We landed in Bangkok in the late afternoon and took a Grab from the airport to our hotel. Grab is the Uber of SE Asia, and it’s been a good fall-back if we find ourselves a little lost with public transportation. Our hotel was right on the Chao Phraya River which winds through the center of the city. We booked it primarily because it had a washer/dryer in our room, and it was time for us to do laundry again. The hotel was brand new (opened three months ago) and was pretty luxurious. Five stars for the price of a three star back home.
We walked outside our hotel to a busy street to find an ATM and somewhere to eat. Within 50 feet there were dozens of small businesses and it took us several trips up and down before we recognized an ATM machine on the sidewalk outside a store. They are much smaller than in the US, so easy to miss. I had googled places to eat and a roasted duck place came up within steps down an alley. That sounded great, but when we got there it was just a little booth where they were cutting up the cooked duck for takeaway. No places to sit, no drinks or anything else. So we reversed course and found a restaurant across the street where we had a great meal. Like elsewhere, they had pictures on the menu which helped us order. We got local beer, a crispy fried whole fish they called white snapper, some roasted cashews and something called water vegetable which google translated to water mimosa. Everything was delicious – even the water mimosa which was kind of like a crispy asparagus texture. The fish was yummy and Sophie and I enjoyed eating it clean to the bones.
We only had two nights in Bangkok, so we made the most of our full day there. We took a shuttle boat from our hotel to a main pier where we boarded another boat to get to the Pak Khlong Flower Market. This was a large indoor market where a little bit of everything was being sold. A big section was dedicated to fresh flowers where florists were creating beautiful creations for temple donations and decorations. They were so pretty that we just had to buy a pair that we would leave as an offering at a temple later in the day. The overall market itself, though was a little underwhelming, so we didn’t stay long.
From there we walked about 15 minutes to Wat Pho temple, the largest and oldest Buddhist temple in Bangkok. This is where the gigantic reclining Buddha is. While very impressive, we enjoyed the surrounding areas of the temple even more. Pretty statues, temples, courtyards and trees. There were also so many golden Buddha statues everywhere down halls one next to another.
After that it was another short walk to the Grand Palace, a large complex of royal palaces, buildings and temples that served as the home of the royal family and seat of government between 1782 and 1946. Now it is primarily used for hosting royal ceremonies and welcoming the king’s foreign dignitaries (as well as tourists, of course). One highlight here is the temple of the emerald Buddha, a revered statue made of jasper and clothed in gold garments. Legend says it was made in 43 BC in India and resided in Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Burma, and Laos before finding its way to Thailand in 1432. It has three seasonal garments that are changed by the current king in special ceremonies. We couldn’t take pictures in that particular temple, but you can see a picture of the statue on wikipedia here.
It was pretty hot that day (at least for us Minnesotans) so I wore longish shorts that covered my knees. That was fine in all the temples we went to, except for the grand palace. They required pants down to your ankles. But, no surprise, they sold pants right by the ticket booth. They were only 200 bhat ($6) and made me fit right in with all the other tourists.
Our next stop was a street food tour. We successfully navigated the subway system to meet our guide called Goffy and another couple taking the tour with us near Bangkok’s large Chinatown. We stopped for ten different dishes during the tour – a mix of Thai and Chinese specialties. Our favorites included dim sum, roast duck noodles and, of course, the sticky mango rice dessert. What made this one particularly wonderful was the super sweet fresh mangoes. I’ve never had such a sweet and juicy mango before! To be honest, though, a lot of the other dishes were just so-so. Lots of variations of meat and rice, no vegetables. The food we were served was also not as spicy as I thought it would be. A lot of dishes you could add your own peppers and condiments to, so you could make it as spicy, sour or sweet as you wanted. We went down some pretty sketchy alleys on the tour to find some of the places. In one dark alley there were sliding doors open to rooms where it appeared dozens of people were living together. Our guide said they were mainly immigrants from Laos, Cambodia or Vietnam.
We had a late afternoon flight to Chiang Mai the next day, so lounged at the hotel then took a grab to a different airport for our domestic flight north.
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