One day in Bangkok

Saturday in Bangkok, we wake up early so that we can get a full day touring and visiting the many Wats that are scattered throughout the city. We wander down from the hotel to the river and hop on their boat to take us up the river to some of the temples.

Looking across the river at Wat Arun

The first river boat drops us off just across from Wat Arun, and we then have to pay 3 baht each to get across the river, now that we know the proper conversion this is about 9 cents. From the distance Wat Arun looks like a big grey mass of concrete, when you get up close it is truly amazing in the amount of color and detail that it contains.

Closer view of the central praang

View of the Kinnari holding up the temple

Looking back across the river to the Grand Palace

Another view of Wat Arun

From there we take the boat back across the river so that we can tour the Grand Palace. When we walk up the palace appears to be closed. Huh. We presume that we walked up to the wrong entrance and proceed to walk around the outer wall taking time to look at some of the junk that the street vendors are selling. Junk being cassettes, members only jackets, Sony Walkman, and other items that I haven't seen since the 80's. It really didn't make any sense.

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While wandering a guy approaches us and explains that the patch embroidered into his shirt means that he's a government employee and only here to help tourists. "That's OK, we are fine, we know where we are going." That didn't work, as he just kept talking and telling us how lucky we were to be there today, as there is a Wat further north that's hardly ever open but it is today.

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"Palace closed now, closed until 2. Now you go to Wat Sam Phraya, is very lucky you are here today. Here, take this tuk tuk, I tell him where to go, he only charge you 20 baht. Don't pay him until he returns you here otherwise he will leave you. I only here to help, you no pay me."

Seriously it worked like that, he never shut up and just walked us over to a tuk tuk. We did listen to him though, and we didn't tip him anything.

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Why not we figured, we've got all day. We get dropped off at a little temple somewhere in some neighborhood, and the driver points us to the entrance and says "I wait here for you."

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Ok, another Wat, it's nice. Not decorated as extravagantly as some of the others we saw, but it's got a giant gold Buddha. When wandering around a man stops and starts talking to us, "You Buddhists? No? Then how you know about this place? You very lucky, should have come at 8 this morning when it was full, very special is this Buddha. I came with my new bride today from out of town, I came back now for more luck."

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Ah, we think, it's a perfect sunny day and apparently we are super lucky in the weekend we chose to come. We are feeling good about that.

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Our new friend then continues "Also you very lucky, this week only you can buy sapphires and all our gems without paying any tax. They will give you receipt of authenticity, very lucky They only sell like this one week a year to get people to come back to Thailand. I bought a big gem on my credit card and will sell it on my honeymoon in Australia. With sale my trip will be free and I can pay off my credit card, it is that good. You are very lucky to be here now, you can buy very big gems and make a lot of money."

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We still haven't figured this scam out. The tuk tuk does take you to a gem shop and a tailor before taking you back, but he also explains that he gets a gas rebate if we just look in. We talked him down to only pay him 10 baht, so basically we got an hour tour to the city streets for 30 cents. Maybe if we knew gems we could tell you if there were good deals or not, but we just had this feeling that everyone in the city conspires to try and get tourists to part with as much money as they can. The whole thing seems shady, but it doesn't add up. What does the man at the temple get out of it? He must know the guide and tuk tuk driver along with the tailors and gem dealers. We did try to look up the one Wat on the internet and see when it is open, but we couldn't find anything. That and the embroidered shirts? A lot of people have them and you can buy them in almost every corner store.

But if was a fun little tour and we didn't buy anything, we got dropped off right outside the main gate to the Grand Palace, where we had been walking to a little more than an hour before.

What? Tourists? Inside the Grand Palace

More of the Grand Palace

Bad photo, all I got was Tina's forehead

Yaksha, these are at most of the entrances

The grand palace is amazing, and just over the top in the amount of detail that is on every temple, statue, and gateway. It was full of people which was a bit of a bother, we really have been lucky in that we hardly ever have to deal with other tourists, but this was worth seeing even with the crowds.

From there we went back to the hotel and inquired about someplace that we could sit outside and watch the sunset. He picked a restaurant for us but told Tina that she needed to put heels on and told me that I couldn't bring my camera bag. Ok, Tina in heels, that'll happen. We just figured that we would walk over and see anyway.

The restaurant was on the 9th floor of the State Building, they did have signs downstairs stating "No backpacks, No T-Shirts,..." and the such, but we had no problems getting in. The views and the sunset were perfect.

The view when we first got upstairs

The view as the sun set

We were a bit shocked from the wine prices, which we were calculating at $120 for a bottle we usually buy for a little over $20 in Chicago. An Aussie group next to us told us never to drink wine, too expensive, and to stick with the mixed drinks. Better, a gin & tonic only really set us back $16. The wine was actually only $75, again my bad conversion skills, but still expensive.

After we enjoyed the sunset we wandered over to the Padpong area which was the story we gave you yesterday....