Temples, Boats, and Good Food

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Thailand!!!

So, After getting a new job I decided to celebrate by meeting Brad in Thailand for a few weeks before I started. I was very lucky to have actually gotten on my flight, because I was departing for Wed. at 1am which meant I needed to be at the airport Tuesday night Midnight. Thankfully everyone clued me in on this vital piece of information the day of, so after my goodbyes at EA and Dinner celebration with the Audio crew I was off! First leg of the trip was 15 hours, to Taipei, then to Bangkok.
Once I arrived in Bangkok my next mission was to find Brad. After waiting for a few minutes in baggage, I quickly realized he couldn't meet me there so I walked around the airport a few times till finally I saw him, woohoo! After a quick catching up we were off, in a cab to Soy 11, Le Fenix hotel.
If you are ever in Thailand Le Fenix is a nice place to stay, located close to the Sky Train at the Nana stop. Anyway, anxious to explore we went for a walk around Bangkok, ate at a decent Thai restaurant that had these cool appetizers called Golden Bags that were delicious and we also found a red mango in the mall which had Lychee and Ramubtan as toppings so we had to get one since we always visit the one back home (which is now closed). After food we went for a Thai massage AKA Beat the crap out of you for an hour. After sitting on planes all day it was much needed and awesome. During the slow relaxed walk back to the hotel we started to plan out our stay in Bangkok and a rough outline of the rest of the trip. Temples, Good food, Massage, Rock-climbing, Kite surfing, Full Moon Party, Rafting, Monkeys, Elephants and whatever else we could imagine, done! So...The next morning we woke up and started our adventure. We walked to the Nana sky-train and headed to China Town. Once in china town we basically wandered into the direction of Wat Trimet. After a few blocks we started to see a gold structure protruding from the regular buildings, success our first temple! We took our shoes off and headed inside to sit next to a monk who doused us with water and put a white string around our wrists for good luck, pretty cool. When we stepped outside, to our left was a ton of kids playing outside, it looked like recess mixed with a bit of chaos, all they were playing with was rope and a basketball, but they were entertained. We watched for a little bit and then headed towards Wat Pho. A few backpackers recommended to take the boat in the river to Wat Po so we decided to give it a shot. After a local tried to convince us we needed a tuk tuk and giving us directions anyway, we eventually found it. A free ride on the river, sight seeing on the way we ended up at Wat Pho. It's basically immediately off the river stop, we walked in not quite knowing what to expect, the main building housed a HUGE lying buddha. HUGE. While being in awe over that, we heard a strange noise behind it, after making our way to the back of the buddha we discovered that people paid 20 baht for a bowl of coins, that they then dropped in bowls all along the back of the building. The sound of it was awesome. Once outside we wandered around a bit more spoke to a monk briefly and got back on the boat and headed back to our hotel to rest before dinner. Dinner was at a crazy futuristic looking place called Bed Supper Club. The room was a big oval open area all in white, 2 stories of beds that you sit or lay on while eating. The night we went was a Surprise Dinner night. We sat down and just ate whatever they gave us. I still don't even know what was in half of it, which I like. It encourages me to trust and try new things. While we were eating there was performance art happening in front of us. We saw a women climb under a ladder covered in white cloth that transformed into a white dress with a gold collar, she then put on a crazy looking gold hat and proceeded to silently read a book for 20 minutes while people eating watched. After that a guy in all white and gold came out with a gold butterfly on a fishing-line and dangled it in front of everyone while they ate, it was cool. There was also beautiful dancing, and some less than desirable singing. Overall an amazing dining experience and a good way to end our Bangkok part of the trip. next up Puhket.....

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