Advertisement
Bangkok: May 16-19 Wow, what a place! Loved every moment of our action-packed four days in Bangkok, with its rich culture married with bustling streets, millions of motorbikes, lovely people, cheap but fantastic food, magnificent markets, heat, air con and even the con artists kept us entertained.
We arrived at 3am local time on Wednesday after a nine hour flight, so had a long day after leaving Patonga early the previous morning. Where's your Berocca when you need it!? Thought they had lost my pack when we went to collect our bags, but luckily about 20 people were in the same boat, er plane, and they eventually found the missing trolley of luggage. Was starting to sweat that someone had put drugs in my bag! All the while our poor tour guide "Willy" was kept waiting. The real sweating began however when we stepped outside, with the evening temperature at a cool 35 degrees - humidty a gazillion percent!
Day 1: The Grand Palace After a five hour sleep, we got up to make the most of our free continental breakfast before the 10am cut off. Then by 9am we were off out for our first
Bangkok adventure. (We decided to pretend we hadn't been up over 24 hours the previous day!) We made our way to The Grand Palace, which served as the official residence of the king of Thailand from the 18th to mid-20th century. Its amazing array of oppulent temples constructed in the late 1700s made all others on our trip seem small, although each has its own characteristics. We got there via skyrail, which was conveniently just 10 minutes walk from our hotel, and longboat. The 20 minute ride down the busy polluted Chao Phyara River was quite an experience in itself. At times you expected a body to float past! Luckily none did. As we weren't on an official guided tour we followed our noses to the palace and ended up around the back of it in a very third world market - easy to do with the palace's massive 2km perimeter bounded by 15 foot walls. Every few steps we were approached by men who told us varying stories about the palace being closed until 9pm and that they would instead take us to find the 'Lucky Buddha'. Whilst intimidating but not entirely threatening, we were relieved to find the
front entrance and laughed at the posters warning against trips to see the Lucky Buddha.
Upon returning we went swimming in the hotel pool before venturing down the road to the Shangrila for tea. This turned out to be our most expensive meal, but was still only $25 each including starters and several rounds of drinks!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.163s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 6; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0892s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
KP
non-member comment
Which world?
Why did you expect a body to float past? Not seeing one pass by is not luck but a norm since we, like the Australians, British or Americans, do not leave dead bodies floating freely in rivers. Though the Chao Phraya is far from being the cleanest river on earth, she in general is clean, with more water plants drifting by than garbage. The yellowish brown color of the water is the color of the mud washed down into the river, not the color of pollution. Speaking of the very Third World market, I have never heard of it. What you saw was a traditional market or old-style market. If you wish to see modern (or First World?) markets, then we also have a lot of them to show to you. We Thais do not classify countries into three groups based on level of development as westerners do. We never consider ourselves a third type citizen of the world. Do you call the Aborigines Third Australian people? As a matter of fact, there is nothing as simple as poor countries-rich countries. Almost all countries are either poorer or richer than one another. In terms of GDP per capita, Australia is richer than Thailand but poorer than France or Japan. On the other hand, Thailand is poorer than Australia but richer than Egypt or China.