Bizarro Bangkok

Our plane touched down the next day in the humid and heady city of Bangkok. Once more we found ourselves blessed with a good hostel. We took a long walk and found that Thailand has lots of 7-Elevens. On the way to take the taxi boat, we met a man on the street who advised us to take an open air taxi or a tuk tuk to the Buddhist temple we wanted to see. Later we learned that the man was helping his friend, the tuk tuk driver across the street.. 

We loaded the tuk tuk and headed for the temple. Almost immediately upon arriving, we met a man who worked for the president’s security force. The president was going to visit that temple later in the day and he was making sure it was secure. In addition, the temple was being cleaned with scrub brush and hose and various Buddha’s were being scrubbed off.

Our new acquaintance gave us a full history of the different buddhas and where they came from. They were gifts from various countries at different times and each had different symbolism. He explained feng shui as a belief system that was more like a talisman of good luck for people. He told us we needed to buy a certain stone in order to help us become more wealthy. How cool it was to get a full history of the temple from a Thai person for free! His English was fantastic because he spent 7 years in the navy in America and attended the Naval academy. This is required for those who want to serve in the Thai security force for the president.

After our tour of the small temple, we climbed back into our waiting tuk tuk and asked him to help us find a place to eat. We soon learned that he spoke very little English as he took us to a fancy gem shop where one could watch jewellery being made while being watched by uppity thai people. Instead we walked around behind the building and found a small ‘restaurant’ on the street. The lady warmed up some chicken for us, gave us each plates of rice and some spicy thai papaya salad. We ordered all this with the help of a man sitting at the table next to us. In the end we paid $4.50 for our meal, which seemed like an extraordinary amount in thai baht =130.

Our tuk tuk driver was hanging around waiting for us, even though we really didn’t want him because we were afraid of being taken to a place completely different from where we asked. And there was a man hanging around trying to talk to us and give us directions. He was a little creepy so we made a quick exit.

        We took off walking and our tuk tuk driver followed us! Honking at us from the road, he couldn’t understand why we didn’t want his services… We were tired of being harped on and it was only the first day. Eventually we found ourselves walking through a neighborhood and then down the railroad tracks between two neighborhoods. It was interesting observing the little houses on each side and the people’s faces as they watched three white girls walk down the tracks. We walked to a small open air market on the street. There was seafood, fruit and veggies galore. I found myself being offered a fried locust by one of the shopkeepers so, not wanting to be rude, I ate it.. Not bad, crispy, salty..

Eventually we got a tuk tuk to take us to the water boats and we found our way back to our hostel. It was an adventure of a first day and we had almost a month to go!