Thailand #1
Dec. 26th, 2016 12:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miss_squiddySo yeah. I went to Thailand on holiday by myself (Mike didn't have enough leave and I had loads of TOIL to use up). As I can't speak or read Thai and didn't really have any time to plan what I wanted to do in any kind of detail (but wanted to do more than just sitting on a beach), I decided to book a package deal and settled on a trip with Kuoni, who offered one with lots of variety on some very do-able dates. It's not what I would normally do, but it was about all I had the energy for...
Kuoni were actually really great. They sent me an itinerary with vouchers in for all of my hotels and the details of all of all my flights and basically sorted everything out for me from the moment I arrived in Bangkok. I was really impressed with their service and would definitely recommend them: I worked out that the difference in doing the tour with them and by myself roughly equated to £800 - but that was easily recuperated in transfer, travel, efficiency and time saving!
So early on the morning of Saturday 26th November, I found myself driving to Heathrow to get on an Airbus 380 and make a 12 hour flight alone to the other side of the world with Thai Air. The Airbus 380 is a REALLY BIG airplane. Even the number of doors used for boarding is ridiculous - but luckily I found myself somewhere toward the front in a smaller section which was not terribly busy. This meant I got three whole great big leather recliner seats all to myself and had a nice, quiet journey. I have to admit that I didn't sleep much - but that did mean that I was able to watch a lot of films that I had missed at the cinema - and the view we got when we flew over Delhi at night was quite something (it is a HUGE city and was all lit up. Plus the plough was nose down and the crescent moon was like a smile in the sky instead of a 'C'... It also seems that Thai Air are a very good airline to fly with (and that was all a bit of an accident as I swapped airlines to make getting back home again a bit easier) - they serve actually quite good food and really make an effort to look after everyone...
Important bit - film reviews:
Secret Life of Pets - I thought this might be a fairly funny film about what pets do at home when their owners are out, but it was actually an adventure romp about two dogs who spent a lot of time running around trying to find stuff. It was OK, but a bit repetitive and lacking in the adult subtext you would find in a Pixar film.
Legend of Tarzan - Eric from True Blood takes his shirt off a lot and does smouldering faces in a jungle. This has basically nothing to do with the actual Tarzan story. Eric is all grown up, terribly posh and a bit ashamed of the whole jungle thing, but when some dude wants to steal a diamond using him for bait, he proves that he can still fight a gorilla and win. Don't watch it for the plot.
Finding Dory - In this film, Dory tries to remember her family and discovers they live in a aquarium. So, instead of busting all the fish out, which was basically the entire plot of the original film, she decides to go and live there. Nemo's dad tries to save her and is hindered by Nemo, who is a whiny little jerk.
Ben Hur - The classic story of two brothers who like horseriding. One is a rich Jew who finds himself on the wrong side of a Roman revolution, the other goes and joins up and wins glory in battle. It's got lots of action and big budget special effects but it's not very well written and the whole leper colony scene is very poorly handled and lacked the emotion from the original.
Bad Moms - OK. I was running out of stuff I hadn't seen by this point. Here's a film that screams "Hey! Mums don't have to be perfect!" and then jams that message repeatedly into your face for an hour or so. Apparently in America you can either live for your kids and spend your entire time doing PTA activities, or you can be a terrible human because you have a job and your own life. And you need a whole film to tell you that it's OK not to do every single fucking thing for your kids.
So five films later, I arrived at Bangkok Airport. It was 6.30am and already 27 degrees - what a change from the UK! (The heat was a like a wall as soon as we stepped out of the building...) My rep, Viktor, was waiting for me with one of those little boards (super cool) and took me and my luggage across the airport to another terminal where we met Vish and Sudha, another couple who it turned out were coming on the same tour. Despite the fact that the three of us were all staying at the same hotel, we got sent there in our own cabs. When we arrived, we were greeted by Nina, another rep who was based at the hotel. Nina said that our rooms would not be ready for a while, possibly not until midday, as the outgoing guests were only just checking out and she advised waiting in the hotel as we would be given the best rooms if we were available when allocation began. I really don't care much about that stuff, but it was REALLY HOT outside, we were quite a way from the historic centre (there are two main districts where most of the hotels are and neither of them are that close to the centre) and I knew that we were due to be taken out to see all of the best stuff over the next couple of days.
