Our first taxi ride from The Bangkok Loft Hotel into Old Town gives us a look at the bustling city in the daylight. We figure we will be stuck in traffic, sweating it out in the backseat, but we move along swiftly and the taxi is air conditioned, clean and modern. After a twenty minutes of dodging merging scooters and tuk tuks, our driver drops us at the top of the tourist mecca known as Khao San Road. The ride costs us 81 Thai Baht — less than $3 Canadian. With our bags strapped on, we walk the bustling and chaotic street. There are lots of farangs here (foreigners). It is sticky and hot. We're both sweating buckets and we haven't even started in on the spicy food. The air smells of exhaust and incense and BBQ charcoal. There are endless rows of carts selling chicken and pork balls and skewers, pad thai noodles, salted fish, grilled vegetables we don't even recognize, papayas, coconuts, pineapples and mango. Fruit shakes, tea and cheap beer. The street buzzes. Everything is for sale — CDs, used books, t-shirts, hats, sunglasses, jewelry and trinkets. It is an open street market which we soon learn gets rolling early in the morning and goes long into the night.
We get lost, double check the map, attract the attention of locals trying to help us and practice repeating politely, "Chai mai," which means no. We don't know how to add thank you. One street over we find our hotel, the Viengtai. It is here we will meet up with our tour guide and the rest of our group.
It is early in the afternoon, but they have a room ready for us. We drop our bags and head off in the direction of the Grand Palace only to realize it is closing. In front of the National Museum, we meet a fellow who works for the museum (at least he has a badge that says STAFF) and he suggests we visit two temples which he circles for us on our map. Then a tuk tuk pulls up and our impromptu tour guide arranges the driver to take us to the two temples, wait for us while we look around and then bring us back, all for a whopping 30 Baht — $1 Canadian. Bargains galore here in Bangkok!
Into the tuk tuk we get and we're off, swooshing through the streets of Bangkok with the soot and breeze in our hair. That's one way to cool off.
The first temple, Wat Indraviharn, sports an enormous 32 metre high golden buddha. It is the tallest representation in the world of the Buddha holding an alms bowl. There is an interesting mishmash of styles in the temple grounds including a Chinese shrine.
Then we go to the oldest temple (or one of the oldest) in Bangkok. Known by the locals as Wat Thai, it is approximately 855 years old. The temples are an oasis of calm in amongst the chaos of the city. We sit quietly before the statue of Buddha beautifully decorated and covered in gold leaf and take some deep breaths of history. We see the monks draped in their orange robes and hear them chanting in the background.
Our patient tuk tuk driver now wants to take us to a Thai fabric shop. He tries to explain in broken English that he gets a coupon for gas and oil if he brings us there. "Just two minutes," he says so we let him take us. We've been warned of scams where you are whisked away to gem shops or fabric shops and not allowed to leave until you buy something, but this seems much more relaxed. We walk around the two floor shop filled with fabrics and silks, accompanied by a slick Thai man who speaks perfect english. He tries to get us to buy a suit or a tie or even just a loofah soap. We decline and manage to slip out after a cursory look around and join our driver, still waiting outside and now with his coupon. He zooms us back to Khao San Road.
From there we walk over to another temple, Wat Matathat, and walk around the grounds. The Buddhist University is attached to this temple and offers many free meditation classes in Vipassana meditation. There is supposed to be an English talk with one of the monks on buddhism that evening which we think sounds interesting, but we can't find where and no one seems to know anything about it. We wander around the manicured grounds and do find lots of gold buddha statues, monks and people meditating.
By this time it is about 4:30 p.m., so we wind our way back to our Khao San hotel for a look at the pool, a drink and nibble next door at the overpriced farang bar.
We are scheduled to meet our Intrepid group and our guide Bouna (Boo-na) in the hotel. Though we prefer to travel independently, we were both in agreement that this month long tour offered us the best of what we were after in South East Asia. It takes care of all our travel arrangements (bus, boats, planes, trains) and accommodations, offers many great included tours of places of interest (temples, palaces, museums), but still allows for a great amount of free time where we can explore on our own. We also hope it will ease the burden of navigating through several, quite challenging, language barriers.
Intrepid, the company we chose to go with, supports local guides and local businesses. Our guide, for example is from Cambodia, and our first tour (more on that later) is lead by a local Thai man. Intrepid supports many non-profit organizations (rehabilitation of people, animals, businesses, etc) in each of the countries we will be visiting. We are unsure of WHAT this tour experience will be like, but we are open and interested to find out. Again, with all the opportunity for our own explorations, it seems it will be a good fit.
Our group consists of two other Canadians (sisters from Edmonton), a couple and gentleman from Australia, a couple from Manchester, U.K. and a Kiwi couple. All the couples are in their 60's so the "youngsters" are ourselves (ha ha!) and the Canadian sisters.
After our intro session, Bouna takes us over the road for an authentic Thai dinner. Jenn has a yellow curry; I have a seafood noodle stir fry and both are good, although not outstanding. We are looking forward to our own food exploring tomorrow!
We talk with our guide and our group members, but it is a struggle to keep our eyes open. We plead our case for jet lag, say goodnight and head back to the hotel. It's lights out after an adventurous first day...
....until the jet lag 3 a.m. wake up, that is!!
No comments:
Post a Comment