The big goals for Day 2 in Bangkok were to see the Royal Palace and to explore Chinatown (weird, right?). That sounds like a very easy thing to accomplish, but we completely wore ourselves out and walked over 8 miles in one day! We left the hotel intent on taking the local boat ferry up the river to get to the Royal Palace. While the first day we had been confused about how this system works (because, there's no actual system) and were bombarded by tourist-trap expensive "long-boat" tours, on day 2 we were confident and deftly (kind of) brushed off the aggressive advances of the tour promoters and made our way to the boat. After forking over our $1 (for the two of us) we arrived at the Royal Palace.
The first thing we noticed is that there are Chinese tour groups EVERYWHERE. Seriously, I think that all 1 billion Chinese citizens all came to see the Royal Palace this week. Maybe America's reputation of being the loud, obnoxious tourists is going to be lessened in the future by the Chinese's arrival. The second thing that we soon discovered is that they are VERY strict about the dress code for visitors in the Royal Palace. Men and women need to have their legs completely covered. This has led to the fascinating introduction of a thriving industry around holy sites: elephant pants! Countless vendors sell cheaply-made pants with elephant patterns on them for about $3. Emily and I are a bit skeptical about the authenticity of the strict dress code, and think it was invented solely to grow the local elephant-pants economy, but oh well. The unintended consequence is that nearly all the backpackers in Southeast Asia have a strange uniform of elephant pants and light cotton t-shirts.
But we digress...the Royal Palace was truly amazing, and you have to see the pictures to really get a sense of the grandeur of the place. They've kept the grounds and buildings immaculately restored, which was really cool to see. The grounds are filled with golden temples and giant sculptures of "guards." I'm not even going to try to describe it, and will post all the pictures later. The highlight of the Royal Palace is the chapel of the Emerald Buddha. The centerpiece is the Emerald Buddha, a Buddha image carved from a single piece of jade. They don't seem to know where it originated, but it is highly revered and they take it VERY seriously. The Emerald Buddha has different clothes for the various seasons, which the king himself (who was born in Harvard -- BOO!) changes. The Emerald Buddha sits on a gigantic golden throne, and the whole room is watched over very closely by guards who make sure that no one is taking pictures or pointing the soles of their feet towards the Buddha (but really, a scary guard with an insanely hairy mole made another man delete a picture off hhis camera, and yelled at me for the positioning of my feet!).
After a nice air conditioned lunch of pad thai and soup, we headed for Chinatown. I'm not sure what we thought Chinatown was going to be like, but it was so much crazier than we could have anticipated. It's a several square block section of the city that is one continuous market. The whole thing is covered, and there are store fronts, vendors, and shops on all sides. You get the sense that it just goes on forever, which it basically does. It's basically the Shuk in Jerusalem, x100. There are a lot of cloth wholesalers, knock-off designer bag stores, and strange food stalls. It's a strange place because you can get ANYTHING you could imagine, but it's impossible to figure out how to navigate the place or find what you want. We walked around in a bit of a daze for at least an hour, just soaking in the sights, sounds, and smells.
Once we were sick of the smells of Chinatown, we headed towards the outdoor flower market. We're not sure how this economy is profitable, because there seem to be countless flower vendors and I just can't imagine that so many people need to buy flowers everyday, but they're still in business so it must work. It was very beautiful and smelled amazing, but we were quite worn out by that point, and headed back to the hotel for a nap and a relaxing dinner near the hotel for our last night in Bangkok.
A quick note on the taxi situation in Bangkok before we move on to Hanoi. Basically, every taxi is trying to COMPLETELY screw foreign tourists, and it's kind of difficult to stop them. We had some costly mistakes at the beginning, but became total pros by the end. What would you expect to pay for a short taxi ride in the States, $8? $10? That's what we figured too, and that's how they get you. When we first got to Bangkok, we had a 10 minute drive to our hotel. "300 baht" said the taxi driver. That seemed reasonable, being about $9. We paid him, and everything seemed fine. The next day, we had the manager of the hotel call us a taxi to take us to downtown Bangkok, which should have been a 40 minute ride. He told us it would be a 500 baht flat fee, which we should pay the hotel. Seemed reasonable, only about $15. Our first night out in Bangkok we took a Tuk-Tuk: a taxi-cart pulled by a motorcycle. We had a 20 minute ride, which the driver demanded 300 baht for. It was about this time that we started doing some online research into the taxis, and found that you're supposed to ALWAYS get the meter, as it is about 3 times cheaper. Once we started doing this, the fares dropped to absurdly low prices. 15 minute ride across town? $2. Hour-long ride back to our hotel? $4. Return trip to the airport? $9. The hardest thing about the taxis is finding one that's willing to play the game honestly! We had countless taxis turn us away when the first thing we said was "meter, ok?" It was like they were disappointed that they couldn't squeeze us for some more baht. Ok, enough whining about that. It's a good example, however, of how valuable (and difficult) it is to get "insider" information while traveling.
And that was it for Bangkok! Kind of amazing that we only had a few days there, but we tried to make the most of it. We'll pass through a few more times, as it's a hub of travel in SE Asia, but for now we're moving on to Vietnam, starting with Hanoi! Post to come soon.
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