I think maybe if I had the time again, I would have gone to the National Museum, as that was the only place of interest that I didn't get to see - but it was actually quite nice just to sit in the bar and get some stuff done on my tablet!
I was allocated a room at 10.30am and Nina was not wrong! All of the hotels we stayed at were really good quality 4* places, but it was nice to get a big room with a huge bed (they have the same sort of 3m wide beds that we'd slept in in Peru - the type where you can easily lose the person you are sharing with), and a brilliant view: I could see out across the city but also toward a rather magnificent park and down to our rooftop pool! Once settled in, I went down for a swim and spent an hour or so just doing laps and enjoying being in the water in the lovely sunshine after just leaving horrid grey England behind - it was lush and I still have the tanlines to show for it!
When I'd had enough, I went back up to my room, put on some fresh clothes and went out to have a wander. It really was sweltering out there. Bangkok is very hot and stuffy, and the air hardly seems to move. There are no pavements along a lot of the roads so you just have to hope for the best and walk in amongst the traffic! I passed quite a few cafes and (perfectly innocent) massage places, then down the main street and up to the Sky Train station (it's an overground railway which runs above the roads) and into 'Terminal 21', which is an airport themed shopping mall which has fake security scans at each entrance and every floor is styled around a different city (all the food is in San Fransisco, all the cool young people clothes in London and all the crafts in Istanbul)! It was very weird: like any big city, there was a big mix of people from all over the world and shops such as Boots and H&M, which I really wasn't expecting to see! I explored all the floors but there wasn't a lot I was interested in (most of the clothes were very straightlaced - and although Bangkok seems to be quite a laid back and cool city which likes the idea of tattoos and piercings, everything I saw that was a bit zanier and actually good quality was very 'fashion' and high priced - there was a lot of stuff that was obviously very cheap and printed with bootleg designs!
Back at the hotel, I had a bit more time to chill before heading down to meet our guide for the entire tour, Chaiyan, and our driver Sam. The other four people in our group were getting a later flight in (the one I'd decided came a bit late in the day) and they had decided to meet us in the city, so vish, Sudha and I got on our bus and headed to the market district to meet them. Chaiyan took us for a wander through the streets of Banglamphu district where we saw a LOT of tourists and backpackers (had a good giggle at 'The Dread Doctor' who had an entire business just sorting out the crappy hair of backpacker types), a lot of stalls selling cheap t-shirts and cotton trousers with elephant prints on them - and some other things that were of more interest like a man cutting up Durian (stinky but sweet fruit) to sell, cooked scorpions and spiders, coconut ice cream served inside coconut husks. We made our way slowly to the river and took a boat across to a waterside restaurant which had a lovely outdoor terrace surrounded by all sorts of orchids. Our first meal, like most of the meals that followed, was a big communal Thai food buffet. Luckily Chaiyan was really into his food and ordered different things for us every day - lots of regional delicacies and special treats - so we never really got bored. After a long meal and another river trip, we made our way back to the hotel, ready to collapse!
Day 2: Bangkok
Most of our days had relatively early starts but none of them finished terribly late so it wasn't really a problem. I was up in plenty of time for breakfast - which was very confusing! First off, the foyer by our lifts played birdsong in the morning and that is quite a surprise when you are in a city and 10 floors up! Secondly, breakfast was a mix of the usual slightly odd continental stuff (meat, cheese, bread, cereal, croissants, tiny muffins, etc) and traditional Thai breakfast stuff (rice, chicken, spicy things that seem virtually indistinguishable to lunch). It took me a while to also discover that there was an 'egg bar' (all hotels had these) and you could get your breakfast eggs cooked fresh to order.
