One day in Bangkok

We woke up early to Skype our families for Father’s Day! We use the internet a lot out here and it does an amazing job at helping us feel connected, but this was one of those times that it really seemed like a miracle. We used Google + to do a giant Graf video chat from Thailand, New York, Arizona, Lindon, and even a car ride to Vail, Colorado! We’d seen the Google + ads featuring the group chat, but honestly, it was the coolest thing and really made us feel like we were all sitting around chatting on Father’s Day—a huge accomplishment considering we were eating breakfast at a hostel in Bangkok! We called the Lamb home, where every other member of the family just happened to have gathered earlier that day, and we felt like it was as good as it could be to get to video chat and be apart of it!

We started out with a plan to do a walking tour as set out by our Lonely Planet Discover Thailand book, so we walked to the historical sights from our hostel. Here we met our first overly helpful Thai stranger who offered to get us a tuk tuk, or motorized taxi cart, for really cheap to take us down to the harbor for a 900 baht boat tour (about $30). We somehow wiggled our way out of that one, but man, these guys are pretty good! It was the first of many “wily strangers” as the signs call them, and we got good at not letting them ask their questions and pull us in to whatever they want us to spend money on. Such a joke!

Where we intended to start our walking tour--the Grand Palace

The forementioned wily stranger told us that the Grand Palace was closed to non-Thai people until 1 pm, and although we weren’t sure if he was lying or not, we were on the opposite block from the entrance so we decided to start  with the temple structure of Wat Pho, most well-known for the reclining Buddha. Wat Pho is also the birthplace of Thai massage!

He's huge!

We never see American flags here! We had begun to feel unappreciated, so we were super excited to see this one.

Free water! And boy do tourists need it in Bangkok. We managed to go our entire trip without buying any--a huge accomplishment!

At this point we realized we were hungry, so we sat down on a bench to consult our tourist book, when all of the sudden another helpful stranger latched onto us and started asking the same questions. Where are you going? Where are you from? Have you been to the Grand Palace? Do you need a tour? These people are relentless! We told him we were looking for a place to eat and he pointed around the corner. We managed to shake him down the street, and what do you know, he was actually right about finding food around the corner! One rule we try to follow in any situation is to not eat at restaurants who don’t have customers, but here in Thailand we try not to eat at restaurants who don’t have any Thai customers. It’s a way to spot and avoid the really touristy, overpriced food! We passed up a restaurant with plenty of white people for a restaurant where the tables and chairs were literally on the sidewalk. We had delicious Chinese style noodles and Pad Thai, and were content with the fact that we had found ourselves food so quickly for so cheap, and had to give the wily stranger some credit for helping us.

Eating on the sidewalk

Delicious!

After lunch we set off to find Wat Arun, a temple that was built when the capitol of Siam was moved to Bangkok. We knew we had to take a ferry across a river to get there, but we hadn’t found any more details than that. We walked down an alley way full of hilarious sights--boxes of dried fish and squid, cartoon massages, and ESL at its finest--to get to the ferry entrance.

Turns out the ferry cost a whopping 3 baht (10 cents) to go across. We get charged that much for the bathroom sometimes! The ride across the river took all of a whole minute, and we were soon on our way.

Waiting to board

Riding across the river

Sometimes, you just can’t help but be a tourist. Sometimes you have to completely be aware of what you are doing and how over-the-top or showy it is, but you just smile and go along with it. And then you pay money to have someone dress you up in Siamese royalty outfits and take pictures of you. And you never regret a second of it!

Finally we made it to the Grand Palace, where lucky Justin got to rent some pants to cover past his knees. The history of this place is awesome.  Everything is so incredibly ornate and detailed, they just put their best in for the royalty! Nat told us that the best of everything in Thailand is found in the Grand Palace, and we could see what he meant! In one of the temples, we saw an artist touching up the gold paint on one of thousands of murals on the wall.  Another cool thing about this place: a lot of the Gold really was gold, not just the colored paint you see on most of the temples around here.  The palace is where the Royal family lived until the former king was assassinated there.  The temples on ground were the most stunning things we saw on our trip, and they house the Emerald Buddha- the symbol of Thai Buddhism.

We've been wanting a good picture of Thai Buddhist monks since we got here.  This one was perfect!

You're not supposed to take a picture of the Emerald Buddha, but we sneakily tried to get this one. Too bad  Asians are professional photo-bombers.

After the grand palace, we caught a tuk tuk from a persistant driver who offered us a deal we couldn’t pass up, and we went on what felt like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride through the city to the mall, darting in and out of traffic, changing lanes, and accelerating towards red lights. It was exciting, to say the least.

The Siam Paragon mall is HUGE, with seven floors, a movie theater, an aquarium, and a supermarket. We explored a bit and then saw Madagascar 3 (loved it!! Laughed our heads off, we highly recommend it), which was really fun since we haven’t seen a movie in the theater since the Hunger Games, I think. It felt so normal to buy movie tickets and popcorn! We settled into our seats and laughed at the over-dramatized previews for orange-flavored milk and collagen drink for your skin. One preview in particular started and before we knew it, everyone in the theater stood up so we hurried and followed suit. It was a tribute to the king! There were many pictures and videos showing his goodness and the service he has rendered for Thailand, with a children’s choir playing in the background. It was quite touching to see that the reverence and respect they have for their king even permeates non-political things like seeing a movie! The movie started, and I know what you’re thinking: no the movie was not in Thai! It was in English and there were Thai subtitles. We saw it in 3D and the subtitles even stood out a little..it was a nice touch haha.

We were too exhausted to fight our taxi driver about using the meter to calculate the price on the way home, so we over-paid but it was worth it to get home and hit the sack again!