Autumn tells me that the title is called Click-bait. Call me a social media neophyte, but I didn't know it had a name. Funny thing, I fall pray to it more than I'd like to say.
Four nights in Bangkok and the world's our oyster!** Well we did it folks. Like the New York of the Orient, this town is raw, energetic, paradise for some, and torture for others. For us, it was a fun place to visit, but no place for us to settle.
Like most of the blogs say, Bangkok is a punch to the gut the first couple days before you start to understand the appeal. Within a day, Nicole and I figured out that this is not a town that caters to children, and we adjusted our daily routine to do some morning stuff with the boys, then ditched them (in a perfectly secure apartment with all the entertainment they could ever want) for the afternoon and evening (Autumn had the stamina to join). There's a reason you don't see too many tourist families wandering around this town.
Between the heat, the humidity, the smells, the ear splitting noise, the unpolished sights, the shoulder to shoulder crowds, and the painfully slow ability to get anywhere, Bangkok is a finely tuned headache inducing machine. Come 2pm, all we wanted to do was eat and find solace in our air conditioned apartment. We were country mice being ridiculed by big city rats (of which there were plenty).
But if there was one thing in particular that would keep us at bay, it's the smells. As Autumn put it, everywhere you go, it is a blend of durian***, sweat, and sewer. Regrettably, the off putting odors has now tainted the wonderful smell of Thai food, which now reminds me of cat food. Blurg.
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| I wouldn't normally post a picture of an airport, but the Don Mueang was striking to me. Felt like entering The Matrix. Large expanses of stark white rooms with harsh lines forever. |
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| Our Airbnb was a very comfortable and modern three bedroom apartment in the Silom district. Very nice accommodations for very nice price. |
Jan 27 - The Three key Wats
Today we ventured in to the old part of town to visit the three main Wats in Bangkok: The Grand Palace, Wat Arun, and Wat Pho.
The Grand Palace
- The mosaic tile work is so incredibly intricate and beautiful. It's hard to fathom how long it must have taken to set every piece by hand. Not a surface was left uncovered.
- The mural painting that surrounds the complex is so finely detailed. You can stand back to get the overall story, then get closer and closer, and closer still to see another level of intricacy. Again, the effort must have been monumental.
- When they say you can't have your knees showing, they mean it. I have a new pair of pants to show for it. [post script...oddly enough, the place that we heard was strict about pants was Angkor, which has turned out otherwise. Shorts are fine at Angkor]
- This is where we learned that Bryce is more interesting to Asian tourists than Buddha. Everywhere we went, Asian tourists couldn't keep their hands off of him.
- Good golly this place gets crowded. Forget about taking that perfect shot, or a family selfie without a handful of photo bombers.
- Worth a visit, but once is enough
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| It's a busy place |
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| The variety in buildings at the Grand Palace is striking. It was like a Temple version of keeping up with the Jones. The next temple needed to be blinged out just a little more than before. |
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| This mural runs the entire perimeter of the main square and it's impressive. We spent more time focusing on this mural than the temples themselves. |
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| Autumn always finds the natural beauty of a place. (Was pretty hard to find in this place) |
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| They have a full scale model of Angkor Wat. [Spoiler Alert...Now that we have been to the real Angkor Wat, I would have spent more time looking at this] |
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| From a distance, the temples look beautiful and sparkle in the sunshine (when the haze clears). From up close you begin to understand the magnitude of how difficult it must have been to clad these structures. Every mosaic was set by hand, and I wouldn't be surprised if there is a stone for every star in the sky. |
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| This is the Grand Palace itself. Once the residence of the Royal family. It's sort of a bipolar thing, with Temple hats sitting on Romanesque buildings. The bottom left pic shows just how difficult it can be to get a clear shot. At one point, someone actually squeezed in between the camera and the family (the ultimate photo bomb) |
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| We all sort of felt like this weary gentleman. Serenity now. |
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| I really like this pic. There are a handful of all white turrets that create a sort of ghostly backdrop for the other ornate temples. |
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| The Asian tourists absolutely loved Bryce. I mean, what's not to love? It was endearing at first, then annoying. |
Wat Arun
- Stopped for a quick bite on the river. Thought we found a cool spot under a fan with a breeze off the river. Nope. Hot and Sticky. Hot and Sticky.
