Exotic Bangkok

Day 3  Monday, April 2, 2018   Bangkok

Our first tour stop was Wat Pho (watt-poh), the oldest and largest in Bangkok (Thailand has about 32,000 temples). It was home to the huge Reclining Buddha and the place of origin of the famous Thai massage; it now houses Thailand's Massage College.

The day began with looking out our room window and seeing how pretty our setting was, on the river and in a lush setting with a beautiful swimming pool. We headed down to the buffet breakfast which was right over next to the river. The food choices were amazing, seeming more like brunch than breakfast with all the entrees offered. They even had sushi, so I had lots of that.

Here's how lush the grounds were in the pool area as we walked to the buffet restaurant.

After breakfast, we showed up at the appointed time, 9 am, and began to meet some of the other 34 on our tour. It turned out we were all Americans. We got to wondering about this tour given that our guide, Nu, didn't show up until about 9:20. I never heard an excuse from him, but I must say, that was the only criticism we had about Nu for the entire seven days he was with us. We loved him as a tour guide.

We had a fancy modern bus, with three Gate 1 staff always with us - Nu, the bus driver, and a helper. The other two spoke no English, but were always helping out giving us hand wipes, bottles of water, and controlling traffic if we needed to cross streets getting onto or off the bus.

We saw this sort of ornate and elaborate architecture during our entire tour, but Wat Pho was our first exposure to it, so I took lots of photos. 98% of the citizens are Buddhists.

I wanted to get a close-up to show how intricate the carvings and painting are - everywhere!

 Those round "pyramid" thingies are called stupas, or chedi, which hold the ashen remains of wealthy citizens. Every temple ("wat") we visited or could see had these stupas. By the way, you can see from these photos that it was overcast, which was a blessing because even without any sunshine, it was hot and muggy.

There's our group listening to Nu describe the various temple sights in our headphones. We are in front of a large stupa, with the colorful lotus flower paintings all over it.

And of course the Buddha statues...everywhere. Nu said that Wat Pho had 1000 Buddhas scattered about, the most of any temple in the country. I'll spare you many of the other photos I took of lines like this of identical-looking Buddhas. The exact position of the Buddha and his hands, called the "mudra", have specific meanings. This one is called "calling the world to witness", and is the most common mudra to be seen in Thailand. 

And the Buddhas came in all sizes! The largest was famous for how huge it was:

The Reclining Buddha - 140 feet long and 15 feet tall. It is super-heavy because it's made of concrete. It "floats" on a wooden platform over a pool of water to allow for movement or actual river flooding.

Yes, it was huge.

This intricate display lay along the base of the Reclining Buddha, with its two little reclining Buddhas and about six other Buddhas.

Perhaps the most impressive sight at Wat Pho was this "principal Buddha image," displaying the meditation mudra seated on a richly decorated pedestal, under which some of the ashes of King Rama I are buried. Our guide, Nu, made sure we knew that if we sat down, we were not supposed to let our feet be pointed towards the Buddha.

More pretty scenes walking around the vast temple grounds, with the waterfall and yet another incredible temple behind.

More temples and stupas, but I also noticed a fellow up on the roof of the temple in the center back. What was he doing?

He was yawning! Actually, he was painting, but just as I snapped my close-up of him, he yawned.

Another spot had standing Buddhas, and the mudra with hands facing outward means "absence of fear" or "calming the ocean."

Another photo of large stupas with incredible intricacies carved throughout.

On our departure, I saw this "welcome" in English on a small lawn. (The workers were erecting something in front, so the poles are in my photo.)

The main reason I took this picture (of their Technical Defense Command) was because of the large photos out front of the the previous king and the current king. One of the primary cultural learnings we had during our Thailand tour was how much the citizens, including our tour guide, adore their royal family - at least the previous king who died in October, 2016 after 70 years on the throne (the longest of any king).

There have been 10 kings of the Chakri dynasty starting in 1782, known as Rama I through 10. Rama IV, who reigned in the mid 19th century, was made famous by The King and I. Rama IX became king at age 17, in 1946, when his brother was assassinated after only a year on the throne. He was a king "of the people", open with his subjects throughout his life and active in so many worldly pursuits and research. His photos, and oftentimes his queen's, were everywhere. Our tour guide spoke lovingly of him throughout our tour. Not so much for his son, the current king, Rama X. In this blog, I will show many other displays of King Rama IX's public pictures.

