In general it was great and I'm very glad we went but I have to fully disclose that we did the full-on touristy trip - no braving Bangkok on our own for me! We hired a private tour guide company and were escorted around all 3 days. We saw a ton of things, and learned a lot about Thailand, or at least the tour guide version of Thailand.
Day 1 - Royal Grand Palace, Canal Tour and Flower Market
This was a lovely day spent in Bangkok and guided by the charming Em. Being with a guide was wonderful for all sorts of reasons -- they negotiate taxi fares (or make sure that the driver is using the meter), stand in line for tickets and pay the entrance fees, fend off the people trying to sell us things, provide advice on what to buy in the markets, translate the various customs of which there are many (remove your shoes to show respect, don't smell the roses that are to be given to Buddha; Buddha gets to smell them first, cover your legs and shoulders in a temple, etc. etc.), provide all sorts of information about the country and its history, and generally makes sure that we enjoyed the time we had in Thailand without worrying. I highly recommend it for wusses like me when visiting a foreign city for the first time.
We went to the Royal Grand Palace and Royal Temple first, in Bangkok. It was amazing! There's really no way that these pictures can do it justice but here are few to give you an idea (and to prove that we were there).
There are recurring themes of buddhas, monkeys and demons everywhere and I'm inspired to read a lot more about Buddhism and the stories that are depicted. Here are monkey guards.
And monkeys and demons -- the demons are wearing shoes, the monkeys are barefoot (and are the good guys, I think - I really need to learn more about this).
We then went to the temple where the reclining Buddha is. He's huge! This picture just gives you a sense of how big the image is - you can't get far enough away to get all of him in one shot.
I had to put coins in 108 brass bowls - not sure why, other than for luck.
I found the various faces of Buddha quite fascinating. This hall had dozens of Buddha images in it and each was slightly different than the others, but none of them were fat like the Chinese Buddha.
After lunch we went on a boat ride through the canals of Bangkok. At one time they were used as a transportation highway but now they are for the tourists and some pretty huge barges. There's no fishing allowed near the temples but you can buy bread to chuck at these huge carp that fight over each chunk.
From there we took a Tuk Tuk to the flower market, which was great. No pictures but you could buy a bunch of lovely roses for about $1. It's amazing what can be grown in a tropical climate like Thailand has. If I lived there, I'd have fresh roses in my home all the time.
Day 2 - Summer Palace and Ayutthaya (the second capital of Thailand).
On this day and the next we were guided by TJ, who was a font of historical knowledge about Thailand.
We first went to the Bang Pan-In Summer Palace, built by one of the early kings of the Chakri Dynasty (of which the current king is the 9th and the king depicted in The King and I movie was the 4th). Although the movie is banned in Thailand we found that both of our guides found it an easy reference when describing which king did what. The 5th king, for example, was educated at Oxford in the UK and was responsible for much of the modernizing in Thailand.
This tower was originally used for spotting wild elephant herds.
But the only elephants there now are these topiary ones.
It was a lovely spot, with a mixture of Thai and European architecture.
At one point, I had to put on a sarong to cover my pants. Not sure why, other than to show respect....
Next we went to Ayutthaya historical park, where we saw lots of ruins and Stupas (the Thai equivalent of the pyramids).
Here's us in front of the Buddha head that magically appeared in the tree. We're sitting down low so that we aren't disrespecting Buddha by being much higher than him (or at least that's what I think the guide told us).
We had another boat ride, this time in the country and then went back to Bangkok.
Day 3 --
This day was rather ad-hoc as we changed our mind and didn't take our original tour as booked.
Our first stop was at an old Thai house that the owners opened up for tourists to see (and wear silly hats so that they can have our picture taken).
They also made coconut sugar there, and I was particularly interested in seeing that. TJ is holding a coconut flower bud, which is what the sugar is made from.
The sap from the flower bud is collected and boiled down to make sugar syrup (the vat closest to us is almost finished; the other two are in varying stages of production).
Later that morning, we went to a floating market in a town outside of Bangkok and had another boat trip around the canals.
On the way back to Bangkok we stopped at one of the many Elephant Camps and watched a very hungry momma elephant devour banana after banana while her baby switched between snacking on bananas and snacking on Mom. There were elephants available to ride but we decided to save that experience for another time.
Back to Bangkok and then to two museum houses - the Jim Thompson House and one whose name translates to the Cabbage Patch museum (because the land was a cabbage patch at one time). It's a very inelegant name for a lovely museum house with a wonderfully animated curator who gave us a great tour.
Most of the places that we visited allowed picture-taking only outdoors so we were not able to capture the insides but they were charming. One thing I particularly liked was that the entry to each room required stepping over either a short or tall threshold. The shorter threshold is to prevent bad spirits from entering the room; the taller threshold is to keep the babies either in or out.
Summary of the trip --
- Thai people are lovely and I intend to go back (but probably not during the rainy season)
- I appreciated their strong devotion to Buddha, their King and Queen, and the way they value their history
- I have put Buddhism and Thai history on my list of books to read (and want to watch The King and I again)
- The food was great and not expensive, outside of Bangkok
- There are things to watch out for - leaving for the airport, we neglected to negotiate the taxi fare or use of the meter (so the trip cost us a bit more than we expected) but the taxi was clean, the driver was polite and we got to the airport in time for our flight so all good.
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