We hired a tour guide to show us around the Grand Palace, one of the best ideas we’ve had yet. Jakie gave us a wealth of knowledge about Thai history, the current ruling family, and a little bit of politics. She also threw in some shade umbrellas and cold water for our hour and a half walk through the grounds. The Grand Palace really is beautiful and worth a visit. It is so full of history in a country that really has been through a lot of different time periods and under many different influences, it’s interesting to see it all culminate in one place.
After the Grand Palace tour, we walked through the local Amulet Market and watched Thai men already wearing multiple lucky amulet necklaces dig through piles to look for the “real ones.” Whatever makes an amulet real or fake is probably something we will never understand!
The next stop was the Wat Pho complex, home of the world’s largest reclining Buddha. This is a massive image of Buddha lying on his side as he dies and reaches Nirvana, and at Wat Pho he is covered in gold leaf. He looks incredibly serene and peaceful, but the most impressive part are his feet: intricately detailed pictures inlaid with mother of pearl cover the larger than life soles of his feet. Other than the hundreds of tourists in a very small space, the Reclining Buddha is gorgeous! We wandered around the complex for awhile before we decided that we were “wat-ed” out for the trip. We headed back to Koh San Road to check things out.
It was strange to see so many people just started their trip as ours is coming to a close. We walked through the market and finally found the hammocks we have been searching for the entire trip. Koh San Road and the surrounding area is just ridiculous… the streets are lined with vendors, most of whom have signs that read “Will Buy Anything” and will also sell tourists anything they want. Behind the vendors are a line of travel agencies, internet cafes, bars, and restaurants. Above these are the guest houses. People say that Koh San Road never sleeps, and those who stay there spend their nights on the street and their days asleep. We were enthralled in the mad house, but glad to be a few blocks away!
After an afternoon nap and our last Thai massage (for real this time!), we went to a Thai restaurant for dinner and had one of the best meals yet in this country. The food was wonderful and a local photographer was showing his prints in the restaurant, so we had some lovely art to look at. When we had sufficiently gorged ourselves, we walked to Koh San Road to spend our remaining baht on beers at a street side bar and watch the madness. It is really very entertaining to watch the range in traveler types pass us: from the overdressed to the barely dressed, from suitcases to empty handed, from smashed to sober, from the bald to the dreadlocks, this little slice of Bangkok has every type of tourist you can imagine. When our baht was spent, we went back to our quiet room and curled up for our last night traveling.
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