When fully fed and ready to go, I joined the rest of our group: Vish (gastroenterologist), Sudha (GP), Kay (psychologist), Andrea (photographer), Tessa (environmental planner) and Dan (chef). Our first destination of the day was Wat Po, a temple in the Old Town. It was a little difficult to get to as the king had recently died and was lying in state at the palace and this mean that lots of roads were closed as thousands of mourners flooded in to pay their respects. Driving in we passed lots of marquees set up on the streets staffed by nurses and ready to offer bereavement counselling and relief from heat exhaustion. Wat Po was quite a tranquil place compared to the bustle of the streets and we had a good look around our first temple which had amazing stupa (pointy towers) decorated with ceramic flowers, courtyards full of golden Buddha statues and lots and lots of Chinese style statues of warriors. The main highlight was a temple with a great golden Buddha inside where monks were sitting and praying. Everything (and I mean everything) that could have been decorated was decorated from the tops of the roofs to the floors. There were intricate paintings, mirrored mosaic tiles and sculptures everywhere!
We thought we had seen the best of the place but then Chaiyan took us to another temple which had a 43m long reclining Buddha statue inside it - there was just enough room to walk around the base and stare up past the wooden columns toward the amazing decorated ceiling. The theme for the holiday was then pretty much set for us: every place we went from then on was different and full of surprises!
Next, we had to take a river ferry to reach our next temple, Wat Arun. This meant balancing on a high floor of wooden planks under what had become a low ceiling in a long market hall to reach the pier and then sitting on a rather precarious craft which had seats, but not really any sides to speak of to cross the river. Wat Arun was much smaller and covered in scaffolding for renovation - but it had enormous sculptures of demons guarding each doorway and people there were dressing up in traditional costumes (with big golden pointy hats) to get their photos taken. The whole place was built from white ceramic tiles with painted decoration on - so it looked different from the last a spectacular in its own way.
Another crossing on a river ferry which was stuffed to the gills with people and staffed by very shouty Thai people who signalled across the river with high pitched whistling took us to the Grand Palace. Despite everyone coming to see the king, we were still able to have a look around - but it was obviously very busy there! The place was an amazing feast for the senses and quite possibly one of the most incredible places I have ever been. Strangely, despite being decorated in gold, green and blue and with statues crammed into every available space it did not feel opulent or cheesy, just wonderful and maybe sort of other-worldly! We walked around, mostly outside, admiring the towering statues of demons, the beautiful tiled roofs with wiggly gables and the huge golden stupa just plonked in the middle of it all! Everything was amazing. The bannisters at the sides of the stairs were giant serpents. The doors were painted with pictures of demons or inlaid with mother of pearl. The window frames were covered with glittery mosaic tiles. Just mindblowing.
We popped into a temple to see the legendary Emerald Buddha (not actually emerald, but still very green and shiny) and passed the king's dressing room, which had a throne inside and two platforms: one for getting onto the platform carried by his lords and one (higher one) for getting onto his elephant. We passed queues and queues of mourners waiting to see the king (they were all wearing black and had to wait for up to 6 hours to get in to pay their respects so they were all very quiet - a bit eerie really)... And then we were out and back at the river where we took a 'Longtail' bot ride along the canals. A longtail boat is a slim but long, two person wide wooden barge with a canopy on the top and a car motor mounted at the back. A very long propeller shaft is attached to the engine and controlled by a manic who revs it to full power and scoots the boat along the canal of Bangkok at high speed, taking corners in such a way that you become concerned about water slopping over the sides. (It never does, but always might).
Along the canals we saw the slightly plainer houses of real people. They are all mounted on stilts to deal with the rising and falling water levels and are made form all sorts of things from very posh, solid concrete - to bits of whatever timber or corrugated iron the homeowner could find. They are all jumbled up together though: there is no feel of rich and poor areas on the canal really.
