Day 2 - Bangkok

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Our second day in Bangkok was as fun, exciting, and full of culture-shock as the first! It was obvious that we were worn out from traveling and from our Day 1 adventures...because we slept until 10:30 this morning! We went looking for a breakfast place near our hotel (Sukhumvit area) and couldn't find it because of some confusion regarding language and city structure. Bangkok's roads are organized by "thanon"s (main streets) and "soi"s (side streets off the thanons). They are organized by number (odd "soi"s on one side of the street and even "soi"s on the other). We didn't know this tidbit yet and Beth's french pronunciation of thai words (soi, in particular) didn't help much. Quick language tip: "Soi" is pronounced like "soy", as in soy sauce. It does not rhyme with any similarly spelled french words like "roi" or "loi" or "quoi". Hilarious, we had no idea why people could help us find our side-street! Needless to say, we couldn't find the breakfast place and decided to dive right into some street food. The Thai omelettes we had were greasy, served on rice, quasi-delicious, and less than a dollar for both!!! Now that more than 12 hours have gone by, and our stomachs are fine, we give Thai street omelettes a thumbs up.

After breakfast/brunch/lunch we made our way to the main river in Bangkok, the Chao Phraya. We caught a river boat for about 25 cents and enjoyed a scenic ride down the Chao Praya River to Wat Pho. The boat ride was fantastic. We had fun watching all the different types of boats go by from the pier while we waited for our boat to arrive. The boats have color-coded flags that denote which stops the boat will take and we felt very proud that we figured it out and made it on the right boat!

We arrived at Wat Pho around 3 pm. Wat Pho is the oldest and largest temple in Thailand and it is our favorite so far (out of 2). I can't even describe how beautiful and serene the grounds were. Seriously, we felt as though we had stepped back in time. The temple grounds of Wat Pho include the temple of the Reclining Buddha, an elementary school, and the Thai Massage School. We headed to the Thai Massage School first because it closes earlier than the rest of the wat. Yes, we have now had 2 Thai massages in 2 days. They are amazing, who could blame us? After the massages (a little more intense than our massages yesterday) we felt refreshed and relaxed and spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the Wat. It was great to see a Thai elementary school! The classroom doors were open and we got to go inside and check it out. Please see Beth about this later for a ridiculously long description. The Reclining Buddha was enormous (46 m long and 15 m high)! It fills up the entire inside of the temple building, leaving space around the perimeter for people to walk. All in all, Wat Pho was our kind of wat. The grounds were stunning and it felt much more laid-back and serene than the Grand Palace. While wandering around at the end of the day we got to peek into a Buddhist wedding and observe a bunch of little kids play hide and seek in the temple grounds. One boy climbed up a tree and perched, squatting, on the net of a basketball hoop to hide from his friend.

Around 6pm we began a scavenger hunt for "Little India", hoping to find some Indian food. This involved a ton of walking through a ton of tiny streets in Chinatown and, you guessed it, a ton of culture shock. We never found Bangkok's Indian enclave but we did find the "soi" (side-street, remember?) to go to if you need ANY type of electronic device or part. The poverty and living conditions here are hard to believe. Today's walk really opened our eyes to that. We ended up back at the river at dusk and took a beautiful, breezy boat ride back to the subway. There is an interesting story about how monks caused us to miss the first boat...that's a better one to tell in person.

The day ended with two very sweaty travelers making their way to a fantastic Indian restaurant back near the hotel. We stuffed ourselves with several choices from the vegetarian section on the menu and walked happily home for our last night in Bangkok. Of course we stopped at 7-11 and stocked up on bottled water (for toothbrushing and drinking) for tonight and tomorrow.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's adventures:

-Chatuchak Market
-night train to Chiang Mai
-extended check-out (we love the Park Plaza!)
-more street food (fried bananas, please)

love,
Beth and Mike

P.S. Can you guess who wrote which blog entry?

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