First day in Bangkok
Downloading pics right now they might follow later today… 😉
Flight over here was uneventful and I slept most of the time which was not a good sign. When I arrived at my hotel I only wanted a bed and nothing else. After a dreadful night with light fever I made it through the day today though. And it was great…
We met at the express boat station, it was Mai, our guide, a couple from Austria, one from stuttgart and myself. We went with the express boat first and when we went off we first visited the flower market. They do sell lots of beautiful flowers, but the bright blue ones are coloured… 😉 Love the orchids. They even had roses carved out of soap. After that we came to a vegetable market where they had spices as well. It was interesting as they sold all kinds of food. I even have pics of the food of ‚kitchens‘ on the street.
After that a row of temple visits started. In the first one I forgot that your feet are never to be pointing towards the budda but Mai let me know immediately… *ooops* She explained us a lot about buddas but it was too much so I couldn’t really listen the whole time. And sitting on the stone is not very comfortable either.
From there we went to a second temple with another budda and inside there we suddenly heard a loud noise outside and it was RAINING… looks like the monsoon season is not really over yet. We waited for about 20 minutes and then it was over. We walked over to the lieing budda (or is it the lying budda? I always forget…. :emb:). I had seen that one before so I was not really impressed. After that we got into two tuk tuks and took a drive from hell to the restaurant at the river shore where we ate some thai food. Curry, fried chicken, sweet-sour fish and some vegetables and of course rice with it. Going by tuk tuk we saw some protestors near the king’s palace. When we came back after lunch, they were gone. Mai told us that they appear at different places every 2 hours or so….
The King’s palace was as impressing as I remembered it. All these colours and gold and different styles of building. I took lots of pics again (this was why I brought my new lense in the first place….). We had a special occasion there as well as some soldiers were practising for a funeral. The sister of the thai King died in January and she will soon be cremated. So the soldiers were there to practive for that. It was interesting because while the guys in the first rows were fully concentrated, one of those in the last row had his finger in his nose most of the time…. :joker::joker::joker: We saw a several groups of people dressed in black and we heard that they had been praying as preparation for the cremation as well.
After the King’s Palace we took another tuk tuk to Khao San Road (I think this is the name). It’s the tourist center of bangkok. You can buy all kind of stuff there like driving licenses, student certificates or whatever your heart desires…. (I think most of the tuk tuk drivers bought their license there…. :D).
From there we went through another monk school and then to another temple but we didn’t wanna go inside any more. Too many buddas already…. then back to the boat and while we were going back to our starting point of this morning, the thunderstorm started. There are so many sales stands everywhere but none that sells umbrellas… I didn’t have to go far to my hotel but further to getting wetter than wet the streets are flooded too. I could have swam to my hotel. And one funny thing: Mai had an umbrella with her but she opened it only when the sun was shining. When it was raining she kept it closed and got as wet as we got. :D:D:D
Now I am in my room, pics are still downloading and will post some probably later on…