Bangkok

Taking a direct flight from Singapore (Tiger airways), we arrived in Bangkok at 7:50 local time. Since BKK airport is located 30 kilometers (19 miles) to the east of Bangkok, we took an ordinary metered taxi from outside the exit on the 1st floor (you should take the escalator downstairs) to our hotel, located at old Bangkok, which cost 400 baht and took around 45 minutes.
Hotel was quite nice located at the heart of old Bangkok too close to the main road of Bangkok, khaosan road, and main monuments of “The Grand palace”, “Wat Pho”, and ….
Resting at hotel till 11:30, we started our journey by walking toward “Democracy Monument”, and then we took a cab to “The grand Palace”. A stranger was standing out side the palace told us "Saturday is praying day for Buddhism and tourists are not allowed to go inside"! Even though I told him "it is written in tourist guide that palace is open daily from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm", he insisted on his words and advised us to take tuk-tuk to go somewhere else. The main problem of Bangkok is that you should be really smart to survive. There are so many strangers over there try to craft tourists to send them to some other places to get commissions. So, if you are going there by yourself, I strongly advise you to plan your trip in advance and not to trust anyone there at all. If someone offers you a great one-day-only sale on gems, smile faintly and keep on walking. Anyway, asking around, we found a back door for tourists to go in and the palace was open! Grand Palace is a huge beautiful palace which cost you 250 baht per person as entrance fee. However, it is really worth to visit for one time. It is the temple of Emerald Buddha, Thailand’s most revered Buddha image. You can also find the Royal Thai Decorations over there. We were lucky to see halo just above the image of Buddha as well!


After that we went to “Wat Pho” by walking. It is located just behind “the Grand Palace” and it is around 15 min walking. Wat in Thai means temple and “What Pho” is the temple of reclining Buddha. This 46-metre long and 15-metre high gold-plated reclining Buddha, the eyes and the feet inlaid with mother-of-pearl brings to mind the Lord Buddha’s entry into Nirvana. Just behind the “wat pho”, you can find Tha Tian pier to get boat along the Chao Phraya River, for 3 baht and it takes just 5 minutes to go to “wat Arun” which says to be the temple of down. It has a nice view from riverside but to be honest there is not that much to see inside. We prefered to have western lunch at the restaurant of our hotel, and after that we booked the River King cruise as a one day trip to Ayuthaya for the day ater. It cost 1600 bhat per person but we paid 1350 instead. Taking a cab to downtown, after passing a boring heavy traffic jam, we reached Siam Center Sky Train station which is the center of shopping centers over there. You can go to MBK as a cheap center where you can find fake products with a cheap price. If you are not interested in shopping, it would be quite boring and time wasting. Pizza hut at Siam station is a great gift to spoil urself. In menu, I found a buffet salad including tropical fruits, vegetables, Thai spices and mouth watering Thai sauces. You should try it! The interesting point about Thailand is that one SGD is around 22 Baht which means we were considered as rich girls over there. This point had strongly changed the way we ordered, acted with waiters and so on. A quite nice taste of money with dish! Thai people are quite friendly, when I asked the waiter to come and clean my table, he just did it and thanked me for asking that!!! You can ever never expect something similar from a Singaporean!


Anyway, we also found American Donut over there. After dinner, we went back to hotel. The whole stories we had during the day, made us to decide not to experience Bangkok nightlife and go back hotel too early.


The day after, a tour guide picked up us at 6:30 am. to go to Ayuthaya. We were back at around 4:00 pm. After taking a short nap at hotel, we went to Khaosan Road, just hanging out and looking around. The atmosphere was truly friendly with nice shops and so many European backpackers. It was quite refreshing but we had to stay smart all the time since it wasn’t really safe especially at night. We took a cab to Chinatown, but unfortunately because of some matters we had to change our cab. It is too sad to say that you shouldn’t even trust taxi drivers in Bangkok. Anyway, there weren't that much in Chinatown at evening. Most of the shops were closed except dining booths serving local Chinese dishes along the road. After that we went back to khaosan road by taxi and had our dinner at hotel as usual.
I did love Bangkok. It is a nice place with friendly smiley people and full of tourists. Bangkok looks quite like Tehran. I was feeling like I am back home and it was a nice calm taste of Bangkok for the first visit!Tomorrow morning we have a flight to Krabi :)


20 May 2007, Bangkok