Bangkok Day 2 Part 2

Found a tiny 7-Eleven, but this will do just fine. Must hydrate.

I am a Singha man, Singha water for me.

Our next destination is not too far from the Grand Palace, so we decided to just walk. There are probably only 5 other people walking out here with us, almost all tourists are on a bus.

I believe this is the defense ministry with the cannons out front. We are around a bunch of government buildings here.

This thing looks modern.

Right across from this more traditional building.

Double decker and way over the top. I guess if you came in on this bus, you’d have a hard time getting back on the wrong bus.

Found Wat Pho, our next destination. As we were outside looking for an entrance, a tuk tuk driver approached us. He asked how we were doing and where we were from…I’ve got a bad feeling about this. He told us that there’s a prayer going on inside Wat Pho right now, and that it wouldn’t open again until 1pm. He asked if we would like to take a tour of a floating market instead….Hmmm…I don’t trust this man. We decided to leave and see if he’s lying to us or not.

Yup, he was lying to us. The temple is open for business, Motherfucker lied to us. Good thing we didn’t fall for it. RL and I decided to come up with a code word for whenever we encounter someone who we don’t have a good feeling about. We will say “Booie”, which is our nickname of our dog whenever one of us gets a bad feeling.

OK, this is nice and all, but where is the famous reclining Buddha?

Found, it’s so hot here!!!

Reclining Buddha! So happy!

OK, this thing is a lot bigger than we both thought!

A dying man, from heat.

The best part about the reclining Buddha is that there isn’t a huge crowd here. For some reason, no tour groups come here.

The feet, inlaid with mother of pearl.

Details of the feet.

108 bronze bowls for you to put coins in for offering.

I wondered what the backside looks like, no I wonder no more.

The elaborately decorated pillow.

We really enjoyed the Reclining Buddha! It was different from all the other temples that we’ve visited and less crowded. Would definitely recommend.

With our ticket also came with a coupon of free drinking water. Speaking of tickets, it wasn’t very expensive to get in here, but it was 500 baht a person to get into the Grand Palace, which is kind of steep.

Out of Wat Pho, and now finding a ferry across the river to Wat Arun.

Oh, they sell mango sticky rice here. We’ll have to try it later.

Found the crossing pier.

Only 3 baht each to cross, 10 cents!

Where we are headed.

Loving old couple still holding hands.

Guy in blue jacket(HOW IS HE WEARING A JACKET, IT’S SO FUCKING HOT!) is feeding the pigeons. Everywhere in the world, there are crazy pigeon feeding people.

Novice monks, eating ice cream. Sinners, you are supposed to forgo the luxuries of life. We want ice cream too!

Sinning never felt so good. Mangnum ice cream bars are all the rage here.

You can rent these outfits and take photos with them. We did not do this.

OK, let’s do some climbing. It’s not too many steps, but they are steep and it’s like 250 degrees out here.

The first rung, just moderately steep.

The second rung, a little steeper. They’ve got hand rails now.

The third rung, really steep now.

Here, you can see how steep the steps are. It’s like a 75 degree incline.

It’s scary…

The view from up top is pretty sweet though. That’s the Grand Palace over there.

RL and her artsy shots.

Bangkok financial district skyline.

Time to head down.

Notice what’s missing.

Found. Someone had broken this just recently.

OK, back down, and now in search of lunch. Not sure what we’ll find in this area though.

We love this photo. We feel hot, sweaty, tired, annoyed, burnt and hungry.

There are only Thai street food stalls in this area, and no restaurants. After working up some courage at the chicken that’s been sitting in that display for who knows how long, we decided to give it a try.

The broth smells good. It’s got chicken feet cooking in it.

Sweaty and tired. At least there’s a good crowd of customers here.

Looks good. The nice proprietor spoke very little English, but we solved that with a lot of pointing.

Wolfing it down, very tasty! The portions were small, but for 30 baht, can’t complain.

We’ve been out in the heat all morning now, it’s time to get back and take a breather inside our hotel for the afternoon heat.

At a 7 resupplying and saw this. Green Blond.

Did not have The Economist. Disappointed.

Maybe one of these to keep in the hotel fridge in case I get hungry.

Need I say more? Ok, I will. Snake brand for your snake.

The taxis here in Bangkok are great! They are all air conditioned and there are tons of them. Not to mention, it’s pretty cheap to get around. We’ve always paid less than $3 for our trips!! The only drawback is that it’s a little difficult to communicate to the drivers where you want to go, even if you have a map. We may have to start asking our front desk to write down the directions in Thai for us.

Back to our hotel, nap nap nap, then maybe some blog. I am way behind in blogging.

Hours of resting later, it’s night time and it’s cooled off…a little. RL wants to go visit a nearby night market, and then we planned on getting some dinner.

There’s a flower market nearby the night market. I believe all those yellow flowers are for offerings at temples.

Across from the traffic circle is the night market. We got here pretty early, so some shops are still setting up.

You can get tattoos at a night market.

Seriously, there was a person getting a tattoo right there. That scares me, a lot. Many of the people have tattoos at the night market here. I don’t remember seeing quite as many around the rest of Bangkok, or maybe its just because more guys have their shirts off here.

There are essentially no tourists here. This night market is an actual market for the locals. This is where a lot of them shop.

Shoe stores, knock off Onisuka Tigers. I didn’t see any Ultimate 81s though, which is what I wear exclusively.

Even more shoe shops.

At one end of the night market, we saw this riverside restaurant bar. We had planned on eating back at around our hotel, but this looks like a fun spot.

They have fans here, and there is also a very nice breeze from the river. It actually feels wonderful out here temperature wise.

There’s a third type of beer that I see around Thailand, LEO. I think it’s the cheapest one out of the three, and it tastes like it. Not much flavor.

Boat cruises going up and down the river.

I bet the Chinese tourists are on those boats.

This was the treat for us, squid eggs in a sour soup. The soup was too sour for me, but we got to try squid eggs! It was kind of pricy though, I think this was over $10.