Last day in Bangkok. Not going to lie, I’m glad. I can’t decide if I like Bangkok or hate it. One thing is for sure, I could do without the following:
- Pushy Tuk Tuk, Taxi, Tourist-trappers.
- Traffic: during heavy traffic expect 35-40 minutes to go 1 miles.
- Air pollution. My throat has been raw since arriving here. I completely understand why locals wear face masks. Its awful at times. When the humidity is so high, it just hangs in the air like a curtain of death slowly choking you.
What I have enjoyed about Bangkok so far is that there is so much to do! So many places you can/could go that we might spend a week here and not see it all. The people here are very friendly. Even the pushy drivers are friendly. I’ve never seen so many smiles before. Everyone is smiling. And not fake “hello tourist” smiles, they smile at one another, they smile at everything, there seems to be a general happiness that abounds—even in the terrible traffic the taxi drivers smile and laugh and make jokes.
There is a deep spiritual connection in the Thai people and it really shows in their daily lives. The respect the share for each other, for their faith, and for their leaders is astounding. Its refreshing to see people genuinely supportive.
Today we finally broke down and took a boat ride. I have NO idea if we got duped or not, but we were taking a walk near our hotel and while crossing the street started talking with a very friendly local Thai woman. She was just getting off work from the Narai Hotel she said—the same hotel we were staying at. After talking for a few minutes about what all we had seen and done she sad we really MUST do the canal tour/boats/floating market. She promised it would not disappoint. We got to chatting about getting there, and we told her of our hesitation to riding in a tuk tuk. She was so surprised that we had had so much trouble with Tuk Tuks and assured us it really is the most affordable way around town. Take for example, she flagged down a Tuk Tuk for us, instructed them to take us to a pier in old town and to only charge 30 baht. Had we taken a cab, the fair STARTS at 35 baht, then goes up based on time/distance. I don’t know what to believe. Our luck on our own hasn’t been stellar so far. But… in this case, it was cheaper, and they didn’t force us to stop at a TAT. The driver took us to a tiny building on the edge of the water—I originally said we didn’t know if we got had or not, because the only vehicles parked at this place were tuk tuks… But any ways, we signed up for a private tour (just the two of us in the boat) for a two hour canal tour.
Honestly, this might be one of the best things we did the entire time in Bangkok. It was so amazing to see the city from that perspective and to see how drastically different the classes are here. Within the same canal you will pass by wooden huts barely standing and modern concrete brightly colored new constructions. You can see how for many the canal is the lifeline for survival. The canal serves as bathing spot, fishing spot, likely toilet, and a place to cleanse tools and do their offerings and magical clearings. We/I in the states are/am not used to the levels of pollution that are evident here, and Travis (more traveled than I) admitted that he considered this waterway rather clean comparatively to some other places he’s been in Peru and SE Asia.
The boat itself was great. They’re long boat style, and when there’s just the two of us in the boat you can literally see everything 360 degrees. Its amazing how well they are able to navigate these boats through narrow channels sometimes three boats across at breakneck speeds. It was really quite exhilarating. I was completely not prepared to see giant lizards, and by giant I mean 2nd largest species in the world, smaller to only the Komoto Dragons, GIANT lizards in the water.
Turns out these cuddly creatures are amazing for the canals. They feed on garbage and rotting carcasses. Cute huh?
After navigating the canals for a good hour we came upon the famous floating market. It was a smaller than typical market mostly due to it being a Sunday and a holiday or so we were told 😀
You get dropped off by your boat captain onto floating piers that dozens of venders have setup “shop” on. You can get everything from food to trinkets, talismans, live animals, you name it. Some venders are literally cooking their food from a boat. Its quite something to see. We found a vender who sold live snakes and turtles for cooking. We did grab some quick lunch while were here. There was a vender selling these thin pancake/taco things with various pastes in side. They were incredible. There were savory, sweet, gingery, coconutty, yummy goodness. We paired them with some dragon fruit and enjoyed them back on the boat after our 30 minutes at the market were up.
We ended the boat ride back in Old town at a pier near the Grand Palace. Which charges you to exit the boat! Wasn’t expecting that.
We had intended to visit Wat Po, even purchased the ‘elephant fashaun’ pants and began trying to find our way around the palace to Wat Po… on one of the four sides… the palace is HUGE btw.
On our walking around, we discovered this interesting little ally way that seemed to tuck itself back between some building and a number of Thais were heading into it. Why not follow I thought! So we did. And we found ourselves in an maze of alleys with vender after vender selling amulets and talismans. There were hundreds of venders. We wandered around picking up trinkets here and there, then putting them down, even found ourselves in a bead store with sooo many beads. We made note to go back before we leave Thailand because the accessories maker in me would never create again if I didn’t! We wandered around this place for some time, at least a couple hours looking at all the little shops and things.
After finally finding an alley with light at the end, we followed it onto a big pier with lots of “box stores” meaning the equivalent to a strip mall for the US. We looked a couple little shops, honestly, this place reminded me a bit of Japan-town in San Francisco. I have no idea where or what it is called, but we happened upon an ADORABLE little shop, run by what appeared to be a mother/daughter duo with a French Name. La Petit Cafe Bon or something. These two lovely ladies were making smoothies, coffees and shakes. We chose to indulge in a Dark Chocolate and real bananas shake. OMG. It was shu’die’for. We enjoyed the gentle cooling effect of the shake as we wandered through the shops wondering what to do next. Maybe grab some lunch, maybe wander some more.
