthday and that is truly incredible as when I'm at home i love to make a huge, big deal of my special day.
I tearfully opened the card I had been carrying with me from my mum and Dad and went down for a quick breakfast before beginning the first day of our tour in Bangkok.
We met our Tour guide called Katie, and marched in the sweltering heat to the Grand Palace with it's famous emerald Buddha. This temple was completely stunning; made from tonnes of gold as far as the eye could see with beautiful ornate designs and stunning architecture. This was to be the first temple of many on our tour and we began to get to grips with the customs that Buddhist people follow when entering a place of worship. Things like removing your shoes, sun glasses and hat is a must- Then
you must make sure you never point at a Buddha with your feet....this may sound strange but actually can be easily done with a momentary lapse of concentration....apparently it is considered really rude to point at anything with your feet, for instance if you were to just signal to a shop keeper which box of fruit you wanted by gesturing with your foot they would have to throw away the box or leave it for a period of time until it was OK again. I have discovered that learning about Buddhist beliefs is a truly serious business. Women and men have to be dressed modestly when they enter a temple, which means no vest tops for women and below the knee trousers or a skirt are ok. The head is also considered a sacred part of the body, you should never touch any one's head and never even reach above someone. This goes ten fold as far as monks are concerned and you should never place any part of your body above them. There are many more things to be aware of but Simon the tour leader said that if you are a woman then just remember not to rub
a Buddhist monk on the head with your foot 😉
As much as I think Buddhism makes sense as a belief system I am still disappointed by the way that women come second to men. Women cannot train as Buddhist monks and they must not touch or give anything directly to a monk.
Any way back to the day in hand. Well we went on to visit another two temples, Wat Po, a temple which contains a huge reclining golden Buddha and Wat Arun ( the Temple of Dawn) which to get to we had to cross a fast flowing river on a very rickety and noisy boat that shunted its way across from one side of the river to the other. Three Buddhist monks joined us on the crossing back over the river Two of them were absolutely beautiful with just the most symmetrical lovely faces and I politely asked if I could take a picture of them which they agreed to. However later on I was to discover that these pure soles were not so pure when Paddy- the Irish guy from our tour- informed me that the young monks had been asking him questions about
us girls, more on a level with any young guys of their age who weren't practising to be a monk. I guess they are at the beginning of their long and winding path to enlightenment. Bless.
After a hurried lunch of spicy hot Thai green curry we took our over night bags and headed to a hotel located near the Mekong river. We had time to chill out and Sarah decided to buy me leg and foot massage for my birthday which was absolutely blissful after which I briefly rang home to hear happy birthday from my mum.
Later that evening we headed with Katie our lovely guide to a dinner on board a boat which sailed us up and down the river. This was where my second birthday surprise surfaced after a delicious dinner of Thai courses. Suddenly a cake appeared decorated with my name on and followed by a courus of Happy Birthday (slightly muffled at the Happy Birthday dear Sam bit as a few of us had got to grips with every bodies names)
We ended the day with a hugely funny drunken Karaoke which ensured the group got to know each other with
some seriously dreadful singing 😊
The next day- we enjoyed a dinner cruise on a big boat back to Bangkok where we managed to get caught In heavy monsoon down pour. Being stuck inside we were subjected to hours of America's funniest Videos. That evening, our last in Thailand, we headed for a famous and well respected Lady boy show. The show included a three course meal to begin and then we were ushered down stairs where the show began. i have to say I really really enjoyed it. Some of the Geezer Birds- probably about 4 of the 30 or so in the show were actually impossible to tell apart from a women- probably because they were so petite and pretty which I guess helps with the illusion of being a woman. It was quite amusing when they all lined up at the end as up close, with the exception of the four I mentioned, they were all huge with tonnes of makeup on. But the show was fantastic. It was about ten minutes after coming up from the show that I realised I was with out my camera!
We got immediate permission to go back down
but they were cleaning and changing over ready for the next show and there was absolutely no sign of it and i was really gutted. I felt doubly terrible as we had to drag Katie out of bed to get her to come and translate to the police so they they could write a report. As we were leaving for Laos at 5am the next morning I realised that there was little hope of getting my Camera back easily if it was found somewhere here but in reality I knew I wasn't going to see it again, all of my photos of Koh samui gone 😞
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