Entries about wat

We had to get up early on Sunday; the bus to the floating market would pick us up at 7:30, so for one day, breakfast in the hostel was served at 7 for us, instead of 7:30.

Bein served breakfast at the Sivarin Guesthouse

It was very nice to have an air conditioned bus and the motorboat ride to the floating market was refreshing due to the wind and water. But when I say motorboat, don’t misunderstand. It’s a boat (rather long and narrow and riding low in the water) with a motor on a long stick (they steer by moving the stick from left to right), hence motor boat. They go with reasonable speed on the narrow canals, so the wake is significant and sometimes the boats jump over each other’s waves (which makes some Chinese tourist squeak in your ear *g*).

Life along a canal

House along the water

We took a peddle boat around the floating market. Not cheap, but sites is not what we want to save money on, besides, 150 Baht is still peanuts (1 euro = around 40 Baht). I’m glad we decided to take the boat, because – even though it was rather warm – the experience is not the same from the waterfront. The canals are lined with boats that sell stuff, from groceries to tourist crap (mostly tourist crap) and when you’re paddled past, they stick out their hook on a stick and pull you up next to their boat, so you can ‘peruse the wares’. Besides that, there are literal peddlers: smaller peddle boats from which the Thai sell hats, fruit and even wok a meal for you (as the guide said, you can eat on the boat, drink on the boat, but you cannot sleep on the boat). Now imagine the size of an already narrow channel halved by the boats lining it on both sides, full of tourist boats and add the dozens of salesboats and you can imagine that it’s full. We met several traffic jams on the water, at which point a game of ‘bumper boat’ ensues. The skippers gently bump their boats into that of the person next to them and keep peddling, pushing each other out of the way.

Meals being prepared on the boats

Floating fruit

Link to You Tube.

Once back on shore, we tried kannom krok, a traditional Thai breakfast. It mostly tastes of coconut and is very sweet, but it really wasn’t bad. For my Dutch family and friends, they look like two ‘poffertjes’ stacked on top of each other with the flat side touching. They come filled with pumpkin, spring onion or corn (they like sweet corn here, KFC sells it in an ice cream, imagine a McSundae with corn instead of caramel, weird huh?).

Kannom Krok, a traditional Thai sweet breakfast or desert

After this experience, we got the chance to go to a snake farm, but since lonely planet warned that those are turned into circus spectacles where the keepers ‘fight’ with the snakes, we opted out and went back to Bangkok.

The long ride back to the city left us Hungry, so we grabbed a bite in Kaosan road. It was good, but nothing special, but since Kaoson is the backpacker’s street, it was rather expensive. By that I mean 120 Baht, instead of the 50 we paid the day before.

After lunch we climbed the Golden Mountain. Now that sounds impressive, but it’s really not much more than stairs with an attitude. It gave us a nice view over Bangkok however. Also the weird spectacle of a big assortment of laundry lines, full of money.

Money laundring

Stairway encounter

View from the Golden Mountain

Wat Pho and Wat Arun came next. Wat Pho boasts the largest reclining Buddha in the country: 46 meters long and 16 meters high. It was large and it was a Buddha, that's about all you can say about it. I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

Collection of Prangs

Reclining Buddha

46 meters oong

Me, making Europeans proud

At Wat Arun, we had a ‘Italian softdrink’, which turned out to be syrup (in our case kiwi flavoured) soda and a whole lot of ice. Ice, made from the local tap water. We decided to be brave (or stupid, but warm) and just drink it and hope for the best.

On the boat back to our side of town, we were treated to a gorgeous sunset.

River sunset

After a very nice Japanese noodle soup with roasted pork and a stop at the 7/11 it was time to realize that it can’t be vacation forever: I did the laundry.

Time spent in Asia: 3 days
Number of sights seen: 7

On Saturday we slept in, trying to catch up on some sleep. I also forgot my already trusted notebook (gift from Dima and Ksju, thanks again guys ) so I had to write everything up after we came back to the hostel.

We had a great breakfast of scrambled egg, toast, orange juice and tea at the hostel (they would add two baby bananas on later days).

First breakfast in Asia

After that, we made our way to the National Museum again. This time, we had to buy a 200 Baht ticket each (which is about 4 times the price locals pay, but still only around 5 euro), but at least we could check everything out. We estimated an hour or two, but ended up leaving the 40 room large museum at 16.00 instead of around lunch.

We started with the building that was said to contain the history of Thailand, but what it actually contained mostly, was a long, very long praise of all the kings of the country. Seriously people, the Thais love their king. I, personally, believe they are demi-gods: composing, writing literature and poetry, painting, sculpting, photographing and filming, all of them could do all of it and spectacularly good too, according to the information panes. Oh, and they were skilled strategists and leaders too, of course. You don’t believe me? Several of the kings got two museum rooms for their life stories and a little further into the museum, the seashell collections of the most recently deceased king was displayed.

Other things we saw included an insane amount of Buddha’s. They made us eye roll around number 2.000, but we did manage to learn how to identify some of the postures. For example, he can be meditating, repelling fear, teaching, blessing, giving protection or – and there were a lot of these – subduing Mara. Once we've collected enough Buddha pictures, I will create a seperate post on this with explanations.

We also tried to see how the Thai identify their gods Shiva and Vishnu and Harihara, the result of the two gods merged. Ganesha had his own exposition, but having an elephant head, he wasn’t that hard to recognize to begin with. We strive to learn the features of more Buddhist gods along our way.

We missed one room of the museum, because it was ‘closed for lunch’, which made us laugh. But the room full of enormous golden palanquins and chariots (honestly, the entire museum room was blinding, so much gold) and the filthy cheap but tasteful meal at the museum restaurant, more than made up for it. Although I must confess, Gege accidentally stole my Pad Thai (which was tasteful) and I got his dish (which consisted of something green in a slimy sauce (and was rather weird and not that good). But oh well, I got tasty (although peppery) vegetable soup, while he was rewarded with hot and sour soup that was so hot, it made him cough and he didn’t finish it for stomach safety. So all was fair in the end .

We were stumped several times in our search for a toilet by meeting squatting toilets with a shower for your ass instead of toilet paper. And I might not have a choice later, but while in civilized Bangkok, I’m opting for toiletpaper.

After our prolongued tour of the museum – during which we were, unfortunately, not allowed to take pictures – we got on a boat to cross the Chao Praya river into Chinatown. It was not the hustle and bustle we expected, but then again, we arrived around closing time. We did find a fun restaurant to eat: a Chinese chain named Texas.

Cable jungle

Chinatown tourist crap

Crab display

A whole duck

On our way back to the hostel, we picked up some fresh pinapple and enjoyed some nice evening scenes.

Neon bridge

Sunset from the dock

The evening was mostly spend on selecting and editing pictures, but we also took a short walk, during which we were surprised by an outdoor and apparently free aerobics class. Now I'm no stranger to gyms, but this was a bit high level for me.

You Tube link.

Also, if any of you have any questions whatsoever about Thailand, the people, the culture, the weather etc. Feel free to ask. I will do my best to answer.

Time spent in Asia: 2 day
Number of sights seen: 4