Thailand – Bangkok

We left the hotel around 4am on Saturday to catch a ride to the Phuket airport.  The hotel gave us boxed breakfasts since we missed out on the included breakfast buffet.  They actually had a lot of food in them—croissant, cheese sandwich, 2 boiled eggs, yogurt, banana, green orange thing, baguette, and a really horrible orange juice.  We chowed down in the lounge until it was time to board and one of us packed some of the leftovers in case we got hungry later :)

Breakfast time

We got into the Bangkok airport where Paul realized he left his hat on the plane—so we waited around for about 45mins for the flight attendants to bring it to us.

Waiting for that IA state hat

I don't even know what to say about this photo--it's a miracle

From there we took the monorail “skytrain” into the city.  At the end, we hopped off and took a taxi to the Grand Palace (where the Thai King & Queen live).

Metro Ride from the airport.  Gotta love that asian fashion.

 

We got “took-took by the tuk-tuks”

When we arrived at the Grand Palace, a couple of “helpful” guys warned us at the gate that it was closed for the next two hours because it was prayer time for the Buddhists.  He and his friend suggested that we go see a few other Buddhist temples in the area and then head back when the temple/palace would be opened.  He said we could ride “tuk tuk” which are these rickshaws and that it would only be 40Bhat per tuk tuk round trip ($2.50 for the four of us) so even though it seemed a little fishy, we decided we didn’t have much to lose and hopped in.

We were having a good time..it was nice to be moving along with the wind blowing—otherwise it was crazy hot.  Then we turned down a slightly sketchy alley and I turned to Paul and said “Why do I have the feeling that we’re about to get mugged?”  Thankfully, we didn’t.  We ended up at the first temple, went in took some photos, and then came back out to our tuk tuk drivers.  Next the drivers took us to some jewelry shop and all but forced us to go in.  Again, a but sketchy, but it was actually kind of nice because it was super cool in there and we just hung out in the corner cooling off.  Once the jewelry store owners realized that they weren’t going to be able to scam us into buying some jewelry, they basically kicked us out.  Then off the next temple where D & I saw a guy that told us a little about how the Buddhist monks work, etc.


Then it was back in the tuk tuks and they forced us to stop at a tailor shop and another jewelry stop because if they got us to go in, then they got their “gas cards” stamped by the companies and supposedly got free gas.  They tried to take us to another, but we put our foot down and after much arguing, finally got them to take us back to the palace.

 

The Grand Palace

Once in the palace, the boys & D had to go change into long pants to be allowed in and then we headed for the ticket booth and temple area.  The architecture was really intricate and hard to even begin to capture in photos.  It was really pretty neat.  Paul didn’t really see much because he was overheated and in “mumbling” mode .  Once we got the group moving again, we stayed in the shade as much as possible and found our way out.


From the palace, we walked through a market where we bought strawberries, mangos, and doughnuts.


At the other end of the market was the water taxi stop where we hopped on and headed down the river to a stop near the metro line we wanted.  The water taxi was a pretty cool experience.  It was packed, but at least it was open and the wind was blowing nicely.  I would say that the boat was at the dock for less than 30 seconds at each stop—you had to jump on quick or else you’d end up in some nasty water.

Chattachuck Market

We took the metro up to the Chattachuk market.  The boys were hot and had had enough shopping from Phuket, so they went off to seek some A/C while D & I went to hunt for a few last treasures before we left.  D ended up finding a nice backpack which they’ll use for their Grand Canyon trip this next fall.  She also got a few cute wicker balls—I’m pretty sure my mom has the same ones and they might’ve been from cousin when he and his wife lived in Bangkok!  I got a few packs of dried mango that was perfectly soft, moist, and not too sweet.


We met back up with the boys who apparently chose the Thai Department of Transportation building as their target for some A/C.  After getting taken to a nice room and offered water, the girls there just kept repeatedly asking them what they did for the DOT.  They tried to explain that they were just tourists, but since the DOT probably doesn’t get too many tourists wandering through the front door, she just couldn’t seem to understand how they could be there and not work for the DOT.  Eventually the guys left and found an adult soccer match that was going on.  They had a fun time watching the match in breezy shade until it was time to meet back up with us.

Brain freeze!

We were starting to get close to our check-in time for the airport so we went back to the metro to catch the ride back.  While Paul and I were buying our metro passes, R & D decided that the perfect way to finish off some of their Bhats was to get us some ice cream to enjoy on the ride back.  Unfortunately, this plan backfired a little bit because as we walked the 6 feet to get through the metro gate, we were told that ice cream wasn’t allowed on the metro.  Was there a sign on the ice cream stand?  Did anyone mention anything to R &D while they bough 4 ice creams to take on the metro?  No, of course not.  So we had to just stand there and down the ice cream before we could go any further.  It was still delicious, although I think we got a few more brain-freezes than we might have had we been allowed to take our time and enjoy it.

We made it back to the airport and flew back home hassle-free.  I think we would all agree that it was really a wonderful and memorable trip.