Bangkok, Thailand, Asia

Lynne and I got up at about 10am and grabbed breakfast at the hostel. We caught the BTS over to Central Pier, and from there got a water taxi upriver to Tha Tien. This is where we thought we could see the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, but we saw a sign that said Wat Pho was closer. We weren’t sure what that was, but I had heard the name before, so we decided to take a look. We paid our 50 baht ($1.50) to get in and we were very impressed!

It turns out that Wat Pho is where the Reclining Buddha is housed. It is the largest reclining Buddha in Thailand, and it really is incredible how big this thing is. It must be about 100ft long, and is covered in gold. The bottom of its feet are inlaid with opal designs. It was amazing! We spent a bit of time in the temple and walking around the grounds, checking out just how ornate some of decorations are.

We headed over to the Grand Palace, where the Temple of the Emerald Buddha is kept. The Palace is surrounded by a 15ft wall, so we were walking the perimeter to try and find the entrance. We saw a guard outside of one of the entrances, so we asked where we could go in. It was about 1:30pm at this point and he told us that it was closed until 3pm for prayer, so he said we should go up to a couple other temples and then come back. He scribbled all over my map and said a tuk-tuk would only cost 40 baht ($1.30).

We got pushed into an old man’s tuk-tuk and before we realized what happened, we were driving down the busy roads of Bangkok at 50mph by a mad man! We weren’t really sure where we were going, the only thing we knew was that it was going to cost 40 baht. The old man was unbelievably happy, and had this massive smile on his face the whole time that showed off his one and only tooth. He first brought us to a standing Buddha, and it was huge! It must have been about 60ft tall, and completely covered in gold. It was in a little temple courtyard that was decorated with Chinese lanterns.

We got back into the tuk-tuk and our driver disappeared to the toilet for about five minutes. There was a guy sitting behind us that started talking to us and told us the best place to go get information about the islands was this office in a market. We didn’t really want to go there, we had plenty of information, but the old man must have been working with him. When the driver got back, he told us we were going to go to the market, before going to the next temple. We said no, we didn’t want to go there. He kept looking back at the man on the street and saying we had to go to the market. We kept saying no. He started driving and stopped around the corner and kept pointing to the market on the map. We kept saying no. Then he pulled out a little paper that said “Free gasoline – Esso” and told us that he had to go to the market to get gasoline, no longer than five minutes.

He brought us to a tailor’s shop and pushed us in and said “just look, no buy.” I’m assuming he would get a commission if we bought anything, but the guy in the shop saw straight away that we weren’t interested and we walked outside after about one minute. The driver didn’t look happy. We got back in the tuk-tuk and he started pointing to another market and said “just two minutes”. This time I stood firm and said no, and demanded we were brought back to where we started. He was definitely not happy about this, and tried for about five minutes to get us to go to the market. He finally realized that he wasn’t going to get us to go, and he drove us back to the Grand Palace without smiling again. We paid him the 40 baht, and he drove off very upset. We’re guessing that the security guard that pushed us into his tuk-tuk to start with probably wasn’t a guard at all, and was just trying to get people to go to the shops and markets. Annoying.

We got to the Grand Palace at about 3pm and saw that they are only open until 3:30pm. So now that we’d wasted all that time, it didn’t make sense to go in and rush around, so we grabbed some lunch at the pier and decided to go another day. We went back to the hostel and relaxed in the lobby with a freshly made fruit smoothy and watched the monsoon-like storms outside. Lynne was well up for keeping my Hard Rock tradition going, so we headed out to Siam Square for dinner.

We found the Hard Rock Cafe and got seated upstairs with a view of the stage where a concert would be starting at 9pm. We finished our awesome meals just in time for the concert to kick off so we got another pitcher of Chang beer to have while we watched. We were in for a real treat, it was an Elvis impersonator contest tonight. And they were all bad. We saw three impersonators sing a bunch of songs that we had never even heard of, and none of them were any good. We had a good time laughing at them, but it was a very strange night for the HRC. We finished our beers and headed back to the hostel. We’re not sure what tomorrow holds for us, but I’m sure we’ll figure something out.