After four long months, we finally got to meet Dave in Bangkok! It was a great reunion. It was strange waiting for Dave in the arrivals area. Seeing him come around the corner, with a big smile and a huge back pack, was the best feeling. While still in the airport we went to one of the Thai tourist booths, which help you organize tours and day trips. We booked a day trip that included a river boat ride in one of those James Bond boats with the really long prop coming off the motor, and a tour of some temples and the famous Reclining Buddha. We had a day to sleep in, relax and do some walking around Bangkok. Then we were picked up by our guide, Wan, who was a licensed tour guide and spoke very good English.
The river boat ride took us past some very rich river side homes, as well as some homes built on stilts, half on land and half on water. We saw families cooking, doing laundry, and looking after their boats. Each home had a designated area for offerings, which they give three times each day without fail. These include burning incense, saying prayers, and leaving trays of food, drink, coins, clothes, etc. Anything that they think deceased family members might need in the other world. We could see beautiful temples with giant statues of Buddha along the river, as well as the King's Palace.
We didn't visit the palace, but we did vist a few temples. One in particular had the steepest most treacherous staircase I've ever climbed. There's no way they'd allow people on it in Canada. Worker's Comp would be all over it! But the view from the top was great, and we survived both the up and the down trip without injury.
The Reclining Buddha was fantastic. Covered in gold leaf, it's 15m high and 43 m long. My favourite part was the huge feet, with swirls on the bottoms of the toes like fingerprints.
We also went to the Wat Traimit Temple. This temple houses a remarkable, solid gold Buddha with a neat history. While historians believe it was originally built in the 13-14th century, it was significantly altered in about 1767 when Thailand was under threat of invasion by the Burmese. To protect the solid gold Buddha from luting, the monks plastered over it with stucco, and decorated it with mosaics of broken glass. In 1954 it was being moved to a new location, when the ropes broke (they probably weren't expecting a stucco statue to weigh so much!) and some of the stucco broke off, revealing the gold. The monks removed the remaining stucco and discovered the beautiful statue underneath. The clever artisans who built it, had separated it into nine sections that were easily taken apart with a key, that was also found hidden in the stucco. This made it easy to transport the statue to it's new location at Wat Traimit Temple. In the picture you can see that this solid gold, 3m tall, 5.5 tonne statue sits upon a high pedestal that looks like a pile of cushions. At $1400 an ounce the gold is worth about $250 000 000, but of course, to the Thai people, it is a priceless piece of their history.
Along our way we found statues for the kids to pose with. Katie does have luck finding statues of cows!
For dinner, we went to a terrific sushi restaurant. We had mackeral tetaki, served with the bones of the fish beautifully and artfully displayed, showing the freshness of the fish.
We also snacked on the food cooked by street vendors. Usually this consisted of some sort of meat on a stick. One time, Cooper chose a stick that turned out to be chicken livers! It was actualy very tastey. This picture shows a lady selling bags of fresh fruit all peeled, cut up and ready to eat.
Finally, I can't miss mentioning the famous Tuk Tuks! What a great way to zip around town. And I mean ZIP! Our driver looked like he couldn't have been more than 16, and he drove like Enzo Ferrari! If visiting temples isn't your thing, spend the day eating food from the street vendors and zipping around town in a tuk tuk. Too fun!
A monk snoozing on a bus...
