Thailand - Bangkok
27th October
We grabbed breakfast and headed to the airport. The taxi took forever, and we arrived 30 minutes before the game closed, but hey! We got there!
Arriving in Bangkok we got confused as to which visa stop we needed, turns out we didn't need a specific one, we just had to go through immigration for our visa exemption. Another stamp in my passport.
Pulling out of the airport in Bangkok was a dream come true. No longer did we have dirt roads, beaten up cars and beeping every 2 seconds. Smooth tarmac-ed road stretched out ahead of us and the silence was oddly eerie. People used their indicators and all their lights worked. All is right with the roads! The city at night is beautiful, and I'm surprised at how 'western' everything is. So far in India and Nepal it's been obvious that we've been in Asia, but Bangkok is a completely different ball game. Gone are the shacks that vaguely resemble shops, in their place there are 7 elevens, and clothes stores that actually have their products inside and on rails. I'm sure I'll grow to miss buying crisps on the edge of a dusty roundabout, but for the moment, this is a nice surprise!
The hostel is pretty cool, and kinda looks like a city flat block that's been repainted to make it look less like a tower of concrete. This is a good thing. Rainbow coloured metal bars break up the grey, but glossed concrete. The main steps and corridors are open air, covered by a roof, but the ends of the building are almost completely open. The dorms are 4 bed, 2 bunk beds. They all have their own plug sockets, lights and shelves, although I have a second set of shelves in the ceiling which is super cool.
28th October
After an early night, we got up around 9 am and headed out for some sightseeing. Wandering around, we got helped by a guy that told us where we should go (a river boat for 1400baht each) and grabbed us a taxi who dropped us off. There was no way we were paying that but we got out and wandered along the river to find the 40baht boat our hotel had told us about. We hopped on and got off at Wat poh, the site of the reclining Buddha. The boat stop was a small wooden building with low celivings that even I needed to duck to walk through, not helped by the raised platform we had to walk along. There were people selling tickets, fresh fruit, water, snacks and trinkets, but it was when we emerged that our senses were heightened. Colour everywhere, all types of food and drink, from smoothies to deep fried scorpions (which I am yet to work up the courage to try). Having just had breakfast we declined their wares and walked towards the temple where we found our dorm mates and some others from the hostel outside.
The reclining Buddha was the main event of this temple, but the architecture of the buildings around it are not to be ignored. Buildings with scale like tiles that glimmered in the sun looked like dragons had been built from the ground. Stone statues depicting dragon/gargoyle like creatures also lined these buildings, as well as rows and rows of golden buddhas. At first glace, these statues look the same, but actually they are all different. Every single one. Details in their posture and facial features change as you walk along, as well as the patterns on the podiums that they sit on. They are turkey a sight to behold.
As we walked around the buildings we came across canteen-like marquées full of men, young and old, eating lunch. An explosion of orange robes told us they were all monks. The further along we walked, the more people we saw eating, some monks, some regular citizens. We are pushed towards some food stalls by an over enthusiastic Thai woman who told us 'take take, free free'. Baffled, we join a queue and are handed a bowl of noodles, dumpings and soup. Discovering that this was all in aid of the late King, I was surprised but also humbled. You'd never get this in the UK if a member of the royal family died. Food vendors would up the prices if they knew lots of people would be gathering in one place not cook for free! The food was incredible, and we found a perch to eat it away from the Thai woman who was telling us to take more (before we'd even stared the first bowl!!). It seemed we picked the right spot as monks swarmed past us to their temple in a blur of orange. There must have been over 200 of them walking past us in an organised single file line. One monk stopped and handed us each a pot of walls ice cream! It was incredible (the queue of monks, not the ice-cream although it was pretty good).
After seeing the reclining Buddha, which by the way is huge, we headed towards the grand palace to see if we could see inside. Due to the Kings death we couldn't go inside but outside was a humbling site. There must have been a couple hundred thousand people in the area around the palace, all in black, mourning for their king.
We headed back out of the security checked area out of respect for the mourners, and caught a cheap boat across the river to the temple on the other side. Or some of us did. Half of us couldn't fumble together the 3.50 fare, and before we knew it, we were waving at them on the dock from the water! Oops.
Temples in the area explored, we headed back on the tourist boat to check out Khaosan road. As we had predicted, it was pretty quiet, but we headed into a beach themed bar and got through a couple of beer towers. At this point, our group consisted of me, Lucy, Lisa, Sofie, Mark, Tim, Hannah, and John. Feeling hungry we made our way to China town for dinner.
It's not a big city if it doesn't have a China town, right?