- A short river taxi (a hefty 10 cent ride) across the Chao Praya River
- An iconic temple clad in broken Chinese porcelain (once used as ballast in their sailing vessels and dumped in Bangkok. The Monks scooped it up to make their temple look awesome)
- Steep steps up to first level for a walk around the zig zaggy pathway.
- Worth a visit, and fun to hone in on the details.
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| Restaurant on the water |
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| Autumn likes taking glamour shots of Zane. You can see the hot glistening off his face. |
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| It's not a particularly clean river front. Again, it saddens us how dirty and wasteful Thailand has been. |
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| Looking across the river to Wat Arun from our lunch spot. It's a super busy river with boats wizzing this way and that creating a frothy stew of choppy water. Occasionally massive barges would float by forcing the ferries and long boats to give way. |
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| Again, from a distance, the temple has a pleasing texture and muted color tones. When viewed from six inches, the porcelain bits becomes apparent. |
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| This is a portrait of the current King of Thailand. The previous revered king of four decades passed away two years ago. The new King is controversial given his current residence in Germany. |
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| This is about when the heat became a thing. Check out those cool new light blue pants. They're actually quite nice. |
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| Me and the Monk keeping the pole from falling over. |
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| Our Thai Iced Coffees were put to use in other ways. |
Wat Pho
- Behind the Grand Palace, and amazingly not as crowded as the Grand Palace.
- Home of the famous reclining Buddha. It's impressive for sure.
- The sparse crowds made this a really pleasant place to explore.
- The tri-colored roofs were striking and came together at all angles.
- Buddha, Buddha, Buddha. There is no lack of Buddha images and statues at Wat Pho.
- Definitely worth a visit, and to come back and find a quiet little spot to take it all in.
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| Nicole particularly liked the Reclining Buddha's feet... complete with toe-prints. |
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| Right in front of the Buddha is a case with some gifts from Barack Obama. He is quite the revered statesman around the world. |
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| As we walked the front face of the Reclining Buddha, there was a constant tinkling sound. Turns out the behind the Buddha is a long procession of metal buckets for dropping coins. |
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| Must be like painting the Golden Gate Bridge.... A constant process starting from one end, then starting over again when it gets to the end. |
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| I just loved these tile roofs |
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| Given the less crowded environment, Wat Pho was home to people in deep meditation. |
Day Two: Khao San...Not
Our goal for day two was to visit the infamous Khao San Rd, the epicenter of the backpacker universe. We needed to see it first hand.
We opted for a more circuitous route: BTS Skytrain, Tourist Boat along Chao Praya, Walk to Khao San. The tour boat gave us the ability to see Bangkok from it's main artery, and the ability hop on and hop off as we pleased. On the way to Khao San, we hopped off at the Chinatown stop. Our goal was to find a replacement luggage tag for Autumn (lost in transit a month ago).
One of the great things about exploring a new place is to simply wander down streets that look interesting and see where it takes you. On our way to Chinatown, we turned down an alley with some trinket stands on either side. Little did we know we entered a labyrinth of covered back alleys with vendors packed in for several blocks. It was as though all the shops spilled in to the narrow streets and their awnings began to converge together in to a continuous roof structure. The roads are now just the aisles between the shops. We never did find a luggage tag, nor did we make it to Chinatown.
We hopped back on the tourist boat to continue our journey to Khao San. We could sense the will to live was draining from Zane and by the time we made it to the end of the river, a migraine headache had set in and we needed to turn tail and run. By the time we made it back home, Zane was a complete mess. Poor kid. This was the moment we realized that Bangkok is best to be taken in small doses, especially for kids.
