The rest of my trip was fantastic. After i left off with my last post, i made it to the airport and flew the one hour flight to bangkok without incident. I made it to my guesthouse and was happy to find the "boutique" review of the place was dead on. Teak floors and beams in a beautiful old building with a cute little coffee/bakery place at the entrance. Jaesun, the new friend i'd met in siem reap (and toured the temples with) had arrived in bangkok a couple of days before me, and we'd discussed meeting up for the day on monday. We managed to find each other at the train station and (along with another new friend briana), took the train 1.5 hours to ayuthaya, where we found more temple ruins, and i took an elephant ride!! Returning to bangkok by 3pm, we walked through chinatown, grabbed dinner at a noodle place, and found some markets to peruse. Briana returned to her guesthouse, and jaesun and i took the ferry up the river (snapping photos of wat arun, etc. at night), and then walked through banglamphu- the "backpacker" area. The rain (which it appears to do in the evening for a few hours) made everything feel cleaner and gave my photos a nice light.
Tuesday morning, i got going early to see wat arun and wat pho (two more well known of the hundreds of temples). They were interesting, particularly wat pho, which contained the reclining buddha. It was HUGE. I met up with jaesun after finishing the temples and we saw the grand palace and grounds. The only word i have for this is "glittery." The amount of effort that must have gone into (and still go into) creating and maintaining these grounds is staggering. Though the admission price was steep, it was worth seeing.
One note i'd share with anyone planning to visit this area, is that it's imperative that you physically go to the ticket counter in the grand palace to confirm if they're open or closed. I was told by three completely different people that the palace was closed to tourists because of a buddhist holiday. One of these men was a tuk tuk driver (and therefore trying to get us to pay him to take us to other sights), but the other two men were wearing official palace uniforms and were still trying to pass us off to tuk tuk drivers. DON'T LISTEN TO THEM!! Everything the guidebooks tell you about scams, etc, is true. Jerks. While tuk tuk's are the way to travel in cambodia, they're to be avoided in bangkok!
After the whirlwind morning, i took a quick shower before heading to the airport for my return to hong kong. I was safely in the house by 10pm, just two hours before my birthday (in this time zone, that is).
2 comments:
It's about time-- I was having heretohere withdrawal hahahaha =) So happy to read (and see) that you've been living life to the fullest out there... I can't say it enough, everything you've done looks amazing!!
It kind of weird to think that we were in the same places in Asia so close to the same time. I thought about you so much while I was there. I still think it would of been fantastic to have been there together!
We need to go somewhere sometime together!
Post a Comment