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Published: March 26th 2008
Having slept with the fan on all night, we still woke up feeling all sticky from the humidity. 😊 What a change from the freezing winter we've spent the last few months living in! Instantly it becomes difficult to imagine why we would ever want to wear a jersery!
Kao San seemed to have become a completely different place over night! In the morning light, everything was just starting up. Stalls selling everything from food, clothes, resin statuettes, and books, to full body massages and good fortunes started popping up all over the place. As we mingled through all the stalls, looking at their wares we managed to get seperated. In a way it was a really good thing. We ended up spending about an hour just doing our own thing, muddling through the various stalls at our own paces, drinking sweet freshly squeezed orange juice.
My birthday is coming up, and for my present, Darrell said that he wanted to get me a bigger day pack. So, off we went in the direction of the bags stalls 😊 one thing you should know about Darrell, is that he is meticulous about researching what he wants to buy before
he commits. This time, however, when we asked about the different brands, our salesman simply said, “You choose style and then I can put any brand” 😊 10 out of 10 for quality service... giving the customer
exacly what they want 😊 Still, we found nothing of particular interest...
We ambled around for a while longer, booked our transportation to Koh Tao, and sampled more of the freshly squeezed orange juice before it was time to move on. Next up...
temples! As we got to the main road, it took all of about 30seconds before a friendly looking Thai man approached us and offered to help. Before we could protest, he had our map in his hands and was bussily circling all the important sites! Then, just as he'd finished telling us how frustrating it is not being able to speak Thai... and that he'd be happy to help translate, a man on a tuk tuk drove up beside us and and our friendly helper quickly started offering us his services to take us around the city... he'd translate... no problem!
We'd been warned about the touts trying to scam tourists like this before. Apparently what
Breakfast
Energy for the daythey do is they promise bargain prices tours of the city, and then once you agree, they take you to all their friends stalls and make unnecessary stops all over the place, encouraging you to spend all the way. We really weren't in the mood, so we declined and tried to get away...
In our haste to get away, we ended up heading the wrong way! Oh well, lemonade out of lemons... we were heading to a really tall Lucky Buddah... so Buddah it was 😊
Oh we zigged and we zagged through all the hidden back roads of town in search of the Buddah... who knew it would be so hard to find!! Eventually we spotted a giant golden head emerging through the telephone wires above the rooves of the run-down alleway houses... bingo!!
Lucky Buddah
The Buddah was really tall... it was true. But other than that, especially after all the walking to get there to see it, I felt it was a bit of a let down. Maybe it was over-commercialised, or simply exploited, but I really got the feeling that it was all for the tourists. There were people selling lottery tickets at the
door (it being a lucky Buddah and all) and for extra luck, you could pay $5 or $10 to set a pair of doves free from his feet. Lotus buds on their thick green stems and other parts of the worship kit were neatly laid over the tables leading in to the Buddah. The idea here, from what we could tell, was that you made your donatinon, and took all the ingredients. Then you kneel down in front of the statue and slowly peel back the bud until the flower was open. The opened flower was then laid somewhere on the statue or put into a basket. And that was the really tall Lucky Buddah.
At the pier
To get a break from the city noise and bustle, we chose to meander down the river to the Grand palace. After some more involuntary city site-seeing (we got lost.. and there was a lot to see!), we emerged through the dark fish tunnel-market onto the pier. As there was still about 15min before our ferry was due to arrive, we inevetably started poking our noses around, and came upon one very interesting stall indeed. It was right before the pier
River taxi
The driver was nuts! and it sold bread crusts! We looked around a bit more and saw a kid with a bag of the stuff, and he seemed to get great delight from throwing it into the sea! Litter bug! So we got a bag of our own... anything to pass the time 😊 In western culture, we save our bread crusts for the ducks, here, it seems they save them for the fish... and the fish love it! There were literally piles of them as they tried to swim over each other to get to the surface to get the bread -
see the video at the bottom!!
