What do you do when school is cancelled and you have a day to spend by yourself without a worry in the world.? Go for a ride on the river, of course! I sort of felt like Ferris Beuller because one of the campus’ was closed and even though I work on both campus’ I took advantage of my situation to ‘fool around.’ I decided to see some of the major tourist attractions of Thailand which happened to be centred around the Chao Phraya river..
When I got to the ferry, by way of the BTS or overhead public transportation, I took the all day pass to ride the river and that is exactly what I did. I started out at the Temple of Dawn. As you can see from the pictures, it is really beautiful and a well known landmark in Bangkok. I had always seen the obelisk structure from afar but I was surprised by the stone whimsical characters I saw. I was also delightfully surprised by the fact that I could use my school identification to get in free. In Thailand, there are two prices for everything….farang and Thai. Now I can get the Thai price, at least in one place. The Thais make no bones about this differentiated policy. In the Wat Pho, which I visited next, there was a place for the Thais to leave their shoes ( which was a lot more convenient that farangs) and a separate entrance to the reclining Budda.. Fair enough, I guess. They went directly to pray or meditate and we simply went to gawk.
At Wat Pho, they have the world famous massage school. All the massage places in Bangkok seem to have a licence from the city or country to operate and they all seemed to be trained at the Wat Pho. I do find my massages consistent and the routine identical no matter which massage outlet I enter. It is almost like yoga with the very specific positions the massage person has to go through to give a proper “Wat Pho” massage. I was going to get a massage there but it was way too expensive, surprisingly. As you can see from the picture, it is not so surprising tha they practice on each other, I guess like Josh practicing on his colleagues. Proabably not that great.
After I finished looking around the Wat, I got back on the river, always filled with monks waiting to get on the boat and went to the famous Oriental hotel. By the way, there is a separate entrance for everything for the monks. Since the river has all the important Temples, you will see from the pictures that they are everywhere. To get on the boat, you have to enter a line from the left, unlike Canada where we enter everything from the right.Because I find it hard to break the habit, I keep looking the wrong way when I cross the street and certainly entering the dock area walked down the wrong gangplank reserved only for the monks which happened to be on the right.. What an embarrassment as they were all standing there ( as you will see from the pictures) as I was being yelled at.
Anyway, back to the Oriental hotel. I had heard that it was the most elegant hotel in Bangkok, if not the world. Frankly, I was rather disappointed with it, at least the part I saw. It was very ordinary, in spite of the 950 bhat tea service, which did look elegant, but I preferred my iced tea from a street vendor, who spent about 10 minutes making the hot tea, cooling it in a glass of ice, squeezing in about 3 limes, stirring in the sugar and so on. And believe me, the price was not 950 bhat. I also went to the next street vendor for a banana crepe.for 10 bhat. The street ventors have a little motorized bicyles with the stove attached and it is actually quite amazing to see them pick up and move from location to location. Not quite the same as the Toronto hot dog ventors who bring their cars and attach the stand to the car!
After the Oriental, I tried to go the Royal Barge museum but it happened to be closed. However, I had to walk through a hospital and it was like a little city. There were 30 thousand doctors, nurses, patients, cleaning staff etc and according to some German medical students I talked with, it was a great hospital. When you visit a hospital in Bangkok, and I occasionally eat in the one beside my school, it is more like an elegant resort than a hospital. I think Thailand is the place to get sick, even for the Thais.
My next stop along the river was Banlampu and Khao San Road where all of the tourists hang out. I was so proud of myself again in my bargaining abilities. After spending about 15 minutes at a clock store buying an alarm clock and spending full price, 500 bhat, I went next store to another clock store and saw the same thing for 350 bhat. I returned to the first store and told them I saw the same clock for sam lois or 300. The woman wanted to give me back my money and let me go next store to get it but her husband yelled at her and she gave me back 200. When I was leaving Khao San road there were two people trying to get a ride to the BTS and negotiating with a tuk tuk driver for a decent fare. He wanted to charge them somthing like 300 bhat. I told them to come with me, jumped in a cab, spoke in Thai, or some relatively close facilime and got us to the subway for 50 bhat. They were backpackers from England and New Zealand. She was working on her Ph.D in Asian movie studies and he was a doctor taking some time away from his practice. I can see that if I was actually traveling alone it would be quite easy to meet fascinating people by simply going to the famous tourist spots and simply start talking. I presume that is what Josh just did in his recent Greece trip which I can’t wait to hear about that trip in December..
To-day, I am not going to check my e mail or answer the phone, in case the owner of the school or someone tries to get hold of me. I am just heading for the airport and getting on a plane for Phuket, a few days early but can’t wait to see Daniel again. He is in Hong Kong doing some business, but we are going to spend the week-end together. It should be great. Stay posted for the pictures! draft by Michael 5:46:00 PM Delete
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