We had a good long ride, the scariest part of which was crossing the river to our disembarkation point: our tiny boat was thrown about in the wake of much larger ships and we all remarked on how what we were doing would definitely not be allowed on the Thames! Getting out was quite a feat - the boat was pitching all over the place and the jetty was about 4 feet higher than the edge of the craft. We4 had to stand on the seats, push off from the edge of the boat, hope that we could catch our feet in the tyres along the wall and then scramble up! When we were all safe and had had time to breathe and recover, Chaiyan took us to the Chinese quarter where we visited another temple - but this time a Chinese one - (Wat Mangkon Kamalawat) to see a mummified monk, more huge statues and money trees. We wandered through the markets of Chinatown where we saw lots of interesting food: huge sacks of dried mushrooms and bags of what was essentially fish in batter, sacks of rice, dried and flattened squid, shops selling gold in huge quantities, restaurants selling shark fin soup and pharmacies stocking modern remedies as well as Chinese herbal medicine.
But we weren't done yet! We walked from the markets to Wat Traimit - a modern temple built in stepped layers with a huge golden roof which housed the Golden Buddha. And this one was real gold. We trekked up the steps to get in and found ourselves in a small room at the top of the tower where there was a slightly larger than lifesize golden figure on the top of a podium. Real gold is really shiny. It glows and looks warm. I saw a LOT of fake gold in many different forms all over Thailand but nothing else looked like this. It's only a small place and the architecture really can't compete with the other temples we saw that day, but it didn't really have to because the Golden Buddha really was a bit special!
I know I have described a fairly exhausting amount of things here and you probably think it must have been about midnight by the time we'd finished seeing them all. But it was only about 4.30 thanks to the early start and when we went back to the hotel I agreed that I would go out for the evening with Andrea and Sudha to take a look at Patpong, the famous market area where the ladyboys hang out! Nina advised that we were likely to get approached by people inviting us to their ping pong shows (we did) and that we should travel by the subway (we did not). Instead we took the Sky Train because Andrea really wanted a go on it!
I'd already scoped out the station so was able to lead the others straight there - and I'd noticed a ticket window so we were able to ask (by using our map) for tickets to the right stop. The lines weren't too hard to figure out so it was easy to get where we needed to go, but the trains were very full so we did almost have to shove our way out when we got there! Essentially, it is just the same as taking a tube train - but high up instead of low down.
When we got back down to the ground, I hazarded a guess on the direction we would need to go to reach Patpong - and was right - which made me some kind of navigational genius in the eyes of the others! Patpong is essentially two streets packed with market stalls. A lot of them sell the sort of hookey goods you'd normally expect to see in a market (dodgy watches, fake branded good and cheap hair and beauty products, but mixed in with all of that were lots of Thai textiles (those elephant trousers again) and lots of 'hilarious' rude figurines. We had a bit of a wander and picked up a few cheap bits - but it wasn't very big or very special (a bit like Camden is now really - more reputation than actual) and although we had a peek through the doors of a few clubs and saw lots of topless dancers and a few ladyboys getting made up and ready to begin their evening trade, we weren't tempted to go in (not even to the S&M club with the hilarious Camden Town style 'sexy' building models on it)...
Getting back was a little harder as we had to use the automated ticket machine - but I quickly got the hang of it as I had noted the price of our tickets on the way in. There is a map of the network showing each station and marking them with a number. The number is the price of a single ticket to that station so all you do is find the number on the ticket machine, press it and put the same amount of money in. Simple!
But the day still wasn't done! We were all a bit hungry (it was somewhere around 9pm by that point and although we'd had breakfast and lunch we hadn't eaten for some time) so I took the others to Terminal 21, which was open until midnight. They were just as blown away with it as I had been so we had a look in some of the shops, laughed at the crazy decor and made our way up to San Francisco for food. We eventually found a place we all liked and ordered some fishfinger sandwiches (yeah!) but after half an hour they hadn't appeared and it seemed as though our order had not gone through. We decided by then that the need for sleep had overtaken the need for food so gave up and walked back to the hotel to collapse!
