It's an Exciting World

We went to a really nice restaurant near where the massage palace is and it was incredibly tasty fusion food. I got the tom yum pizza which had all the tasty cheese and crust of pizza with all the spice and seafood of tom yum. We got dessert which was tasty and then Steph went to the massage palace but they were fully booked for the rest of the evening. We walked through soi cowboy a few times since we were near there and then took the train back to Nana station. Nick Steph and I were the only ones still out so we decided to randomly wander for a bit. We went north into the Arab district and saw more of the same market stalls. Steph and I then headed back to the hotel for a reasonable nights sleep. Nick went out wandering and I am hoping to hear a good story tomorrow morning.

The second part of the tour was very enjoyable. We took a ferry across the river to the temple of the dawn. It was a really amazing older structure. The temple was also something one can climb. We went past the lower level of hell, up to the middle level of earth, and made it all the way to the upper level of heaven. I suppose one could consider Tue very top of the temple to represent nirvana. The stairs got steeper as the steps got higher so that at the top of the temple I was having trouble lifting my foot to the next step. It was a glorious view of the city and the river from atop the temple. After the dizzying descent from the temple we went to the canals. I really enjoyed seeing all the houses along the canals and was intrigued at how mixed the level of house was. There were mansions and shacks very close to each other. There were also decently large sections that had been destroyed in flood and never rebuilt. There were many temples along the canals and we stopped at one to feed the fish. They were of the giant catfish variety but the largest if the group were only two feet long or so. Jeremy got a beer from one of the random shop boats that was in the busier areas of the canals. Since we were going to be staying at Khoisan road on the way back through Bangkok we decided to just head back to the hotel.

We stopped for lunch and got some really tasty food and drinks. A large contingent got more of the Thai ice tea and I had the problem of not knowing what my food is supposed to be again. I might want to start knowing and remembering what I order but where is the fun in that.

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.