Determined to take in as much as we could, we left Zane and Bryce in the security of the apartment and headed back out to the Jim Thompson house, and I joined another Airbnb Experience - A sketching class.
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| The BTS Skytrain has a brilliantly simple system of getting one way tickets using a coin machine. Just push the value you need, insert coins only, and presto ticket is issued. The ferry boats are a loud and intense way of cruising the river. |
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| Once open city streets, now consumed by merchandise. |
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| This is what a Migraine Headache looks like. |
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| Jim Thompson House. He was an american that settled in Bangkok after WWII to start his Thai Silk business. |
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| This was a really great experience to see Bangkok in a more peaceful way. It was this night with a local (Cherry was her name), and another visitor (his name was Stephan), that I began to appreciate why some people are so drawn to this town. Again, I don't think it's any place we could settle, but the place has a personality all to it's own. |
Last day
We were fortunate to have our last day in Bangkok land on a Saturday. This gave us the opportunity to visit the largest market in Southeast Asia, the Chatuchak Market. Imagine if a standard mall with anything you could want had all of the air space magically removed. The merchandise to area density is off the charts. Moving through this market is like swimming through an ocean of t-shirts, backpacks, phone cases, fruit, incense, raccoons, popsicles, artwork, furniture, and fish. Did you catch the raccoons in there? Yep, if you wanted to buy a raccoon, this is where you go. Oh, and you can buy a hedgehog too... which pleased Bryce to no end.
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| We obviously love the upper left hand pic. |
https://youtu.be/ZX0TBbBquFQ
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| If there is one thing about Southeast Asia that we all loved... The smoothie stands at every corner. Cheap and delicious with healthy portions of sweetened condensed milk. |
We ditched the boys again that afternoon to complete our mission from yesterday.... visit Khao San Rd.
You know a place has heinous traffic when the quickest option to go 5 miles is to walk to the subway, ride it to the river, hop on a 35min ferry boat that stops 12 times, and then walk another 10 mins. That is how we went to Khao San Rd on Saturday night.
The weather was most agreeable and made for a wonderful night out. We got to Khao San with the sun still up, so I suspect we experienced the road while it was still sleeping. It was decidedly mellow but still made for some good people watching.
Now for the hook... Autumn got a tattoo! A henna tattoo that is. Sorry, nothing permanent.
Autumn, Nicole, and I had a wonderful time and settled down for a delicious plate of Pad Thai right there on the street. As we savored every bit of our yummy dinner, we pondered how wonderful it would be to kidnap the street chef and open up the best Pad Thai restaurant in Lafayette.
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| Turns out, the best food of our Thailand adventure (according to the boys), was the $1 bowls of frozen dumplings from the 7-11. |
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| The non-tourist river boats are all business. They move in and out of the docks like a nascar driver through a pit stop. If you're not queued in back to get off within the allotted 30 seconds, you'd be on the boat all day long. |
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| One of the many long tailed boats that zip up and down the river |
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| One of the many passengers on these boats. |
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| Welcome to Khao San Rd. |
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| Tuk Tuks everywhere. |
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| Best Pomegranate juice on the planet. |
Other general comments
- In a largely cash based society, there were ATMs everywhere. I mean everywhere. You couldn't walk half a block without finding two or three tucked between stalls and vendors.
- Throughout all of the many markets, one of the most predominant items for sale are iPhone cell phone covers. I have never seen anyone buy one, and I would venture a guess that the tourists that can afford to travel from far and wide, have already outfitted themselves with the cover of their choice. Frankly, this could also apply to the countless stores selling knockoff luggage, and headphones. There is such a stunning lack of creativity in what is for sale, and I don't really understand the economic realities of being a proprietor of these shops.
Post script... As I assembled this post, I was actually struck by how colorful Bangkok really is.
All for now. Next Stop... Angkor Wat!
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*** Durian is a local fruit that is so potent, there are signs that ban it from being on the subway system.