Phew! Day done!
Kuoni were actually really great. They sent me an itinerary with vouchers in for all of my hotels and the details of all of all my flights and basically sorted everything out for me from the moment I arrived in Bangkok. I was really impressed with their service and would definitely recommend them: I worked out that the difference in doing the tour with them and by myself roughly equated to £800 - but that was easily recuperated in transfer, travel, efficiency and time saving!
So early on the morning of Saturday 26th November, I found myself driving to Heathrow to get on an Airbus 380 and make a 12 hour flight alone to the other side of the world with Thai Air. The Airbus 380 is a REALLY BIG airplane. Even the number of doors used for boarding is ridiculous - but luckily I found myself somewhere toward the front in a smaller section which was not terribly busy. This meant I got three whole great big leather recliner seats all to myself and had a nice, quiet journey. I have to admit that I didn't sleep much - but that did mean that I was able to watch a lot of films that I had missed at the cinema - and the view we got when we flew over Delhi at night was quite something (it is a HUGE city and was all lit up. Plus the plough was nose down and the crescent moon was like a smile in the sky instead of a 'C'... It also seems that Thai Air are a very good airline to fly with (and that was all a bit of an accident as I swapped airlines to make getting back home again a bit easier) - they serve actually quite good food and really make an effort to look after everyone...
Important bit - film reviews:
Secret Life of Pets - I thought this might be a fairly funny film about what pets do at home when their owners are out, but it was actually an adventure romp about two dogs who spent a lot of time running around trying to find stuff. It was OK, but a bit repetitive and lacking in the adult subtext you would find in a Pixar film.
Legend of Tarzan - Eric from True Blood takes his shirt off a lot and does smouldering faces in a jungle. This has basically nothing to do with the actual Tarzan story. Eric is all grown up, terribly posh and a bit ashamed of the whole jungle thing, but when some dude wants to steal a diamond using him for bait, he proves that he can still fight a gorilla and win. Don't watch it for the plot.
Finding Dory - In this film, Dory tries to remember her family and discovers they live in a aquarium. So, instead of busting all the fish out, which was basically the entire plot of the original film, she decides to go and live there. Nemo's dad tries to save her and is hindered by Nemo, who is a whiny little jerk.
Ben Hur - The classic story of two brothers who like horseriding. One is a rich Jew who finds himself on the wrong side of a Roman revolution, the other goes and joins up and wins glory in battle. It's got lots of action and big budget special effects but it's not very well written and the whole leper colony scene is very poorly handled and lacked the emotion from the original.
Bad Moms - OK. I was running out of stuff I hadn't seen by this point. Here's a film that screams "Hey! Mums don't have to be perfect!" and then jams that message repeatedly into your face for an hour or so. Apparently in America you can either live for your kids and spend your entire time doing PTA activities, or you can be a terrible human because you have a job and your own life. And you need a whole film to tell you that it's OK not to do every single fucking thing for your kids.
So five films later, I arrived at Bangkok Airport. It was 6.30am and already 27 degrees - what a change from the UK! (The heat was a like a wall as soon as we stepped out of the building...) My rep, Viktor, was waiting for me with one of those little boards (super cool) and took me and my luggage across the airport to another terminal where we met Vish and Sudha, another couple who it turned out were coming on the same tour. Despite the fact that the three of us were all staying at the same hotel, we got sent there in our own cabs. When we arrived, we were greeted by Nina, another rep who was based at the hotel. Nina said that our rooms would not be ready for a while, possibly not until midday, as the outgoing guests were only just checking out and she advised waiting in the hotel as we would be given the best rooms if we were available when allocation began. I really don't care much about that stuff, but it was REALLY HOT outside, we were quite a way from the historic centre (there are two main districts where most of the hotels are and neither of them are that close to the centre) and I knew that we were due to be taken out to see all of the best stuff over the next couple of days.
