It's an Exciting World

The tour started out by taking us to the temple of the golden Buddha. It was very pretty and amazing that so much gold was in a single statue. The statue had been hidden from pillagers by a layer of plaster like the emerald Buddha and many others. While the practice of hiding the expensive Buddhas has kept some of the great ones around it also led to the practice of chopping of Buddha heads to see what they are made of.
We saw how the wallpaper is actually a lot of intricate hand paintings and all the different types of offerings.
We then went to the center of the city to see the city monument that is supposed to house the guardian spirit of the city. Bangkok is odd in that it has two, since they made a new one but didn’t have a place to put the old one.
The temple of the emerald Buddha and the royal grounds were next and all of it was very pretty. We were shown how some of the monks were allowed to have fun with the religious paintings. It was also interesting how the religions fused together with it being mostly Buddhist with a lot of Hinduism and a splash of local spiritualism.
The thrones and royal items were neat to see and the elephant parking was also neat.
The next stop was the temple of the reclining Buddha and the main Buddha statue there was massive. It was interesting also that the bottom of the feet were a mural.
There were lots of other smaller things at that temple since it was meant to be a teaching temple for Thai massage and later yoga.

The tour with tong group was picking us up at the hotel at 8am so we all came down around 7:30 to grab breakfast. The hotel breakfast was really good albeit pricy compared to the alternatives. Once everyone was ready we met the guide Jing and the driver Jom.  We left for the old city to start the tour and she gave us lits of good info along the way.

We got dinner at a restaurant right next to the hotel and it was very tasty. The place was a little fancier than most of the other places we went. There was a little bit of Thai taste to everything, but it was actually quite nice.  After dinner everyone was dead tired so we went back to the hotel and crashed.

We went to a massage palace that Steph looked up. I say palace because it looked like a palace and felt like one while you were there. Adam and I elected for the 1 hour food massage while the others got 2 hour full body massages. The massage felt absolutely amazing and the only one iffy on going back for more was Amit who said that it just wasn’t for him.
In the down time Adam and I walked through the close by red light district Soi Cowboy. This lived up to its reputation of being showy and not terribly seedy. I would be willing to go to a show there for the experience of it. Close to our hotel is the really seedy area Nana Plaza which I would be hesitant to walk through let alone go into a place there.
We grabbed drinks nearby Soi Cowboy at The Queen Victoria. It was like being in England. We chatted about fantasy novels and then went back to meet up with the others.

The Thai mall is different than the american mall in a few crucial ways. There are a lot more service based places like beauty salons, massage parlors, and printing booths. The second big difference is that it is about 50% stands 30% food and 20% stores. The number of stands make it seem more like the night market than what I would think of as a mall. The stands had much the same stuff that the stores did and they were all pretty much the same as each other. Steph and I had our phones die while at the mall so we didn’t get any more pictures for the day.

We went to one of the major tourist stops in Bangkok, the Jim Thompson House. It was built by a British architect who started the large scale trade in Thai silk. The house and gardens were absolutely gorgeous and the stories about the man and the company were interesting. It was well worth the stop. There were no pictures allowed inside so there aren’t many pictures I got of the house. There was also an exhibit with a Greek bane curated by a Japanese man on the nature of the fabric industry displayed in the form of interpretive fabric art. That part wasn’t nearly as interesting.

We took the train to the national stadium stop to see the Jim Thompson House. Before stopping there we walked by the place and then took a detour along the canal. We ended up back next to the station at a really authentic looking place. We noticed that it was full of foreigners but it seemed like a local food spot. The food took a bit to come out but when it did it was really amazing. Especially the dish I got, the tom yum soup.

We stopped by a very British pub for drinks that was in the sane mall as the tailor. Adam came to meet us and we had a few drinks. They were larger than expected and really large compared to everything else we have been served thus far.  The name of the bar was The Huntsman.

After breakfast everyone but Adam headed down to the tailors to pick up sine well priced clothes. The cost came to $40-$50 per shirt but that is really good considering similar quality in the states would be $150 each. I ended up getting 3 black dress shirts to replace the China trip ones that have worn out. Steph and Jeremy got some clothes but I’m not sure about the others. I think Amit and Tina also got some but nick certainly didn’t.