Jan. 14-17, 2013 - Bangkok, Thailand

Jan. 14-17, 2013 - Bangkok, Thailand

We walked to the dock and took the river taxi for 15Baht to the center of town.




We stopped first at Wat Pho, home of the reclining Buddha.  Its a massive, I mean, HUGE golden Buddha reclining on his side.  His feet were covered with mother of pearl art.  The rest of the complex had beautiful temples covered in tiny tile mosaics from top to bottom.

Next was the Grand Palace.  This is a HUGE complex of religious and political buildings used for various things.  It also houses a couple of museums for the monarchs jewelry and clothing as well as a weapons museum.  We spent most of the day in here.  Both men and women have to be covered from the knees to the elbows.  This is true for all the temples.  So I am wearing a funny outfit in all of the pics (my dress with long sleeve safari shirt over it and my sarong as a longer skirt [apparently tights dont count as pants, oops]).

We also saw the emerald Buddha (actually Jade) and Wat Arun that day too.

The next day we took our time getting ready and lounged around the hostel.  Once we got out, around 1:30, we went city exploring again.  We saw the worlds largest solid gold Buddha.  Huge! And expensive.  We also went to the golden mountain.  We had the Tuk-tuk driver drop us off in China Town.  We wander through the tiny stalls and bought things we didnt need and had fresh pomegranates juice! Then we walked on home.  That night we caught the free boat taxi to the fancy night market for dinner.

The 16th was also a lazy day and we just did a little bit of wandering around town.  Though that night we headed over to Khaosan Rd.  This is the crazy backpackers area of town.  And crazy it was.  They were selling an assortment of fried bugs and scorpions on a stick to eat.  When we return we will be trying some of this crazy food.  We didnt take our cameras that night and we definitely have to have photo evidence.   The place was hopping with travellers and food stalls and restaurants and bars and cute clothing stands etc.  We have decided we need to stay there on our return trip through Bangkok.

The 17th was proclaimed American day by Alene and I.  We had to check out of the hostel this day so lounged until noon, check out time.  We then proceeded to eat McDonalds for lunch, KFC for dinner and bought Dunkin Donuts for our over night train ride that night.

Funny story, as soon as I got up to order, Kentucky Fried CHICKEN ran out of CHICKEN!  Luckily, Alene was just ahead of me and we got to split her piece of chicken.   I just order the large tub of mashed potatoes.  It was heaven!  Oh, and the McDonalds here in Thailand offers fried chicken combos.  We killed some time at the hostel.  Booked our flights from Phuket to Singapore and then on to The Philippines.  And then caught our 10pm train to Chiang Mai.  This was supposed to be a 15 hour ride.  Not too bad considering we got 2nd class which includes a bed.  And these beds were MUCH better than the sleeper buses in Vietnam.  I actually got to sleep.  And we were able to have breakfast along with our donuts that we bought.  But then the train ride just kept going and going.  It ended up a 17 hour ride.  How is a train late?  Anyways, we finally arrived and took a cab to our hostel, ThailandWOW!  haha. We didnt do much, just walked to a local market for dinner and saw a little bit of town.