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Published: August 27th 2005
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Last Friday we flew from Phuket to Bangkok, the last stop on our round the world voyage. We braved Air Asia (one of Asia's budget airlines) once again - it was fine apart from the unallocated seating, so it felt like getting on a bus as people scrambled for the best seats...
We had a busy old time in Bangkok visiting temples and night markets. The city is home to lots and lots of Buddhist temples, the best of which are near the river and within easy walking distance of each other. First up was Wat Pho - famous for it's enormous reclining Buddha (or lazy Buddha as one Thai tour guide put it). Wat Pho was pretty spectacular - the temple buildings ornate with jewels and intricate murals, and the most fantastic statues guarding the entrances, and the Buddha was pretty amazing to see. It is about 45 metres long and 15 high, and it's feet are completely inlaid with mother-of-pearl designs. Must have taken years to make!
Next we went to the Grand Palace, en route to which we encountered our first Bangkok con artist. As we were dithering slightly about where the entrace to the complex
was (note: never dither in Thailand, someone will try to sell you something, be it a tuk tuk ride, a taxi, bootlegged gear in a market or fake gems...) a well dressed Thai man approached us and said "You visiting the Grand Palace? This is the entrance", pointing to what looked like a back lane... "You like Buddhas?" he continued, "I know many Buddhas" and starts drawing on our map to show us where they were. "And here is a very good market, very cheap you know"... Now I was already bored with this man as it was lunch time and we were actually heading in search of food when we came across him, and was fed up waiting for his punch line: "The Grand Palace is closed today, till 3.30, I can take you to these other places and bring you back for 3.30. very good price?". (we later discovered that the Grand Palace was open till 3.30, not at 3.30). It was so predictable, I almost laughed - every guide book, tourist leaflet, hotel warns you about these guys - they tell you your attraction is closed, offer to take you somewhere else, then take you to a
gem shop and try to sell you fake semi-precious jewels at hugely inflated prices... The poor man got my "teacher" look and a sharp "no thank you" as I dragged Graeme off to look for lunch. The cheek of it!
Once we finally got there, the Grand Palace was pretty impressive. Even more jewels, gold and painting than Wat Pho, and the 'aww' factor was compounded by a class of Thai school children who had been brought by their teachers to practice their English on unsuspecting tourists. They had a speech written down to remind them what to say, and they had to introduce themselves, ask our name and where they were from. They were very sweet, except that once one had spoken to us they all reailised that we weren't ogres and we had about 20 clamouring for our names and country... All in a day's sightseeing!
We did a couple of day trips from Bangkok - one to the River Kwai, and one to the Damnoen Saduak Floating Market. The River Kwai trip was to see the infamous Death Railway and the bridges over the river where the Japanese made Allied prisoners of war construct a
railway between Thailand and Burma during WWII. They reckon that for each sleeper on the 500k railway, one allied prisoner died. It was a really interesting and quite moving trip, especially since we also visited one of the WWII grave yards where many who died were buried. The floating market on the other had, turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. It's one of those quintessential Thailand postcard shots - the market on boats on the river, full of fresh produce and Thai people doing their shopping there... Think again! This one was full of boats of tourists being ferried from one stall of cheap tacky tourist tat to another, with a couple of token banana stalls thrown in for good measure. It was quite good fun however, especially when there was a traffic jam and all the boat pilots started shouting at each other :-)
Back in Bangkok we had a couple of nights on the town sampling cheap Beer Chang with an American bloke we met in Phuket (Rocky) and another friend of his from Canada (Bryan), we went to a cabaret show (the ladyboys in Thailand are great - they are so realistic on
Reclining Buddha's feet
They were so intrcate - I had to take a photo. stage, but when you see them close up...!) did some more shopping, ate some good food... and then it was time to go home.
Till the next time
Jo and Graeme x
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