Bangkok: A Hilarious Combination of Syllables (Part 1)
Song of the Day: “Cryin’” by Aerosmith
NOTE: I have uploaded pictures from Narita and Bangkok to my Picasa web album, the link is on the right.
About a month or two ago, I was telling my friend, Mike, how I had finally found out the date on which I had to be in China (February 18). Much to my surprise, he informed me that he would be traveling to Thailand for two weeks right around that time. Naturally, he invited me to join him for the first leg of his journey in Bangkok. Without a second thought I accepted. One of my reasons for coming here was that I wanted to travel, so why in the world would I turn down an opportunity to go to Thailand? This would be a great opportunity to get a head start on my traveling. We arrived in Bangkok around midnight on February 12 and immediately crashed for the night.
I’ve decided to break up what I plan to write about Bangkok into two parts. Mostly to keep it as manageable chunks that will (hopefully) be easier to read, but also to help prevent myself from going off on my long-winded tangents (which I’m prone to do). My preliminary thought is to have the first part be a simple description of our itinerary–where we went, what we saw, etc.–and have the second part be my reflections and perceptions garnered from my brief time there. So here goes….
The first morning there we went to the Grand Palace where the Emerald Buddha is kept. As it turns out, the Buddha isn’t actually made out of emerald. But it is still impressive nonetheless. The entire Grand Palace is so incredibly opulent that the pictures I’ve taken just don’t do it justice. It’s hard to describe really. Everything is so dense. The buildings and statues are all close together in a relatively small area and they are all beautifully decorated.
In front of the Chapel of the Emerald Buddha (on the right). Not a great shot of the surroundings, but the decorations and craftsmanship you see was literally everywhere.
After touring the Palace for the first half of the day, we returned to the hotel to meet up with two of Mike’s cousins. Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to see anything else that day but I wasn’t perturbed as I understood that Mike and his mom wanted to spend time with their family. Also it was quite hot and humid that day (and for the entire time I was there) so doing all that walking around the Palace had really made me tired, hot, and sweaty.
That evening we visited the night bazaar, which is pretty much a dedicated tourist trap every night of the week. It was still interesting to see though (some of the novelty lighters were just plain awesome), and I did pick up a really nice hand-made silk carpet. Hooray!
For the next day we hired a van to take us out to the floating market in Damnoed Saduak, about an hour outside of Bangkok. We made a quick 10 minute stop at a salt flat for some reason. Nothing special about it, but I’ve never seen one so it was kinda neat.
Since I knew absolutely nothing about the floating market we were going to see, I had no clue what to expect when we got there. The dock, if you can call it a dock … which you really cant, was pretty much just a cement gully filled with water that led to the river. It contained a single boat and after some haggling we boarded the small craft. And I mean small. Like, I could have tipped the boat over sitting down if I wanted to. After a short boat ride and getting a little wet we turned down a seemingly innocuous gully, similar to the one we had left, but which quickly opened up to a sight I have never seen the likes of before.
Quite literally the floating market. This is just a small part, it went on for a long time
It is absolutely crazy. These people were selling everything from their little boats. From fresh fruit, to fried snacks (which seemed like a fire hazard to me, but they didn’t seem to care), to touristy tchotchkes and even clothes. And before you ask, yes, there were “I survived the floating market” t-shirts. It was incredible; just one of those things that you try to imagine having back home but would never work in a million years. It seemed like pandemonium–there were frequent traffic jams (in boats!)–but the people had some sort of unspoken method for conducting traffic that I suppose is just part of the trade.
As part of the trip we stopped at a coconut farm where, as you can probably imagine, there were endless coconut trees. Strangely enough we didn’t see anyone actually working except in the tourist shop. I proposed that coconut farmers don’t actually do much work, they just sit around drinking (or whatever is Thai people do for leisure) waiting for the coconuts to drop, which they just pick up off the ground and throw on the pile. To be quite honest, that theory is not very well informed and I don’t think it holds any water, but it was still funny to imagine.
After the farm we headed back to Bangkok where we visited yet another market. Chatuchak is the largest market in Thailand, covering 35 acres and containing around 15,000 individual shops. It’s simply endless. The shops go on and on forever and it’s very easy to get lost and disorientated. Still it was fun to stroll through the maze of stalls perusing the cheap wares and sampling some of the local snacks that were so cheap they were practically free.
At Chatuchak you could even buy puppies! Holding the dog is Mike's mom.
Wow, OK, so I’ve gone on rambling for much longer than I anticipated. And there’s still more to tell! Here’s a good stopping point so check back later for the rest of the story.
Cheers!
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you should embed a link in your posts when you have pictures relating to the post in your picasa album. I like the picture of Mrs Perlmutter with the puppy. Good shot!
I had a similar experience to your “floating market” when I went to Hong Kong — the bird market there was similarly awesome.
That tune is brilliant, and I’m not really into that kind of music.