I think maybe if I had the time again, I would have gone to the National Museum, as that was the only place of interest that I didn't get to see - but it was actually quite nice just to sit in the bar and get some stuff done on my tablet!
I was allocated a room at 10.30am and Nina was not wrong! All of the hotels we stayed at were really good quality 4* places, but it was nice to get a big room with a huge bed (they have the same sort of 3m wide beds that we'd slept in in Peru - the type where you can easily lose the person you are sharing with), and a brilliant view: I could see out across the city but also toward a rather magnificent park and down to our rooftop pool! Once settled in, I went down for a swim and spent an hour or so just doing laps and enjoying being in the water in the lovely sunshine after just leaving horrid grey England behind - it was lush and I still have the tanlines to show for it!
When I'd had enough, I went back up to my room, put on some fresh clothes and went out to have a wander. It really was sweltering out there. Bangkok is very hot and stuffy, and the air hardly seems to move. There are no pavements along a lot of the roads so you just have to hope for the best and walk in amongst the traffic! I passed quite a few cafes and (perfectly innocent) massage places, then down the main street and up to the Sky Train station (it's an overground railway which runs above the roads) and into 'Terminal 21', which is an airport themed shopping mall which has fake security scans at each entrance and every floor is styled around a different city (all the food is in San Fransisco, all the cool young people clothes in London and all the crafts in Istanbul)! It was very weird: like any big city, there was a big mix of people from all over the world and shops such as Boots and H&M, which I really wasn't expecting to see! I explored all the floors but there wasn't a lot I was interested in (most of the clothes were very straightlaced - and although Bangkok seems to be quite a laid back and cool city which likes the idea of tattoos and piercings, everything I saw that was a bit zanier and actually good quality was very 'fashion' and high priced - there was a lot of stuff that was obviously very cheap and printed with bootleg designs!
Back at the hotel, I had a bit more time to chill before heading down to meet our guide for the entire tour, Chaiyan, and our driver Sam. The other four people in our group were getting a later flight in (the one I'd decided came a bit late in the day) and they had decided to meet us in the city, so vish, Sudha and I got on our bus and headed to the market district to meet them. Chaiyan took us for a wander through the streets of Banglamphu district where we saw a LOT of tourists and backpackers (had a good giggle at 'The Dread Doctor' who had an entire business just sorting out the crappy hair of backpacker types), a lot of stalls selling cheap t-shirts and cotton trousers with elephant prints on them - and some other things that were of more interest like a man cutting up Durian (stinky but sweet fruit) to sell, cooked scorpions and spiders, coconut ice cream served inside coconut husks. We made our way slowly to the river and took a boat across to a waterside restaurant which had a lovely outdoor terrace surrounded by all sorts of orchids. Our first meal, like most of the meals that followed, was a big communal Thai food buffet. Luckily Chaiyan was really into his food and ordered different things for us every day - lots of regional delicacies and special treats - so we never really got bored. After a long meal and another river trip, we made our way back to the hotel, ready to collapse!
Day 2: Bangkok
Most of our days had relatively early starts but none of them finished terribly late so it wasn't really a problem. I was up in plenty of time for breakfast - which was very confusing! First off, the foyer by our lifts played birdsong in the morning and that is quite a surprise when you are in a city and 10 floors up! Secondly, breakfast was a mix of the usual slightly odd continental stuff (meat, cheese, bread, cereal, croissants, tiny muffins, etc) and traditional Thai breakfast stuff (rice, chicken, spicy things that seem virtually indistinguishable to lunch). It took me a while to also discover that there was an 'egg bar' (all hotels had these) and you could get your breakfast eggs cooked fresh to order.
