Breakfast was great. Porridge and, wait for it, fresh fruit!!! We made some quick phone calls before hopping on the metro to its terminal stop at the national stadium.
While walking off the skytrain, Karla read in the guidebook about Jim Thompson's house. He was an American who had come to live in Thailand after falling in love with it while on assignment in the army. We were a little skeptical as to whether it would be too touristy (which it was ) but it was so amazing. He had not only revived the silk production in Thailand, but he had been an avid collector of traditional Thai art and even built his house in an almost completely traditional manner. It was sad that we couldn't take pictures because it was breathtaking inside. We got some great ideas for our own houses. The art was all so well displayed, and the woodwork around the house was so cool. The nice thing was that the tour was included in the admission price, and the not so nice thing was straining to hear what she was saying in her Thai sounding english. Once we got used to it wasn't so bad (we had only just gotten used to the Indian and Kiswahili English accent).
Next we decided to take a tuk-tuk so as to get to the other sites by the river much faster. As we found to be true with most drivers of any kind here, they don't know, or pretend not to know, how to get to where you want to go. This guy took us to a place to the south instead of west towards the river. Luckily we didn't lose that much money and learned that we were going to have to be vigilant. Constantly.
The plus side was that he dropped us in what seemed to be some sort of restaurant district. We were hungry for lunch anyway, so we randomly picked a place and sat down. We ordered chicken dishes, but Karla had to ask them to remember to put chicken in her dish (constant vigilance!). Once they gave her the chicken, we got out and this time took a metered taxi (somehow about the same price as a rickshaw) to the river (this time we had the map out and followed closely how he went). The down side was that we hit a lot of traffic and it took forever to get where we wanted to go.
When we finally got there we still only had time to walk through Wat Pho, a temple complex that looked even more like Munchkinland than the previous temple we visited. Its decorations and ornamentation were mind blowing. It was like something wed never seen before. If this was the first place wed visited on our trip we wouldn't know what to do. But being veteran temple goers, we just snapped as many photos as possible, imitating the hilarious dragon and wise men statues when it was appropriate (although we can't imagine it was ever so). The intricate mosaic outer shells of mirrors and colored tile on the buildings were filled with intricate paintings touched with gold paint inside. Not to mention there were hundreds of Buddha statues lining the walls. This complex also happened to house the largest reclining Buddha in the world. It was made of bricks and plaster and painted in gold, but the feet were most impressive with its black marble inlayed with mother of pearl designs. Everything we saw was just so over the top, and huge. I'm sure that the pictures we took won't even be able to describe this place.
It was getting late and we still had to visit the Emerald Temple that was closed the day before. Realizing we would have to put it off yet another day (because it had again closed), we instead revisited the royal gardens where the princess's (the king's sister) newly constructed cremation temple was. It was here that they played the same song over as the visitors stream in day after day in hordes. Apparently she had died nearly seven months prior but wasn't able to have a proper funeral for her cremated body until the temple was made. The funeral was apparently last weekend (why it was soooo crowded). But we didn't of course learn this until the next day, and Alicia spent most of her time there trying to figure out how long the Princess has been dead. It is just amazing how the Thai people love the royal family (in schools there are even wardrobes and days with special colors that have to be worn according to Katie Poor (Alicia's roommate from Wesleyan who is teaching north of Bangkok in Suphanburi)). There was a hundred and one days of mourning where people could only where black or white after she died. We couldn't imagine how sad the country would be if the 80+ King died.
Surrounding the gardens, there was what seemed to be a giant fair. People were selling food and pictures of the royal family like crazy. The food all looked so good (fresh fruits, meats on a stick, drinks, grilled anything, and who knows what else), but we didn't dare to chance it. There were even people giving thai massages on mats in the parking lots amongst families picnicking on shiny plastic sheets (I told you they love plastic).
After this experience we headed to Khao San Road, a road dedicated to the Western backpack culture (bars, cheap clothes, snack food, music stores...). It was rather overwhelming to see tons of white people jamming to Bob Marley or Sublime while downing beer and cocktails in the early afternoon. Oh well. We were there to find buses to Suphanburi to visit the aforementioned Katie Poor. We must have gone to seven places until we found out where the mini bus could be. Which was by the Royal Hotel. So we went there and asked. They pointed to a restaurant down the street. Finally on a side street we found the mini bus and chatted with the driver about coming tomorrow. Phew. That took forever.
Next was dinner. Long story short we walked back towards the river looking for a place that didn't exist. We sat down at one place thinking it was it, realized it wasn't, left, looked some more, couldn't find it and got fed up and ended up going back to the same place. We think that the waiters got a little confused (we'd said that we were meeting friends at the other place).
Of course after dinner we still had to navigate getting back to the skytrain via taxi. We asked a bunch if they spoke English until finding one that semi-understood. We again followed along with the map (having to redirect him once or twice). Don't they know where they are going at ALL???? Unfortunately it pays for them to get lost...we ended up at the metro station, so we just took the subway to the skytrain instead of trying to explain.
Back at the hotel we tried to see if we could watch one of their many free movies, but it turned out that the VHS player was broken (typical) and we had to settle with going to sleep.
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