We were also thinking of perhaps heading back to the hotel to freshen up when a Tuk Tuk driver pulls up and offers to give us a ride.
When will I learn to avoid Tuk Tuks? We get into the damned thing, and the driver, young, friendly, excited tells us he wants to show us Giant Buddha, Marble Temple, Sleeping Buddha 20baht. (Red Flag ya’ll. Red freaking flag!) Being 1) Hot 2) Tired and 3) Ready to not be on my feet we agree. He zooms off to Big Buddha. Ok impressive. Its HUGE. (no photos because its rude to take pictures of Buddha around Thais/Buddhists) Its sort of like tourists coming into your church in the middle of your prayers to take photos of Mary, Jesus, alters, whatever. But I digress. Its a big freaking Buddha. Many stories tall. His little toe ball is the size of my head. It was really neat to see.
Next we hop back into the Tuk Tuk because he was waiting for us to take us to Marble Temple. First we have to make a stop at a place, 5 minutes only so that he can get a free Gas Card. *sigh* Travis wants to be nice, so we agree. He drops us off at a suit shop where they try to sell us a suit. Very cheap. Very fast. They’ll have it ready to go by the end of the day, we can pick up in the morning. Here’s the problem—we leave in the morning. Ok, no problem, we can pick it up tonight. No problem. The price keeps dropping the more we say no thanks. No. No. No. Now, I’m not against getting a suit. I hear its the thing to do when you get to Thailand. Buy custom made cheap suits. etc. But I REALLY didn’t want to carry a suit around with me. No problem, they ship to USA. No problem. *sigh* I want a suit, but more than that I want to get out of this shop, away from pushy sales people refusing to let me stand up (yes literally pushed be back into my chair with a freaking fabric roll.) At which point, my “Wellman Temper” flared. Its ok in my books to be direct, ok to be aggressive, but don’t MF’ing touch me without my consent. And you best not prevent me from leaving. I grabbed the fabric roll shoved it back at him grabbed my bag giving the guy a testing look, begging him to try and push me again, looked at Travis and said we’re not interested get out of our way and kindly let us leave. We exited the store, asked the kid to take us back to where we started, who refused because he didn’t get his gas card because we didn’t buy a suit. So we gave him 20baht and walked away. Not my most shining moment, and definitely so very American of me, but damn I had had more than enough of the game.
Thankfully there was a 7-eleven next door that we could walk into, be in a crowd and cool off because well its an ice cooler in these places. We grabbed some waters to go, and set out on the street again walking. We were trying to find where we were, and while looking at my phone’s map app I discovered we were only about 1.0 miles from The Dusit Zoo. Now Trav and I are suckers when it comes to Zoo’s. So we decided and headed toward it. At some point in our walking another Tuk Tuk approached and this time I wasn’t having any shit. He offered a ride (nice older chap). I said no. He asked where, I said we are walking to the Zoo. He said he’d take us for 100 baht. I smiled and said no thank you (in THAI thank you very much) which made him smile and say 60 baht. I again said no thank you we’ll walk. 40 baht! I turned to him. OK that we’ll do. NO STOPS, NO CHANGES, STRAIGHT TO THE DUSIT ZOO. Understand? “Yes, yes. 60 baht.” No, we’ll walk and we started walking away. “OK OK OK. Zoo! No stop 40 baht.”
We hop in, get moving and within a block get trapped in Traffic! A HUGE sigh from the driver. He had agreed to a reasonable price, and would have to be in traffic for it. He took it in good humor and got us to the Zoo. Knowing his frustration and not discounting his kindness we gave 50 baht. 😀
Feeling like a little bit of a win, we gleefully skipped into the Zoo.
If no one has visited a Zoo in a foreign country—oof. One thing we get really right in America is Zoo’s (for the most part). This place was small and quite frightening in spots. The elephant enclosure was by far the saddest part, but the monkeys were cute, and there were a lot of monkeys. By American standards, this was borderline cruelty. The enclosures were small, dirty, and crowded. The entire Zoo grounds were small for the size of the animals and quantity of the animals. There were some really neat spots like a “canopy” walkway that took you around the monkey enclosures and to some of the safari animals. That was neat. And another thing about this Zoo—it would freak American parents to death. You can literally reach out and touch the monkeys hanging on the fences of their enclosures. There was maybe 1.5 feet of separation. They don’t mind the possibility of you touching them, but the kindly ask you not to feed them as they need a balanced diet. Here’s the thing though—the kids don’t reach out for them. The kids don’t run, the kids don’t act up, the kids don’t misbehave. They are kids, don’t get me wrong. They laugh, giggle, clap, gasp, cheer, but they also obey and behave. There were no kids running off from their parents. They stayed close, or within arms reach. We stopped to watch an Kenyan Acrobatic show, and the kids all sat next to their parents watching the show, behaving. It was so strange. So there is less fear I suppose of fingers getting bitten. You could even feed a Giraffe from a canopy walk with nothing more than a hand rail separating you. Which was ADORABLE by the way. I touched it. Scratched its head and said hello. He didn’t pay me much mind since I didn’t have yummy vegetables to feed him but the two little kids in the stroller sure did and they loved him!
All in all, the Zoo was fun. There’s another Zoo in Chiang Mai that we’ll likely visit when we’re together there. So excited. Its even bigger.
After the zoo was back to the hotel, dinner then packing for our next adventures. Justin heads up to Chiang Mai and Travis south to do his studies. More to come for sure!