Holly and Lucys Excellent Adventure!

Saturday, 20 August 2005

Location: Bangkok, Thailand

Lucy: Hey everybody! It’s our last day in Bangkok, and what are we doing? Writing the good ol diary… But this will be our final entry!! Yes, you’ll have to find something new to do with your lives I’m afraid, as the Excellent Adventure is drawing to a close… It’s been a fantastic trip, I’ve had soooooo many new experiences, but I am really looking forward to getting back and seeing everyone… especially after nearly a week in hot and smelly Bangkok! Speaking of which…

The next day we actually managed to organise ourselves to go and do some sightseeing! The first place to visit in Bangkok has to be the Grand Palace and temple of the Emerald Buddah, which is all in one place. We headed off there in the early afternoon, via tuk tuk (ignoring claims that the grand palace was shut and we should go across town to visit another temple instead…). There are strict rules about what you can wear into the palace; you have to have your shoulders and legs covered, and wear proper shoes. I had brought I shawl with me, but this wasn’t good enough so I had to join a massive queue of tourists waiting to borrow clothing. Strangely, the rules didn’t seem to apply to everyone… saw quite a few people wearing skirts, and even sandals… but it’s probably something to do with respect for the King, and you don’t wanna make a fuss about that over here! We visited the temple first, where we briefly bumped into Chris and Tess from our tour group (the first of many times we bumped into people off the tour!). We ended up spending about an hour just walking around in there… it’s an incredibly elaborately decorated set of buildings, loads of gold, loads of jewels, loads of mirror tiles, intricate murals all round the walls… not really my taste (although the murals were pretty), but it certainly stands out! The Emerald Buddah is one of the most important buddah statues in Thailand, and is housed in a building here. It’s actually pretty tiny! It’s really made from jade, but was originally covered plaster, and when the plaster started peeling off the guy who found it thought it was emerald underneath, hence the name. The best thing about this buddah was that he has different outfits for different times of the year! At the moment he’s wearing his ‘rainy season’ outfit, but there are also hot and cold season outfits, which they change depending on the time of year! Couldn’t help thinking of Barbie… Then we went on to visit the actual Grand Palace buildings. Unfortunately, you couldn’t visit inside any of these buildings, but they looked very grand from the outside, despite being pretty much covered in scaffolding (as was pretty much everything we went to see this week…) Finally we visited the coins and artifacts museum, which was basically full of shiny things belonging to the Royal family, including the crucial royal fly whisk. This was also where the buddah outfits were kept, so got a good look at them… rainy season is an off-one-shoulder top, cold season is a poncho and a hot season is a kinda funky bikini!

When we were done at the palace we headed off to see the only attraction that we’d heard of in Bangkok, the reclining Buddah. I’m not sure, but I think this statue is the largest reclining buddah world, and it is pretty impressive, especially when you first walk into the hall with it in! There’s hardly any space to move around it… hence the rubbish photos. Its about 40m long and 5m high, and shiny gold, with a mother of pearl design on the feet. I like the way that Buddah always looks so chilled out, and this is especially true with this statue!

We headed back to the hotel after that and got ready to go eat with some of the remaining members of our tour group. After that we were supposed to go for some drinks, but unfortunately we lost them so Hol headed back to the Khao San Road for some more shopping and I went to bed.

On Wednesday we decided to try and get out of the main tourist area and find the city centre of Bangkok. We decided to take a boat down the river to see some of the sights. I had planned to take a boat with a guide on it, but when we got to the station the woman there literally pushed me onto the boat that was waiting there, before I even knew where it was going! Strangely we met Chris and Tess again on the boat, who were now convinced we were stalking them, and arranged to meet up again for dinner. We did see various temples along the riverbank, but didn’t really know what they were… although it’s true what May says, there are shacks right next to the grandest buildings, which is strange to see. We had decided we needed to escape the heat and so we planned to visit Lumphini Park first. We took the skytrain there, which was a great way to see central Bangkok… there are so many layers to city, with the various skyscrapers and walkways, and its all very busy all the time.. the park was a nice break. Not much else to say about it really! I don’t think they’re into their parks in Bangkok, there are no botanical gardens or anything like that. After the park, we walked up the road to visit a small public shrine, which was right outside the Hyatt hotel. It was very busy there, people seemed to pop in to light incense or say a prayer in between shopping. There were also a group of classical dancers here who you could pay to do a traditional dance as a kind of offering, so we got to see that too.
Next we took the skytrain to a big shopping centre called MBK which we’d heard good things about from other members of our group (Jenna and Toby had spent a full day in there)… It was pretty huge, unfortunately we weren’t expecting such high prices as we were used to shopping on markets by then! We had a quick look round but left pretty swiftly. It was late afternoon by that point and we didn’t really have time to visit anything else, so we just headed back.

In the evening we went for dinner in a place just opposite our hotel with Chris, Tess and Ali, who was a friend of James’ who had just arrived in Bangkok on the start of his trip. We then spent a few hours eating weird and wonderful fruit off the market and playing cards… the deal was that the loser would have to eat a crunchy cockroach off the street stall, and I started to lose quite badly… but luckily, we had to abandon the game to go and say goodbye to Toby and Jenna! It was also everybody else’s last night, so it was sad goodbye’s all round before bed.

