I wasn't feeling very well on our last day in Bangkok. Actually, I was *really* sick, and I wonder if I may have eaten something bad. But because I was sick, we didn't get to do everything we had planned to do. We checked out of the hotel around noon (I needed to get a lot of rest), got in a taxi, and set out to see a palace. Here's a picture of what it looks like in your typical Thai taxi. A lot of the drivers have a little Buddha altar on their dashboards and strange-looking designs painted in white on the ceiling. If anyone can explain these designs, please let me know.
We found out when we got to the palace that it was closed on Saturdays. The man at the palace gate said I wouldn't have been able to go in wearing shorts anyway. He suggested that we visit some Buddhist temples instead. So we got in a tuk-tuk and headed for a temple called "Wat Sraket" or "Golden Mount." For those who don't know what a tuk-tuk is, here's a picture of one.
A street vendor outside the palace...
We arrived at Golden Mount. Our tuk-tuk driver said he would wait for us, and then take us to another temple. Here are some scenes from outside the temple.
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To get to the temple, which is the gold pointy thing in the picture above, you have to walk up about 4,000,000 steps. The steps spiral all the way up to the top. But there are plenty of things to see on the way up. Here's Sangho in front of a little waterfall. See the buddha hiding way in the back?
Buddhas were hiding in the trees too...
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More scenes... does anyone know who these three gold guys are?
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People ringing the bells...
We finally made it to the top!
Here's the gold pointy thing at the very top of Golden Mount...
We took off our shoes and went inside, where we saw... that's right... more buddhas. Did you know that the buddha with the fat tummy is a Chinese buddha, and the thin buddha with the pointy hat is a Thai buddha?
Buddhists lighting incense and praying to Buddha...
Looking out of any of the huge, open windows, you could look out at the city of Bangkok. The nicer-looking buildings in the middle are more temples.
On the way back down, we saw the biggest buddha of all... or so we thought, until we realized there was an even bigger one behind him. He was behind a big glass window, so it was difficult to get a good picture of him.
Here's me. If I look sick, it's because I am.
By the time we made it back to where our tuk-tuk driver was waiting, I was pretty sick. I knew I couldn't make it through another temple. We no longer had our room at the hotel, so we decided to go to the most relaxing place we could think of... a massage parlor. We asked the driver to take us back to Kaosan Road. On the way there, he tried to sell us this story about how his friend would give him a free tank of gas if we would "look around" his friend's store for 5-10 minutes. I had heard about these kinds of scams, where the foreigner is taken to a store and pressured to buy some fake diamonds or something. So I told the guy I was really sick, and if he didn't take us to Kaosan Road I was going to throw up in his tuk-tuk. He took us to Kaosan Road. Here's where Sangho got a Thai massage and an oil massage, and where I got a foot massage and a facial.
After our massages, we headed back to our hotel (our bags were there). We got something to eat at one of the restaurants inside the hotel. The waitress brought us these strange-looking things in a bowl. We asked her what they were, and I am fairly certain she said they were "shell nuts," but I'm not 100% sure. Here's Sangho with his Singha Gold (his favorite Thai beer), and the "shell nuts."
Shell nuts close up...
After that, I went to the hotel's shower room for a shower, and Sangho went to the massage parlor next door for one last foot massage. Then it was off to the airport for our 1:00 a.m. flight back to Seoul. I can't wait to go back to Thailand...
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