What a wonderful, crazy day. I honestly don't even know where to begin. Bangkok is just... so much. Like so many sounds and colors and smells and tastes and people, ohhhhh the people. It's just a lot to take in and makes everything kind of a blur. I've read about that and I've seen some YouTube videos about it too but nothing really prepares you for it. We saw it a tiny bit yesterday with the train/taxi ride but really experienced it in earnest today. WARNING: This is a very long post.
Breakfast at Hostel
The day had an inauspicious start. As I mentioned in the last post, I woke up at around 1am or so because we were dumb and didn't plan our sleep schedule well. So I was awake for a long time this morning just hanging out at the hostel. The hostel has a really cool set up and I like the location (in a quiet neighborhood but within walking distance of major sites). Lacey woke up at around 2:30am too so we were both wide awake in the middle of the night. We decided to walk over to Khao San Road (you'll hear more about this later). Unfortunately, we picked a really bad time to go. The bars were all closing up and the whole area kind of smelled like alcohol and pee. Not great! So we walked back to our hostel. There were lots of people sleeping on the major street we walked along, which really reminded us that we are not in Minnesota anymore.
We got back to the hostel and I looked up some more information about the major sites we were seeing today. Our main plan was to hit up the three biggest tourist attractions in Bangkok: The Grand Palace, Wat Pho, and Wat Arun. I started to get really, really antsy at around 6:30am so I convinced Lacey to walk over to a place called the Golden Mount. It was nice seeing the city in the light of day (versus the dead of night when walked earlier). We walked kind of around the complex and realized it wasn't technically open until 8:30am. Oops. So we walked back to the hostel again and ate breakfast.
3 chedirs at Wat Phra Kaeo
The breakfast was pretty delicious. Now that we had breakfast and we knew our major stops of the day would be open, we were finally ready to leave for real. I didn't know this going in but apparently, Bangkok is kind of a "slow opening" city. Like nothing is open before 8 or 9am at the very earliest. It was about a mile walk from our hostel to the Grand Palace complex. My favorite part was that we walked through a small market along a canal. There were food and trinket sellers and local people everywhere. Lacey and I both commented that the canals reminded us strongly of Amsterdam. Other thing, every so often we would get a reallllly bad smell in our noses (from sewers or something?). It was just another part of the assault on the senses that Bangkok does.
Me at Wat Phra Kaeo
So after a pretty warm walk (85 degrees out), we made it to the Grand Palace. We knew we were getting close because the amount of people started to triple. They enforce a strict dress code here: no shorts or shoulders exposed. We stopped at a store across the road and I bought some pretty cool baggy pants and Lacey bought a skirt. These will come in handy at any temples we go to in the future.
Lacey and me at Golden Chedi
The Grand Palace complex was constructed around 1780 and carries Thai and Western influences. The first area we walked around is called Wat Phra Kaeo. This is the temple complex of the Palace. The temples here were built for the royal family back in the day. The most famous one has a 26 inch tall Emerald Buddha. There were A LOT of people here. Like a lot a lot. I'm probably going to keep saying this but the colors on the buildings we spectacular. There were greens and oranges and gold and stone and glittering effects. As I said, the main attraction is the most famous Buddha statue in all of Thailand. I couldn't take a picture of it but imagine A TON of gold statues and pillars and stuff and then a Buddha statue in a small case sitting on the top. Our main highlight of this area was the 3 chedis (pointed pillars). One was gold, one was gray stone, and one was polished stone. This whole place is a feast for the eyes (as long as you ignore all the people).
We took our time walking around the temple complex and slowly worked our way over to the Palace part. It was brutally hot out in this stretch and they didn't have any concession areas selling water so we were kind of rationing the water we brought in our bottles. The Grand Palace is spectacular. You really see the mixing of Western architecture on the windows but the buildings have the traditional Thai flare on the tops. The buildings here still serve a purpose for State functions like funerals and coronations. We took a bunch of pictures in the courtyard area. Luckily there was a shop here and we bought some water bottles (I chugged mine down).
Lunch at S&P
We were starting to get hungry so we walked to a restaurant that my book told me about. It's called S&P and it's a countrywide chain. I would say it's kind of like an Applebees or something like that. It had a huge menu and served traditional Thai food. I got fried rice with vermicelli noodles and Lacey got her favorite, massaman curry. The food was delicious even though Lacey's was a tad bit spicy for her. The restaurant got very busy while we were eating so we timed our visit well. The restaurant was in a pier area with lots of other shops and restaurants too. It reminded us of San Francisco with the stores and stuff right by the water. We also walked through an amulet market. Many Thai people believe in the power of amulets and trinkets to give them good luck. It was cool to see all the different kinds and how shoppers were being very picky about which ones they wanted.
Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho
There were 2 other places we wanted to visit: Wat Pho and Wat Arun. Wat Arun is a very tall temple across the river so we started to look for a place to cross the river. Unfortunately, we could only find a private pier that cost too much money so we figured we would do that tomorrow. Instead, we walked to Wat Pho. Wat Pho is the most famous and important temple in all of Thailand. It houses the looooong reclining Buddha and over 100 chedis. Lacey and I were getting kind of worn down by the crowds and heat. We braved the crowds and saw the reclining Buddha which is bigger than I imagined.
Happy New Year at Wat Pho
As we were exiting the reclining Buddha temple, we saw a crowd gathering under a tent and went to investigate. Turns out a few Buddhist monks we were doing blessings on people with water. Kind of like how a priest splashes water into a crowd around Easter time, except this, was 1 on 1. I knew I had to do this. Lacey filmed the whole thing but the guy realllllly got me wet haha. We noticed a pattern that tall, white guys really got soaked. It was super funny and doing that really lifted both of our spirits. It was also nice because the rest of the Wat Pho complex was not as crowded so we were able to breathe and really appreciate all of the buildings. One other funny thing was statues of people posing in "medicinal positions". Of course, we had to copy a couple of the poses.
We did the long walk back to our hostel and our feet were really feeling it. We napped/slept for like 4 hours and got ready to see Khao San Road at the correct time (around 10 or 11pm). Khao San Road is the main backpacker/club/nightlife entertainment area for Bangkok. There are other areas with bars obviously but this is a small road just packed full of the stuff. It was really something to behold. Each bar plays super loud music and has like 5 people in the street trying to pull you in. There are also a bunch of street food vendors and clothes vendors and people selling scorpions and people with coolers selling beer and yeah. Just an assault on your senses.
Pad Thai Dinner
We walked the length of the street a couple times and got some pad thai (official food of Thailand). It was really good and fun to eat it with chopsticks. Then we went to a bar and had a drink and people watched for a while. Finally, it was back to the hostel to sleep again. Tomorrow we'll do Wat Arun and then catch a flight to Krabi (the island area in the south of Thailand).
Sorry for the length of this post, just a super busy day! One last note. I really like the layout and location of our hostel but the wifi situation is absolutely terrible which is really annoying.
Looks amazing! I'm jealous!
ReplyDeleteJessica T.