Bangkok Weekend
Click on this for more of the gorgeous detail in this shot. Don't forget to look at the temple detail also.
Poor thing - I think he'll be OK. I'm the one on the left.
Hey everybody - we're getting down towards the end of my adventure (and now OUR adventure), so this was a good booster shot of touristy stuff. Paul went to Hong Kong on Friday to visit Grace, Mackensie's ex-roomie from SLU. He got back to KL on Monday, says he had a great time, but not too many details.
Tracy and I flew up to Bangkok on Saturday (2 hour flight). We got back to KL Tuesday evening.
We got our first taste of how things are done in Bangkok, right at the airport.
A tour booth guy worked on us till we bought a 1/2 day city tour for both of us for TB1000 (38 Thai Baht or so = $1). That was about $27 total. Not bad, and the tour was good. Couple of Buddhist temples, couple of Jewelry stores, a big tailor shop, a teak wood shop, and a elephant/crocodile farm/zoo/show.
The tour booth guy also told us the best deal on a cab was the taxi queue outside, not any of the booths inside, and we shouldn't pay over TB300 on the meter for the ride. He even wrote it down for us, and walked out and kinda set it up for us. So, including the TB50 airport fee the trip cost TB350, and they somehow made it a flat rate, not metered, based on the note the guy wrote for us. Turns out the metered rate is only based on distance, and the return fare from our hotel was TB200, so we paid about a 50% upcharge by letting the guy set it up for us.
We had other occurrences of people trying to get us to go where they wanted, or to shop in certain areas, or to buy jewelry for investment, etc. Very friendly, but manipulative place.
Our hotel, The Grande Ville, was right by Chinatown, walking distance to lots of shopping and dining. This was a major league Chinatown (there's a Chinatown franchise in every large city). Kuala Lumpur has a nice little Chinatown, but it's not at all the same thing.
OK - on the touristy stuff -
We saw tons of Buddhist temples, there are something like 400+ temples in Bangkok. There were too many 'major' temples (Wat's) to see in a couple of days. I saw several and Tracy saw a couple more than that.
We did a cool canal tour (Venice of the east) on a long skinny boat called a long-pole boat. It's got seats for a dozen or so people (we just rented our own, just for us). It is powered by a car engine (yep) mounted up high on the back, steered by a long pole that sticks out the back with a prop on the end. Pretty interesting.
There are taxi's and Tuk-Tuk's everywhere. Tuk-Tuk's are 3-wheeled open air motocycle powered taxi's, no meter. You tell them where you're going, they tell you the fare, you either get in or walk away. They have a bad habit of stopping at shops that they want you to go look thru before they finish taking you where you want to go. You get to enjoy every sound and smell from a Tuk-Tuk. The sides of the roof come down just low enough you can't see much though.
I bought some handmade slacks (2) made of cashmere/wool and a couple of Egyptian cotton shirts at a place we stopped at (cause our tourguide thought we needed to stop there) on the way to the Elephant/Crocodile farm/zoo/show. The clothes got back to me the next afternoon and they fit perfect. Tracy bought some souveniers and scarfs and skirts for others. She bought some really pretty Garnet jewlery for herself.
Thai Baht is about 38 Baht to the dollar. Baht is so worthless that you throw it around without worrying too much about it. Tip your waiter TB100? Feels impressive, but it's less than $3. It's all relative though, to them 1 Baht is a buck. Doesn't buy much but it's still the basic unit. Tipping is just not done over here like it is in the states.
The zoo/show was really good. Dozens of elephants, some just sitting around to have pictures taken (this one sat there with its front legs crossed, so you could sit on it's leg for a picture. They had a big arena for a structured show about the history of elephants in Thailand, fake battles on elephant-back, all that.
Then we saw a croc show. I about couldn't watch. These guys were teasing these crocs (well fed beforehand we were told) to make em mad, then sticking their arms down their throats. This one guy stuck his head inside the croc's mouth. Our guide told us that they have lots of 'accidents' at the show, but it's not regulated, so it stays open. Amazing. nothing bad happened, but it just about made you sick to watch.
We spent a short time at the Bangkok 'Weekend Market'. The tour book says there are over 8,000 stalls and I believe it. With aisles (big and small) packed with people, stalls with people in them, eating places, etc, there had to be 50k to 100k people packed into that one market. The tour book said something about it being a sauna. This was true.
We kinda finished up our visit with a 'Caberet' show after a nice (not wonderful) Brazillian (Rodizio style) restaurant. Basically you have salads and side dishes on a buffet bar, and gaucho's bring swords with meat to the table and slice you off a small serving if you want some. Each time they come by their offering is something different. We had pork, pork sausage, chicken wings, lamb, beef, salmon, pinapple and could have had ostrich, maybe more, I don't remember.
The 'Caberet' was a Lady-Boy show (drag show). It was ok. The singing was 100% lipsync (probably a good idea). The costumes were spectacular, with lots of costume changes. They had one comic person who was pretty entertaining, eyeing guys in the audience, flirting, etc, while being bad at the stage stuff. It was amazing how girl-like these guys looked. Some of them couldn't pass for a girl no matter what, but most of them were pretty convincing.
Tracy and Paul went to see 'The Da Vinci Code'. Tracy said there was lots of spoken French in the move and the Malaysian subtitles just didn't help very much. I met up with them after that for supper and bowling. We were very bad, but it was fun.
This weekend, before they depart for home, we are going to a forest research facility to learn and experience all about forests. The highlight is a 'canopy walk' 30 meters up in treetops. The walkway is constructed of ropes. My general high level of respect for tall places makes this sound a bit scary. I think I'll be doing it anyway. I'll let you know how it went.
Talk to ya soon - bye for now.
Lychee fruit has a small white tasty center.
We don't know the name, but it a segmented multipiece white flesh fruit.
If there is a fire, run for the door, duh!
Wat Traimit - Temple of the Golden Buddha. 5 1/2 ton solid gold Buddha. This bad boy was once encrusted with a concrete, and no one knew it was really gold. Some janitor probably bumped into it, lost his job when he broke it, then they noticed that underneath the sacred outer layer (concrete) was gold, solid gold, tons of it. Pretty cool.
Soccer playing elephants. Beautiful animals. Fast, graceful, all that. 
The faked up a nice battle-on-elephant sequence for us.
Chinatown Poultry
This was interesting. Right next to our hotel was this canal. There were shacks built over the canal, metal sheeting roofs, with occasional glimpses of the canal showing thru . Also in that 'poverty' image, there were, in the middle of the metal sheeting roofs, air conditioner units mounted on top of the squatter roofs.
Tracy, has overcome her fear of shopping, casually dropping a few thousand Baht on jewelry (remember, 38 baht to the dollar).
Our tour boat
On the canal, hourses built right out over the water.
Some houses nicer than others.
Queen for a day?
Wat Arun, big temple site, right on the river. We had our boat driver pull up and let us off at the temple. Big place, lots of spires, which all have tons of little statues all over the sides. Very cool.
http://www.into-asia.com/bangkok/attractions/watarun.php
Zoom in for a little detail
From across the river.
posted by Mike @ 2:29 PM
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