Holly: Thursday was our first day of being PROPERLY ALONE in Bangkok. Everybody else had either gone home or moved on to other places. We decided to make the best of the time we had left, and get up nice and early to continue sight seeing. Of course, that was never gonna happen, but we did eventually manage to get out and begin walking to an area where we knew they had lots of culturally interesting things to see. First stop was the Golden Mount. This was a particular building in the middle of a monastery (we think) which was, as you can probably guess, on the top of a hill. It’s a bit of a tough climb up the steps (mainly because of the heat) but once you get to the top, the view is amazing! From the ground it doesn’t look that high, but you can see out over all of Bangkok in every direction. The only drawback was getting very burnt feet; you obviously have to remove your shoes before entering a place of religious importance, and the Golden Mount contains many Buddha images and ancient relics. With the midday sun beating down on the rooftop, you can imagine how hot it was! On the roof there was a huge golden dome / spire, very similar to the photo of the one we took at the Grand Palace. Overall it was very impressive, and well worth the climb, especially to be able to stand in a cool breeze for a while, away from the stuffiness of the city! On the way back down, we were slightly shocked to bump into a man, who was totally stark naked. Now this is a pretty public place, with lots of tourists walking up and down. He saw us and ran round a corner, and proceeded to try to climb over a wall… but didn’t seem able to manage it. It was quite surreal, and no explanation we’ve thought of seems to fit!

Our next stop was the Metal Palace, which was just across the road from the Golden Mount. Only to be accosted on the way by another freaky man, who followed us down the road for ages, deliberately getting in the way and being generally annoying. Once we managed to lose him, we found the metal palace (or Loha Prasat)… which appeared to be under renovations. We were expecting to find it to be pink with 37 white spires representing 37 Dharma of the Bodhipakya… but for some weird reason, the colours all seemed to be wrong! The palace itself was white, with black spires! Not quite sure what had happened there, it looked nothing like it did on our guide map. It was almost totally deserted, and also empty other than a few Buddahs and a very nice spiral stair case up to the top, which again had pretty good views. Other than there, there seemed to be fairly little to see. We moved on again, in search of the Giant Swing and a temple called Wat Suthat. The giant swing was quite impressive, but didn’t actually have a swing on the frame… very disappointing. Apparently it was used in a ceremony long ago, but I can’t really imagine how! Wat Suthat was very beautiful, with the courtyard surrounded by gold Buddahs (many of which were in the process of being repaired) and the main temple had beautiful 19th century murals covering the walls, and another large Buddah statue and alter.

We took a Tuktuk home, which took forever, as the driver obviously didn’t understand where we wanted to go, and headed the completely wrong way for ages. He was totally pissed when he realised we actually wanted to go elsewhere, despite the fact we’d shown him the map twice, and seemed very unimpressed that we didn’t pay him any extra! We spent a bit of time at the hotel and in an internet café sorting some stuff out, before getting a boat to China town in the evening. When we got there, everything seemed totally dead. A man approached us, seeming very friendly, and told us that it was the end of the Chinese month and all the markets, shops and restaurants were closed. We were pretty disappointed, but figured we’d have a quick look around to see if we could find somewhere that was actually open. By the time the fourth Tuktuk had pulled up, we realised that the man had most likely been lying to us… one of their favourite scams is to tell tourists that certain places are closed, but name drop other places right across town, before a whole bunch of tuktuks conveniently appear to offer lifts to said places! We weren’t fooled, and headed in the opposite direction to where our map said to go, to stumble upon a bustling food market and street full of open places. Having had a quick look around the market (mostly selling completely unidentifiable foodstuffs) we went and found somewhere to eat… a cheap and cheerful Chinese café. There were no free tables, but the staff asked a couple already seated if they’d mind us joining them. They turned out to be a much older couple (the guy was at least in his 50’s, although his wife was younger) from LA, who were extremely friendly, and good dinner conversation. They gave us lots of tips for Bangkok and traveling in general, which was cool. And we also found out that the woman was a teacher in the high school where Grease was filmed! How awesome is that? We had planned to go and look for a particular tourist market after dinner, but then the torrential rain started, so we eventually just found a Tuktuk and went back to the hotel.

Friday was our last full day and night in Bangkok, and I felt that we should make the most of it. Problem was, most of the main tourist sights in the city we’d already covered, except the ones that were harder to get to. In the morning we decided to go to the National Museum- the biggest museum in SE Asia and apparently very impressive. There was some interesting stuff in there, like a full history of Thailand (all of which I’ve forgotten) the royal funeral vehicles, and lots of examples of historical items and the like. However, neither of us were really in the mood, not helped by the fact that items were pretty badly lit and displayed, and there was a huge amount of information to digest, mostly written in pretty bad Engrish. We didn’t stay all the long, and went down to a nearby park (which was small but very pretty) where Lucy had a sleep and I watched a tree full of squirrels for about an hour! We eventually wandered back to our hotel, and that evening went back to Khao San road for a bit of last minute shopping, and some gorgeous falafel pitas! We later watched Trainspotting at a pub that was showing movies (can you believe I havn’t seen that film before?) before heading to bed.

Which brings us to our last day. We fly home at 11:10pm tonight, but have decided to just take it easy today. Much of the morning was just spent sorting things out (like, completely repacking our bags to make room for all the crap we’ve bought) and from early evening we’re going to be traveling to the airport (allowing plenty of time, having experience plenty of Bangkok rush hour traffic.) This afternoon we might go down to the local pool, or head back to one of the parks, depending on how we feel. This will be our last diary entry I guess! This trip has been absolutely amazing… definitely the best thing I’ve ever done. I think we’re both about ready to come home now though- it wouldn’t be long before I snap and thump a tuktuk driver for the constant hassle we get! And we wouldn’t want that. So, thank you all for your messages throughout the trip, they’ve been fantastic, and we’ve both really appreciated them. Look out for the next travel diary; I’ve caught the bug, and don’t think it’ll be long before I’m off again!

P.s. We’ve nearly had 2000 hits on our page… how crazy is that???