The boat ride was a really nice alternative to the chaos of the streets. Gently zig zagging down the river we got glipmses of the palaces, temples and giant statues from behind all the riverside dwellings. It was really stunning.
The Recling Buddah
Unfortunately the Grand Palace had closed (we checked on the door and in the guide book to make sure, apparently some of the touts make a bit of extra money off tourists by telling them that the venue they were hoping to see was closed and insist on taking them to
another place instead) Too bad for us, it was no prank. While checking on the Grand Palace entry times in our book, we happened to notice that the largest reclining buddah was in the same area 😊 One could certainly never run out of things to do in this country!! 😊
The Buddah was really massive... and reclining!! We had to wear long pants and a top with sleeves, and then take off our shoes before going in, as a sign of respect. The buddah filled the whole hall, so much so that the spike on the top of his head was sticking into the roof! There was a narrow walk way between the buddah and the edges of the hall. Unfortunately, there were big squares of gold that had been removed from the buddah, I assume for restoration. There was actually quite a lots of restoration going on, as we arrived, there was an artist unpacking her equipment to restore one of the many paintings covering the wall. On the bottom of the buddah's feet were as artists depictions of over 100 of buddah's characteritics, in inlaid mother-of-pearl. Lining the wall on the side of buddah's back, were
those wooden things that I think you're supposed to spin, and some smaller shrines for those who were there to worship.
The whole thing was really over whelming!
The grounds surrounding the Reclining Buddah were even more empressive. There were gardens and gardens of tall and very intricately designed pagodas. Just wondering around them took over an hour. By the time we left, the sun was just starting to dip behind the tips of the tallest spirals. If we wanted to make the most of the view on the Sky Train, we had to go.
We bustled onto the ferry again for a much more crowded and pushy ride up the river to our next stop.
The Sky Train
What trip to Thailand would be complete without it? As a mode of transportation, it's far better than anything on the land... not having to wait in all the traffic means that you really get to where you want to go
fast! And then there's the view. Wow!
The only thing that I would recommend, is that you get onto the train at the very first stop! The train fills up fast, and, if like us your
Skytrain
Bangkok from above feet are flat from all the walking, it could be an unpleasant standing trip with no view out the window.
Bangkok Mall
The train led us into one of the more affluent areas, and with it, the shopping center!
CALLING ALL BARGAIN HUNTERS!
I'm really not a shopper... you have to believe me! Give me a market any day and I'm happy, as far as I'm concerned, malls rot your soul 😊 -no offence...
BUT I could have spent hours exploring this one! Everything was so super cheap, and there was just about everything one would need to buy for any occasion!... ever! Thank goodness we were relatively pressed for time to get back to catch the bus to Koh Tao... We were eventually able to pull ourselves away from the amazing deals, but not before buying a new Oakleys glasses case and that day pack we were looking for! 😊
We were told that the best time use the Tuk Tuk, is when you know exactly where you want to go... and there's no room for the driver to add his own agenda (or fee) to the plan. Tuk Tuks all lining the street
In the Tuk Tuk
Rushing like mad through the streets outside the mall made this the perfect time!
The Tuk-Tuk
This is SUCH a brilliant way to commute! It's SO much fun! The view of the city becomes like one of those bouncy olden day films, with the frame of the roof and sides of the little 3 wheeled motor car. The sound track too is something to experience! I don't think the drivers would be able to last a week before they're stone deaf!! It was
SO loud!! 😊 A couple of times I thought the car would actually tip over going around some of the corners! It was fantastic!
The night market madness of Koa San road had started again and we were quickly swept in! By the time we were back at the travel agent, I'd bought a bikini, clothes and souveniers for my family and friends, and a pair of white (completely see-through - I might add, humph 😊 Thai pants for myself... Darrell didn't do too badly himself! We woke up a bit when we realised that we were actually looking for the owner of the fried cockroach and grasshopper stand!!
Thank goodness it was time to check in!
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Landi
non-member comment
Bangkok is a strange place..was there 2 weeks ago but its fun. Looks like u guys had fun too. Love reading about the travels see u soon Landi