Wat?!?

It has rained every single night we’ve been here so far, but not once during the day. Very nice. It hasn’t been the best weather however, more overcast than anything, but we’ll settle. We’re not greedy. We were even treated to a thunderstorm last night, complete with lightening. We’re getting the full treatment, I guess.

Anyway, thus far we’ve been slowly venturing further and further into the city, and today we looked to get ourselves from Eileen and Kristina’s all the way to the Ko Ratanakosin area. This part of town is littered with wats and Buddhist temples and is a fair distance from where we’re staying. We had to take two separate trains and a ferry to get there. Naturally, the place is a major tourist destination, and so the path there was fraught with hustlers and scam artists looking to lighten the pockets of any inexperienced tourists available, all by legal means of course, which is to say by convincing tourists to purchase meager tour packages and other extraneous goods and services. We did pretty well avoiding this sort of thing, not that it’s all that difficult. Besides, not being overly overweight, extremely pale, having camera bags slung across our shoulders, or wearing ridiculous, supposedly authentic local clothing, we make for less appealing marks. We don’t look like we’ve got money hanging out of our pockets. All it really takes is some ingenuity, and a smile and polite wave of the hand indicating “no thank you”.



Anyway, before getting on the boat to head up river to Ko Ratanakosin, we made a detour to Wat Yannawa (pictured here with trees leading to its entrance). The wat was almost entirely empty and it was nice to have it pretty much to ourselves. Its placement is kind of odd considering it’s in the middle of the city and not at all serene. I imagine it was quite nice a hundred plus years ago when there weren’t busses chugging past and street corner vendors cooking on every sidewalk.

After a brief visit, we headed over to catch a river taxi up to Ko Ratanakosin. The boat dragged us up river while a tour guide gave a review in English of every hotel we passed, noting its opening date and star rating, presumably for the benefit of the non-locals. Occasionally he’d break from the routine to point out a wat, temple or church. We got a pretty good picture of the Temple of the Dawn this way, though we took it from the dock after we disembarked.

Straight off the boat, we walked to the side of the Grand Palace, which is no longer used, but is instead a major tourist attraction, and is surrounded by a large, white wall. Next to it stands Wat Pho, which was supposedly closed for a Buddhist ceremony, but that information was gained from a Thai that we’re pretty sure was trying to dupe us into taking a tuk-tuk to another wat at an exorbitant rate that he might split with the driver. He got us, sort of. What happened was that we believed him, but didn’t immediately take a tuk-tuk. We walked a block and took one. We’re not certain, but we think our driver just drove around a bit and dropped us off in front of a random wat instead of the one we’d requested. Anyway, we felt that the 40 baht we paid wasn’t excessive, and besides, 40 baht is all of $1.16 USD, so we could afford it. It went to a good cause.

We found ourselves in front of what we think was Wat Ratchabophit, which is pictured here, including the one of Hilary. If you can’t tell from the pictures, the wat was amazingly ornate and we were taken by its beauty. The detail was stunning. From there we just wandered until we came upon Wat Ratchapradit. Again, the architecture and detail was remarkable. I can’t really do these places any justice in writing beyond saying that you need to see them your self to really appreciate them. We hung around this wat a little longer because we’d been befriended by an English teacher who mentioned possibly going inside, but it never happened and instead we spent 20 minutes awkwardly conversing with him about his daughter who is going to spend next year on an exchange in Alaska. She’s going to have a hell of a surprise when she feels the cold and the endless winter moon. Hopefully she’s done some research. He seemed pretty intelligent, so I think she’s probably adequately prepared. Finally, when we realized we were not getting inside, we excused ourselves and continued wandering. Next we went to the Grand Palace and peaked in through the front gate. The entrance fee was something like 250 baht which may be less than $10 USD, but is still too rich for our blood. Besides, we really want to see the older, less tourist-visited sites outside of Bangkok.

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the sidewalk market looking at the different tables, which are actually tarps laid on the concrete. Again, I think Thailand has the market cornered on odd combinations of things for sale together. As Hilary said, “it’s like somebody went around their house thinking, ‘what can I sell today.’” Great. This has become one of our favorite things about Bangkok. This and the fruit carts. There are these carts that cruise around the city with peeled pineapple, papaya, green guava, watermelon, green mango and sometimes cantaloupe city atop ice. When you buy it, they put it into a plastic bag, chop it into bite size chunks (the fruit only, they cut inside the bag) and throw a skewer in for you to use as a utensil. It’s great, and all for 10 baht each, though occasionally we have to pay 20 baht.

Sorry for the length of this entry. One last thing. We learned today that most people park their cars in neutral. Due to the number of people in Bangkok, there are not nearly enough parking spots, so people routinely box each other in. The cars are left in neutral so that if you are boxed in, you can simple roll the car out of your way. There are whole parking lots filled with cars that have to be strategically moved. It’s incredible. You’ll come out sometimes and your car will be blocks away. Again, sorry about the length of this post.