After the bus dropped us off back at the hotel, we decided to use the hotel's boat to travel about 10 minutes north (up river) to a busy area to look around and have a beer and snack. This boat shuttle departed every 30 minutes.

There were only four of us on the ride up. It was so "routine" and uncrowded on the river, that you can see both boatmen in front looking down at their cell phones.

As we cruised along, this photo shows two riverfront buildings on either side with the traditional Thai "temple" look, along with the modern high rises in the background.

After we departed the boat, we began to wander the streets. My eye caught this Carnation vendor, so I quickly snapped the photo. But what I didn't realize until days later, and after seeing multiple street vendors displaying stacked cans of both Carnation Evaporated Milk and Sweetened Condensed Milk, was that the most popular Thai drink is called Thai Iced Tea. It is actually world famous, consumed in Thai restaurants around the world, and is almost always made with the two Carnation products. It is hardly like real tea since it is creamy and sweet. But vendors use the Carnation brand, and the displays of the two canned products, to advertise that they are selling Thai Iced Tea.

From the moment our airport transfer car got off the freeway in downtown Bangkok, we were shocked by the massive tangles of electrical lines and cables along every single street. This was my first photo to demonstrate this, but we saw much more dramatic examples in the hours and days to come. No matter which city we passed through in the coming days, the streets always had the mass of cables.

For example, check this out, above. It wasn't until the next morning that Nu explained why they have these wires like this: They keep adding cable lines, and never remove the obsolete ones.

We had to laugh at the likely plight this fellow faced in trying to figure anything out up there in the maze. What if he touched an open live wire???

Although I don't have a picture, another site we saw in abundance no matter where we were in the country were 7-11 stores. In Bangkok, I'm not exaggerating to say that they were about every 50 yards along every street. In many cases, they would be directly across the street from each other. 

One thing Thailand is famous for is their street vendors, which were SOLID along every street on our walk. We wanted to have a snack and a beer, but were too scared to try anything from the vendors because we weren't sure about the sanitation, nor did they speak English for us to know what something was or what it cost. So, we looked for a more traditional cafe or restaurant with printed menus in English. We found this spot, open to the street, with an extensive menu of inexpensive items and cheap beer. This half-liter mug was only 100 Bhat, or $3. We also got a plate of spring rolls as you can see. Of course, in the background, you can see the bundle of wires in the corner of the building.

We strolled back to the dock to catch the hotel's shuttle, which was right under this bridge. We were a bit early, so I walked up the stairs to the pedestrian walkway to catch these views and some photos. All the boats in the photo were tourist boats, but there also were numerous barges pulled by tugs.

On the stairway to the bridge, this fellow had tied up a hammock and appeared to be sound asleep. If there's an opportunity for a nap, take it!

Once back to the hotel, I went to the fitness room to ride, and Janet went to the pool. She visited with a fellow from our tour, who had his wife, two daughters, and a son-in-law along for the trip. After my cycling, I also went into the pool to cool off.

Before dinner, we had a group "welcome" meeting during which Nu explained stuff and we also passed the mike to introduce ourselves. We were asked to tell everyone how many other Gate 1 tours we'd been on, so I told of our Morocco fiasco.

We then ate dinner at the same buffet restaurant where we had had breakfast, and it was covered by Gate 1. There was such an elaborate display of items to choose from. Janet and I loved all the food (all week long!).

After dinner, Nu led us all about a half mile up the street to a big shopping area, called Asiatique, that in decades past was a river port warehouse complex. The main thing Nu was promoting was a "lady-boy" show, in which men in drag lip-sang. Nu made it sound like it was so entertaining, but we decided to skip it (we later heard from those who attended that "no one" in our group liked it). We got this photo of Chang beer's display of their elephant logo.

Even their ferris wheel was Chang branded! Janet and I wandered around all the vendor stalls looking for marionette puppets since Tyson had requested one, but we never saw any. There were, of course, millions of souvenirs on display, and the vendors were not shy about pushing their wares on us as we strolled by looking.

On the walk to Asiatique, we passed this menu for a street vendor, and Nu stopped to chuckle with us about the fifth item. He said it actually stands for "curried rice with peas."

Janet and I walked back to the hotel by ourselves, and quickly went to bed. It wasn't too late - I think about 9 pm, but our time zones were still out of whack.