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With so much to see in this amazing city, our planned 3 day-break quickly transformed into 6 days!! We saw all the sights in our guidebook, and also did some exploring of our own at the less touristy places, such as the supermarket (where we had great fun browsing through loads of packets of stuff we had no idea what they were – we bought some anyway, turned out to be dry fish mostly!), shops selling Hello kitty merchandise (which Sedef luuurves), oh and the bikeshop (which Nic luurves)! :p
Grand Palace & Wat Phra Kaeo – The most famous Bangkok landmark and the holiest Buddhist site in the country. The Wat houses the most important buddha image in the country – the Emerald Buddha. An absolutely amazing place with weird and fantastic architecture and Buddhist angels and demons wherever you look!
Wat Traimit – One of the many Buddhist temples in the city, which is distinguished by the fact that it houses the world’s largest solid gold buddha (13th century) – valued by weight alone at $14 million! The buddha was originally encased in plaster to protect it from pillages – only to be rediscovered in 1955 when the plaster was cracked whilst moving it! This led to a nationwide frenzy of tapping away at plaster Buddhas to check for hidden golden images!! 🙂
Wat Suthat – Another fantastic temple which houses Thailand’s largest Buddha image (8m high)
Wat Po – Houses another famous Buddha image – the 45m long Reclining Buddha depicting the Buddha entering Nirvana
Amulet Market – Amulets are a nationwide craze in Thailand – everyone carries at least one to ward off misfortune. They are also valuable collectors items. The amulet market has a collection of thousands to choose from – ranging from 5 Bahts to 1000s depending on age and material. Saying that we couldn’t find one that we liked!!
Flower & Vegetable Market – Not many tourists here, just local Thais hustling & bustling about unloading, processing, and selling the produce from the countryside. Not dissimilar to the ones in the UK in atmosphere – though the smells and the produce were very exotic!! We didn’t recognise half the stuff on sale!! (those things with long tentacles in the first picture are dried squid – quite yummy surprisingly and addictive)
National Museum & National Theatre – Two things to say about these two: one was great, and the other was, erm, ‘different’!! :p The national museum has an impressive collection of Thai art and historical artefacts. In the evening we got tickets to a Thai dance performance. We were stressed getting there on the canalboats since we were half an hour late…though as Nic said afterwards ‘we weren’t late enough!’. :p The costumes were fantastic but the music (to our western ears) sounded out of tune and we had no idea what the story was as everything (including the programme) was in Thai!!
‘Carnal capital’ – one cannot talk about Bangkok without at least mentioning the sex industry – however unlike cities like Amsterdam, this goes on behind doors in the red light district ‘bars’ since prostitution is illegal in Thailand. The HIV rate we heard runs as high as a staggering 41% amongst the prostitutes (of both sexes). We did not however see any ‘lady-boys’ although even in our hotel there were quite a few fat middle aged ‘farangs’ with 18 year old Thai chicks sitting on their laps at dinner!!
Downtown Bangkok – In contrast to the historical parts, downtown Bangkok is crammed full of skyscrapers and modern shopping plazas. In answer to high traffic congestion, they regulate traffic on three levels – cars on the ground level, pedestrians in pedestrian walkways above the cars, and the ‘sky-train’ running above the walkways. Very Bladerunner!!! We went to a plush cinema to see Memoirs of a Geisha (9/10!) with comfy electric reclining chairs, blankets, wine cooler and side table, and waitress service! We could have probably got a Thai massage as well if we had asked for one… It was a bit of a shock though when we had to stand up with everyone to pay our respects to the King before the film!!
Thonburi canals & floating markets – For the equivalent of 15 pounds we hired a longtail boat for 2 hours to take us around the canals of Thonburi (‘old’ Bangkok) to see the amazing houses on stilts and the floating markets where sellers peddle their wares.
…oh and we fed the catfish at a local fish farm – hungry they were!!
Chatuchak weekend market – An amazing 6000 stalls are set up every weekend over an area covering 10 football pitches, where you can get literally anything you want!!! We spent almost all day browsing through handcrafts, foodstalls selling some appetising kebabs but also bugs and insects on sticks, puppies and all sorts of exotic animals, furniture, knick-knacks… and, well, everything else really!!! Unlike a lot of markets there was some very good quality stuff as well.
For any cyclists out there who want a good bike shop in Bangkok – try Probike just north of Lumphini Park. They have a good stock of bikes and parts and can service your bike on the day! There we met several other western cyclists touring around Asia. One of them was heading into India – hope we did not scare him too much with our experiences!!
Oh and happy Chinese new year! (we just missed it as we left on the day it was celebrated (Jan 29) – year of the dog!
PS – Thanks to the guys at Siemens we have been able to replace our GPS – \ it will be just as indispensable!!
