Advertisement
Published: September 16th 2006
Reclining Buddha
15 meters high...too large to fit in one photo!All I can say is good thing that I've got you-know-who by my side constantly tapping me from behind or steering me in the right direction as I start aimlessly following the local crowds down towards the trains going in the opposite direction. My first impression of Bangkok? Crazy. Overloaded by the heat and a different "unusual" smells as we go down different alleys go from aromas of different food to awful stenches of god-knows-what. The hustle and bustle of the city is definitely exciting as we found our way around the sky-train stations and through the ferries with all the locals... within a couple of stops, we were experts of getting around. Okay, well - Marcos was an expert - he's my version of a personal navigation system 😊 It's definitely noisy, crowded and chaotic as we barely ever get to walk side-by-side along a street for more than 2 seconds before a crazy taxi driver or Thai on a motorcycle comes zooming by... imagine trying to say more than a few words without having to scream at the other person from behind.
We read it a thousand times, we were warned by all the guidebooks, we heard about it on all the pod-casts... but it still happened. We got suckered as every tourist does into spending an obscene amount of money on really absolutely nothing after agreeing to a "personal guided tour" around the Wat Pho temple. A man came up to us offering to give us a personal guided tour of the temple for 300B ($10) - so we agreed. He was actually a great tour guide, but we slowly started becoming suspicious as he took us outside the temple to the ladies in the street selling us their paintings. Before we could blink, we got suckered into spending $20 (yes, dollars - not Baht) on these little gold coins that we easily could have negotiated for 20 Baht, claiming that the funds went towards the “restoration of the temple”. That wasn’t so bad, but no more than 2 minutes later we were ushered to another man for a palm reading. Trying to decipher his Thai/English “future readings” based on the lines and freckles of my hands was definitely a struggle. Basically, the gist of his “psychic ability” was that if I didn’t remove the freckle on one of my fingers, I was going to give my father a heart-attack and he would continue to worry about me for days on end… that, and well I’m going to have twins by the time I’m 28 or 29, we’ll see if that comes true…
After a long day of trekking around in the city, we treated ourselves to our first Thai massages that we could order directly in our rooms! Nice concept - not so nice massage! Marcos loved it and it was right up his alley… for me, I think I’ll have to stick to the resorts and spa treatments…Unfortunately, our (well… more mine) internal clocks are still a few hours behind schedule as I pass out out by 7:00 and wake up at 4 in the morning. We’ve got one more day in the city before we head over to the islands. Definitely getting excited about our bungalows and the beaches that await us…
Advertisement
Tot: 0.059s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 11; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0384s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Sarah
non-member comment
It sounds like you guys are having quite an unforgetable experience. I don't know if we'd do well together in Thailand if we can manage to actually get lost in Venice. And you should be used to getting run over by Asians....remember the Chinese lady with the cart at Canal street? Can't wait to talk to you when you get back. I got my new phone! :)