We had a fairly relaxed start to the day. Priscilla and Steph sorted laundry while I read my book. We then had breakfast at our hotel before heading out for a day touring Bangkoks temples.
Our hotel is right by the river so we decided to take the riverboat to our first stop - the grand palace. On the way Priscilla and Steph picked up sim cards at the 7-eleven store. These have been a pretty good deal so far on the trip - normally they cost less than $5 and mean you can make cheap local calls and also calls home.
The river boat journey was pretty cool. The river boats are like buses here. As the traffic can be pretty bad it is probably a quicker way to get places. I was navigating and didn't do a great job of it as we nearly missed our stop.
On our way to the palace we were stopped by an official looking guy with a sign indicating the dress code. Girls should cover there shoulders and have skirts below the knee while men are not supposed to wear shorts. None of us were dressed properly, but fortunately you can borrow clothes at the palace. The guy also told us that the palace was closed until 1:30pm and therefore we should tour some other sights in the meantime. He suggested a few places to go and how much it would cost in a tuk tuk. Rather conveniently a tuk tuk pulled up just then and we were able to agree on a bargain price of 35 baht (~$1) for the tour.
First stop on the tour was another temple with a huge buddha. In the temple Priscilla and Steph got talking to a local chinese guy who was able to provide some tips for chiang mai which is their next stop. His family has a restaurant there so I think they will try it when they are there.
Next stop was supposed to be the tourist office so the girls could get info on tours etc. I was starting to get sketched out about the "tour" by this stage. The guidebook has warnings about scams and we also heard from Alistair (who we met in Hong Kong) that people tried to scam you outside the temples saying they are closed. One of the main scams I read about in the guidebook was bearing an uncanny resemblance to our cheapo tour. This scam centers around selling gems which are actually just glass.
While we didn't go to any gem shops, the tourist info was actually just a travel agent. Maybe the tuk tuk driver expected to get kickbacks for taking us there. In any case we didn't buy anything there - the lady we spoke to didn't even seem that interested in selling us stuff. She was pretty rude to me - I think probably she realized I knew about the scam.
Our tour continued visiting one more temple where the chinese guy had told the girls they had international monks who could teach you about buddhism in english. I think the girls are going all new age, they will be running off to join the hare krishnas in no time!
Anyway unfortunately we discovered they no longer had these lessons at that temple so we just had a quick look around before heading back to the grand palace. There our suspicions about the tour were confirmed. Firstly the tuk tuk driver only took 20 baht when we handed him 40, secondly we found out that there was no lunch break at the palace. This was all a bit bewildering to us as we hadn't been scammed at all and basically got a free tour. I think this is because the driver realized I had figured out that it was a scam. Priscilla doesn't agree with this, but whatever the reason it was all a bit weird.
After getting kitted out in some very unfashionable extra clothes to protect our modesty in the temples we went to tour the temple and grand palace. It was all very impressive. I had been there when I was younger but could hardly remember much. The main sight is a temple housing an emerald buddha. As is pretty usual Priscilla took photos of me mimicking some of the buddha poses and as usual I was pretty useless at the mimicking.
While we were touring, steph and priscilla got really hot. These two girls don't take heat that well. Priscilla was especially uncomfortable because she had a thick long wrap skirt on top of her shorts, and a button down shirt on top of her tanktop. Sweating like crazy, started to feel sick from the heat and low sugar level. So, I went to her rescue and walked with her out of the temple for some water and cookies to recover. Steph stayed behind finishing up the temples so she can sit in the ac room afterwards.
After the quick recharge, priscilla and I braved the temples again. We both took many photos. But midway priscilla realized she was shooting in a wrong iso, so we had to retrace the steps to retake the photos. In the temples we saw a model of angkor wat. Somehow thai claims pride in it, but from our understanding it belongs to cambodia, hence the cultural disagreements. We also quickly toured the royal palace, where we eavesdropped and learned king's umbrellas have 9 layers, prince's 7 layers and princess' 5 layers.
Afterwards we stopped briefly at a street market for some food, fried rice and noodles. I am pleased to report that my digestive system is showing no ill effects from this! We also tried some freshly sliced guava which was delicious - I believe Priscilla thought it was yummy in the tummy.
Next stop was Wat Po, the temple of the reclining Buddha. The buddha is 46m long and 15m high and another very impressive sight. We also toured around the surrounding temples including one where there were many monks praying and chanting. Monks seem to be everywhere in Bangkok, they even have special sections for them on the riverboats.
We headed back to the hotel and priscilla and I decided to have a quick dip in the pool before heading out. This was very refreshing after our long day of temple gazing. Priscilla asked me to teach her swimming but in truth she is pretty good already.
For dinner we headed out to Khao San road. This is the main backpacker street in Bangkok and is full of bars and street vendors. It is pretty loud so we are glad we are staying a few streets away. We had a pretty good dinner, although some of the dishes seemed more chinese than thai.
After dinner we headed to another bar where they had live music. There was a solo singer who was pretty good singing Oasis, Jack Johnson etc. We stayed there for a few drinks and quickly realized that while he was good he had a very limited repertoire of songs. After listening to Wonderwall for the third time we decided it was time to head elsewhere.
The bars around Khao San are supposed to close at 2am, so there were loads of tuk tuk drivers trying to convince us to go elsewhere to a club or a ping pong show but we decided to give those a miss. Steph was pretty funny as she kept on demanding to be taken somewhere she could see ladyboys. In the end we headed in to one loud bar for a last drink before closing time. Here we got to see a bit of the seedy side of Bangkok, there were loads of Thai girls there dancing with tourists. Clearly it was a bit of a pickup joint. Priscilla and Steph tried to convince me to practice my pick up skills but I decided that it probably wasn't going to be very helpful.
As expected the bar closed down at 2am. We decided to head home but we were feeling a bit peckish and stopped off at a place that was still open. We were surprised to hear we could still order beer as long as we didn't show the bottles - seems like the 2am curfew is easy enough to get around. So with our food we had one last beer before heading home. I told Priscilla rather unconvincingly that I would be ready to swim 50 lengths of the pool at 9am the next day.
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