When fully fed and ready to go, I joined the rest of our group: Vish (gastroenterologist), Sudha (GP), Kay (psychologist), Andrea (photographer), Tessa (environmental planner) and Dan (chef). Our first destination of the day was Wat Po, a temple in the Old Town. It was a little difficult to get to as the king had recently died and was lying in state at the palace and this mean that lots of roads were closed as thousands of mourners flooded in to pay their respects. Driving in we passed lots of marquees set up on the streets staffed by nurses and ready to offer bereavement counselling and relief from heat exhaustion. Wat Po was quite a tranquil place compared to the bustle of the streets and we had a good look around our first temple which had amazing stupa (pointy towers) decorated with ceramic flowers, courtyards full of golden Buddha statues and lots and lots of Chinese style statues of warriors. The main highlight was a temple with a great golden Buddha inside where monks were sitting and praying. Everything (and I mean everything) that could have been decorated was decorated from the tops of the roofs to the floors. There were intricate paintings, mirrored mosaic tiles and sculptures everywhere!
We thought we had seen the best of the place but then Chaiyan took us to another temple which had a 43m long reclining Buddha statue inside it - there was just enough room to walk around the base and stare up past the wooden columns toward the amazing decorated ceiling. The theme for the holiday was then pretty much set for us: every place we went from then on was different and full of surprises!
Next, we had to take a river ferry to reach our next temple, Wat Arun. This meant balancing on a high floor of wooden planks under what had become a low ceiling in a long market hall to reach the pier and then sitting on a rather precarious craft which had seats, but not really any sides to speak of to cross the river. Wat Arun was much smaller and covered in scaffolding for renovation - but it had enormous sculptures of demons guarding each doorway and people there were dressing up in traditional costumes (with big golden pointy hats) to get their photos taken. The whole place was built from white ceramic tiles with painted decoration on - so it looked different from the last a spectacular in its own way.
Another crossing on a river ferry which was stuffed to the gills with people and staffed by very shouty Thai people who signalled across the river with high pitched whistling took us to the Grand Palace. Despite everyone coming to see the king, we were still able to have a look around - but it was obviously very busy there! The place was an amazing feast for the senses and quite possibly one of the most incredible places I have ever been. Strangely, despite being decorated in gold, green and blue and with statues crammed into every available space it did not feel opulent or cheesy, just wonderful and maybe sort of other-worldly! We walked around, mostly outside, admiring the towering statues of demons, the beautiful tiled roofs with wiggly gables and the huge golden stupa just plonked in the middle of it all! Everything was amazing. The bannisters at the sides of the stairs were giant serpents. The doors were painted with pictures of demons or inlaid with mother of pearl. The window frames were covered with glittery mosaic tiles. Just mindblowing.
We popped into a temple to see the legendary Emerald Buddha (not actually emerald, but still very green and shiny) and passed the king's dressing room, which had a throne inside and two platforms: one for getting onto the platform carried by his lords and one (higher one) for getting onto his elephant. We passed queues and queues of mourners waiting to see the king (they were all wearing black and had to wait for up to 6 hours to get in to pay their respects so they were all very quiet - a bit eerie really)... And then we were out and back at the river where we took a 'Longtail' bot ride along the canals. A longtail boat is a slim but long, two person wide wooden barge with a canopy on the top and a car motor mounted at the back. A very long propeller shaft is attached to the engine and controlled by a manic who revs it to full power and scoots the boat along the canal of Bangkok at high speed, taking corners in such a way that you become concerned about water slopping over the sides. (It never does, but always might).
Along the canals we saw the slightly plainer houses of real people. They are all mounted on stilts to deal with the rising and falling water levels and are made form all sorts of things from very posh, solid concrete - to bits of whatever timber or corrugated iron the homeowner could find. They are all jumbled up together though: there is no feel of rich and poor areas on the canal really.
