Day 1: In Bangkok

Emerald Buddha temple
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We survived the gruelling over 24 hours worth of flights and arrived in Bangkok at about 2AM time here.  We were exhausted!  But the room was clean, and the beds were... well, FIRM... and we had no trouble falling fast asleep.

We woke up to some lovely banging right outside our door around 10:30AM.  Realizing that sleep was just not going to happen with that noise, we woke up and began the shower routine.  We headed out around 1PM, headed for the famous Khosan Road.  We were starving and quickly found a restaurant that looked pretty busy and had fans :)  Did I mention that it is is HOLY HOT here?

Did I mention that it is HOLY HOT here?

Emerald Buddha temple -- outside decoration
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My first Thai meal was... of course... pad thai and it was fantastic... way better than Thai Express, and I didn't think that was possible.  Liz and Kris had banana pancakes (also amazing!), but they soon ordered themselves a pad thai because mine was just that good.

After lunch/ breakfast, we started walking to the Grand Palace, but we soon got lost, so we boarded a tuk-tuk (operates like a taxi, but is open, drives with diesel fuel and drivers don't follow road rules very well) to complete the journey.  We gave ourselves a pat on the back for our superiour bargaining skills when the driver wanted 500 Baht and we got him down to 100 Baht.  We soon learned that we got seriously ripped off on this very short drive!

Reclining Buddha
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We arrived and went inside to find this beautiful square filled with shimmering pagodas.  We followed the others inside to a temple with the famous Emerald Buddha -- Wat Phra Kaew.  To enter the temple, you had to take off your shoes.  Once inside, all visitors sat on the ground or kneeled in front of the Buddha.

After looking around the Wat for awhile, we looked for the Grand Palace, but we soon found that it was closed due to a ceremony for to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the King's ascension to the Thai throne.  In honour of this mod-5 celebration, the entire city seems to be drapped in yellow; from Christmas-tree like lights lining the roads, to beautiful flowers framing pictures of the King along alley-ways to nearly every single Thai person wearing a yellow polo shirt.  It's quite incredible.  We'll have to go to the Palace on Thursday when it reopens after these festivities.

City centre around Democracy Monument -- all dressed up for King's festivities. Note tuk-tuk in bottom centre!
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After learning about the Palace, we continued on to Wat Po: the home of the famous reclining Buddha.  This site was pretty incredible... this gigantic Buddha statue leaning over like it's watching TV.  I'm sure the pictures won't do it justice.  While in the temple, the sky suddenly became very dark and we took shelter outside the reclining Buddha's home.  We met some guys from San Francisco who told us about a boat procession in honour of the King along the Chao Paraya River.  They set off in that direction to watch the boats and we soon followed.

Democracy monument at night
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What an adventure!  We went down every street for over 20 minutes and at the end of road -- where the river should have been accessible -- was a sea of yellow t-shirted people, blocking the view of the river.  Occassionally, we walked down a more deserted path, but then we were asked for 300 Baht/ person to see "the boats" -- as we kept asking.  While we never did see the boats in person, we saw them on TV while looking into the house of an unsuspecting Thai.  Down the many pathways, we encountered some nice finds, such as a whole bottle filled with pure orange juice for really cheap, as well as fresh pineapple and watermelons.  So it wasn't a loss by any stretch!

a side road
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After all that walking we were getting tired and decided to head back.  We boarded another tuk-tuk, this time destined for another site: the "Giant Swing".  Just another monument, and not a chance for me to live my bungee-jumping dreams, unfortunately.  We then took a wrong turn and found the Golden Mount and Wat Saket, where we came across a group of about 20 monks chanting in unison.  We were the only people watching these monks and it was absolutely incredible -- very calming and surreal experience.  We have good photos.

Yellow-shirted Thais at the Emerald Buddha Temple with us
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We then walked to the Democracy Museum, where we suddenly noticed that the streets were becoming increasingly crowded with yellow-shirted people.  Kris thought that there was probably going to be a parade (again, to do with the King's ascension).  The atmosphere was extremely joyous and celebratory.  There were families just lining the streets -- almost like a parade at Disney Land.  With all the people, we got very disoriented, so we found another tuk-tuk to take us back to the hotel.  The parade route had closed many of the nearby streets, so our driver was not very happy with us because he was very lost and didn't quite know how to get us back to the hotel!    He had to stop many times and laughed heartily at my already-well-used Tourist Map.

Emerald Buddha himself!
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Back at the hotel, we were happy to wash our blackended feet and change into less sweaty clothes.  Lying down proved to be too nice (i.e. we were going to pass out at only 7PM), so we went out again to find some dinner.  After some walking again on Khosan Road, the best place we could find was the our lunch provider, so back we went!  Great food, again, and even better this time because we followed up with some ice cream.  We also tried the local beer, Chang, which was almost like Molson Dry -- but tasted oh so much better because a thirst-quencher was desperately needed!

Us at Wat Pho -- temple with reclining Buddha
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We're pretty exhausted after a long day of walking and feeling the jet lag, so we'll head back soon and straight to bed.

Overall, great first day in Bangkok!!