Day Six: Riverboats, the Grand Palace, Operation Khao San Road, Wat Po, and Cabbages & Condoms

We began the day by taking a riverboat up to the older part of Bangkok where the Grand Palace and most famous temples (wats) are located. You have to wear long pants into the palace and wats, but it’s hot here, so we wore our convertible pants, which turned out to be a good call. First stop was the Grand Palace, which contains both a palace and the Wat of the Emerald Buddha. The Emerald Buddha is a relatively small Buddha carved from a solid block of jade hundreds of years ago in Northern Thailand. As I understand it, the Laotians took it from a now-defunct Northern Thai kingdom a few hundreds of years ago, and the Thais took it back in another way a few years later. The Emerald Buddha has three outfits, each worn for 1/3 of the year. One is for the hot season (springish), one for the rainy season (summer/fallish), and one for the “cold” season (fall/winterish). (I put “cold” in quotation marks because we’re here during the cold season, and it’s still what I would call “hot,” but I live in Seattle, so what do I know about hot…)

There are several smaller temples or temple-like structures in the complex surrounding the Emerald Buddha. There’s also an intricate mural surrounding the entire Emerald Buddha complex depicting a series of battles (at least partly mythical, but probably based in historical events). The Grand Palace itself is an early 19th century building that has not been the primary residence of the royal family for the past 50 years or so. You can’t go inside, but there’s a nearby museum with some palace artifacts.

For lunch, I wanted to try a Thai vegetarian place I read about in Frommers called May Kaidee’s. On the map, it looked like it was about a 15 minute walk from the Grand Palace. Unfortunately, since the restaurant is located on an unnamed “sub soi” (alley), we spent at least 30 hot, tired minutes wandering around Khao San Road looking for the restaurant. Khao San Road was an experience in and of itself. It’s the backpacker/budget travel district, cheap, chaotic, kind of sketchy, young, and mostly foreigners. It must also be the Israeli tourist district, because we saw a few Hebrew signs (we also saw an Israeli family at the Grand Palace).

After we were ready to give up, we Thai clerk at a guest house, who directed us to a Kiwi or British backpacker hippie sitting in front of the guesthouse, who looked at the directions and told us exactly where May Kaidee’s was (we were close, but we would not have found it without his help). The restaurant was good (and cheap), and Khao San Road was quite an experience, but it still wasn’t so much fun wandering around lost for the better part of an hour with bad directions. We decided to take a taxi to Wat Po (our next stop). As mentioned, Bangkok has both tuk tuks and taxis. Tuk tuks are cheaper and easier to find (in fact, it’s difficult to walk down the street without being solicited repeatedly by tuk tuk drivers), but taxis are real cars, air conditioned, still relatively plentiful, and still cheap. After what would have been at least a 20 minute walk became a 5 minute drive in air conditioning that was not at all scary and only cost us 50 baht ($1.30 or so), we did not regret the decision to jump in a cab.

Wat Po is most famous for its Giant Buddha. “Giant” is not an exaggeration; the Buddha (which is reclining) is 140 feet long and 50 feet high. There are a number of other monuments around the wat, including dozens of “chedis” (mounds) and a few additional halls. Wat Po is also the historic Thai massage school. We went to the massage center, but there was a long wait. Fortunately, a friend who has traveled to Thailand many times told us that there’s a satellite massage center a few minutes away from the temple by foot (which is actually the headquarters of the massage school). We went there and found no wait (and along the way, we walked through the part of the temple where the monks live. The massage place was Spartan, but the people were professional, and we left feeling much better.

From the Wat Po massage center, we went back to the riverboat dock. The boat we had taken in the morning was a nice boat with seats and plenty of space. The afternoon’s boat was older, smaller, and crammed full of people standing. Definitely would not meet USCG regulations. But the sunset views were nice, and we made it back in once piece.

For dinner, we went to Cabbages and Condoms, a Thai restaurant in a tourist area (Sukhumvit Road) founded by a guy who runs a safe sex nonprofit. The restaurant serves good Thai food, and it’s condom-themed. Seriously. Everything is decorated with condoms. In the middle of dinner, Tenaya pointed out the couple at the table behind me—a middle-aged British man with a younger Thai woman. I listened to their conversation for a few minutes, and it became abundantly clear that this was a prostitute-customer relationship, albeit a regular, long-term relationship (as far as I can tell, he regularly travels to Thailand and meets her). Among other things, he was commenting on how one of his friends had asked to meet one of her friends, and he wasn’t sure which friend it would be, which was apparently a problem. He also explained how he’d give her money whenever she needed it, how he “usually saw” Filipina “girls” when he was traveling in Hong Kong, and how in London it’s considered rude to smile at the “girls” or make conversation with them. It was interesting…

Some additional notes:

• To go into temples, you need to take your shoes off. There are usually shoe racks for “Thai people” and “foreigners.” There’s no evident difference between the two racks, and I committed a small act of civil disobedience by using the “Thai people” rack at Wat Po.
• Also on the topic of taking shoes off at temples, I have to say I was a bit concerned about leaving my shoes out unsecured, because having shoes stolen would really be unpleasant. But that doesn’t seem to be a concern here, probably along the lines of the “Sunday truce” I learned about in Season Three of The Wire.
• On CNN, we saw that supporters of the former government have surrounded parliament and are demanding new elections. We didn’t walk by parliament, and I’ve seen no evidence of the political issues here except on TV.
• I continue to be amazed by the volume and variety of goods being sold on the streets here, not just in the explicit market areas like Khao San and the Weekend Market, but also on regular sidewalks. As far as I can tell, one of the defining characteristics of Bangkok is the ability to buy virtually anything (except possibly drugs, but including prostitutes) without significant concern about running into legal issues (in Thailand, at least…getting your counterfeit goods back in the U.S. is another matter). (For the record, we have purchased nothing and do not intend to purchase anything that would be illegal in the U.S.; I’m just noting what seems to be easily available here for those who are interested.)
• I had heard that Thai people don’t use chop sticks to eat, except for noodles. We ate at two Thai restaurants today, and one gave us chop sticks and no fork, while the other one gave us a fork and no chop sticks. We ordered curry at both places. Any ideas?
• From a purely nonscientific, anecdotal perspective, I see no evidence of a tourist slowdown here; things seem perfectly crowded.
• On the BTS train, I saw an ad for a beer called Federbrau (they have TVs running loops of ads on the train). At dinner, it was on the menu, so I ordered to find out what it was, confused by the German name and the “domestic beer” price. Turns out it’s a Thai beer brewed German-style, and it’s actually quite good.
• On the way to Cabbages and Condoms, I saw a guy riding an elephant down Sukhumvit Road.
• The Thai use pencils more than Americans do; on multiple occasions I’ve been given pencils at the hotel and in restaurants where I would have expected pens.
• In the past two days, I’ve seen Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs. This city is really quite a global crossroads.
  

Pictures to follow; an unorganized set here.