We had a good long ride, the scariest part of which was crossing the river to our disembarkation point: our tiny boat was thrown about in the wake of much larger ships and we all remarked on how what we were doing would definitely not be allowed on the Thames! Getting out was quite a feat - the boat was pitching all over the place and the jetty was about 4 feet higher than the edge of the craft. We4 had to stand on the seats, push off from the edge of the boat, hope that we could catch our feet in the tyres along the wall and then scramble up! When we were all safe and had had time to breathe and recover, Chaiyan took us to the Chinese quarter where we visited another temple - but this time a Chinese one - (Wat Mangkon Kamalawat) to see a mummified monk, more huge statues and money trees. We wandered through the markets of Chinatown where we saw lots of interesting food: huge sacks of dried mushrooms and bags of what was essentially fish in batter, sacks of rice, dried and flattened squid, shops selling gold in huge quantities, restaurants selling shark fin soup and pharmacies stocking modern remedies as well as Chinese herbal medicine.
But we weren't done yet! We walked from the markets to Wat Traimit - a modern temple built in stepped layers with a huge golden roof which housed the Golden Buddha. And this one was real gold. We trekked up the steps to get in and found ourselves in a small room at the top of the tower where there was a slightly larger than lifesize golden figure on the top of a podium. Real gold is really shiny. It glows and looks warm. I saw a LOT of fake gold in many different forms all over Thailand but nothing else looked like this. It's only a small place and the architecture really can't compete with the other temples we saw that day, but it didn't really have to because the Golden Buddha really was a bit special!
I know I have described a fairly exhausting amount of things here and you probably think it must have been about midnight by the time we'd finished seeing them all. But it was only about 4.30 thanks to the early start and when we went back to the hotel I agreed that I would go out for the evening with Andrea and Sudha to take a look at Patpong, the famous market area where the ladyboys hang out! Nina advised that we were likely to get approached by people inviting us to their ping pong shows (we did) and that we should travel by the subway (we did not). Instead we took the Sky Train because Andrea really wanted a go on it!
I'd already scoped out the station so was able to lead the others straight there - and I'd noticed a ticket window so we were able to ask (by using our map) for tickets to the right stop. The lines weren't too hard to figure out so it was easy to get where we needed to go, but the trains were very full so we did almost have to shove our way out when we got there! Essentially, it is just the same as taking a tube train - but high up instead of low down.
When we got back down to the ground, I hazarded a guess on the direction we would need to go to reach Patpong - and was right - which made me some kind of navigational genius in the eyes of the others! Patpong is essentially two streets packed with market stalls. A lot of them sell the sort of hookey goods you'd normally expect to see in a market (dodgy watches, fake branded good and cheap hair and beauty products, but mixed in with all of that were lots of Thai textiles (those elephant trousers again) and lots of 'hilarious' rude figurines. We had a bit of a wander and picked up a few cheap bits - but it wasn't very big or very special (a bit like Camden is now really - more reputation than actual) and although we had a peek through the doors of a few clubs and saw lots of topless dancers and a few ladyboys getting made up and ready to begin their evening trade, we weren't tempted to go in (not even to the S&M club with the hilarious Camden Town style 'sexy' building models on it)...
Getting back was a little harder as we had to use the automated ticket machine - but I quickly got the hang of it as I had noted the price of our tickets on the way in. There is a map of the network showing each station and marking them with a number. The number is the price of a single ticket to that station so all you do is find the number on the ticket machine, press it and put the same amount of money in. Simple!
But the day still wasn't done! We were all a bit hungry (it was somewhere around 9pm by that point and although we'd had breakfast and lunch we hadn't eaten for some time) so I took the others to Terminal 21, which was open until midnight. They were just as blown away with it as I had been so we had a look in some of the shops, laughed at the crazy decor and made our way up to San Francisco for food. We eventually found a place we all liked and ordered some fishfinger sandwiches (yeah!) but after half an hour they hadn't appeared and it seemed as though our order had not gone through. We decided by then that the need for sleep had overtaken the need for food so gave up and walked back to the hotel to collapse!
Phew! Day done!