Part of the charm and sometimes frustration of the trip was our short stints in certain cities. Bangkok was one of these cities. It became a stopover city for us on the front and back end of our trip. I wish we would have had more time to explore this city. Despite many people's negative opinions of this "dirty city" littered with sex, I found it be a vibrant place, full of energy and life. (No, I did not see a ping pong show. But I saw my fair share of the places where they were taking place. But that comes later.)
December 16 found us rising early, with the goal to cram the Grand Palace, Wat Arun (Temple of the Dawn) and the Reclining Buddha in before we taxied to Surithana Airport to board a flight to Ko Samui. Luggage packed and left with the bellhop for our 1 p.m. return and Starbucks in hand, we got busy. First stop, Grand Palace: a complex of buildings where the Kings of Siam resided. The king lived here until 1925 and now the palace is used for official events in addition to being a huge tourist draw. The crowds were a little unreal. And it was hot. And we had to be covered wrist to ankle out of respect (am I in the UAE?). Haneefa made me double over in laughter when she got tangled up in a Chinese tourist group's life-size banner (why are we bringing banners?) they were holding up for group photo. Smile! The palace was really beautiful. Everything was brightly coloured and glittery. Temples and statues and shrines galore.
We took a tuk tuk (little motorized golf carts that are all over Asia) to the east bank of the Chao Phraya River and a short ferry ride across to Wat Arun (Temple of the Dawn), a seventeenth-century Buddhist temple (wat) in Bangkok Yai. The temple is named after a Hindu god, meaning radiations of the rising sun. The gardens surrounding the temple were so green and filled with Buddha statues (I was warned before I left that by the time I got home, I would never want to see another Buddha statue in my life. There were quite a lot, but I liked them. Thinking of ordering one for my balcony ;)).
Haneefa and I wound our way to the bottom of the temple and looked up. The steps were incredibly steep and I started laughing and pushed Haneefa in front of me. She will say that she was annoyed at me laughing at her attempts to navigate these skinny, steep steps, saying, "You have to come next, Kaitlin," and giving me a dirty look. I couldn't help but laugh anyway because I knew she was right.
When we finished and crossed back over to the east bank, we had a lunch of mango sticky rice and shrimp pad thai under emerald umbrellas.
Our final stop was across the street. Wat Pho is the largest and the oldest Wat in Bangkok, known for having the most Buddha images and the 46 meter tall and 15 meter high gold plated reclining Buddha, designed to show the passing of Buddha into nirvana. The feet and eyes are made of mother-of-pearls and the feet show the 108 characteristics of the Buddha.
Impressively, we finished on time, and headed back to Amari to leave Bangkok. From Surithana Airport, we boarded a bus that took us to Surat Thani (where we met a friend from New York who would join us at the Full Moon party and later meet up with us in Cambodia) and then a long, hot and dirty ferry to the shore of Ko Samui where it was now the middle of the night. A van hurdled us to our second hotel, The Buddy Oriental, and after grabbing some food in an Irish pub (go figure?), we passed out.
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