Today we have only one thing planned. A dinner cruise at 6:30pm. Heavy rain started at 5:45pm but lightened by 6pm.

Although the early part of the day was kinda sunny. We just wandered around a few street, taking a different from any other walk. I have seen that the lottery here is serious business. Its not like in North America where Government controlled corporations and their appointed agents, are the only officially licensed placed to get tickets. Here you will see everyday people set up with a board and a bunch of tickets to chose from. Very strange. We also saw this whole big tented area where there was nothing but lottery tickets to buy. I am going to take a wild guess that the people selling the winning ticket must get some sort of bonus otherwise why so much competition unless there was some sort of promised dream attached to it?

Everyone who told me “don’t stay in Bangkok for more than a day ” was right. The place feels like a ‘has been’. Like there was a great time to be here when it was fresh and new. When the streets were clean and ‘Armani’ suit hawkers didn’t call you ‘boss’ every 50ft that you walked.

Bangkok has slipped into a grimy future and is limping along on trinkets and tattoos. While I am certain that this may not hold true for all of Thailand, it does paint a poor first impression. I keep hearing good things about the northern area.

Oh good, the rain has picked up again. Well this will make the boat dinner cruise interesting to say the least.

The dinner cruise was quaint. There was about 30 people all told. I chose the traditional Thai menu (more meat) and my wife got the vegetarian one. Originally we were supposed to be on the 6 – 8pm cruisebut somehow that got translated to the 8-10pm one. So we were a wee bit hungry by time the boat actually got to the dock we were waiting on.

We were greeted by some girls in traditional outfits and we got this little flower garland. Not something you could wear but more of something you would hang somewhere. Then they splash some water on it/our hands as part of the greeting. We were then directed to our seats and waited for the rest of the boat to board and head out.

They brought the food out in curses and there was a lot of it. Still too many veggies for me but that’s ok as there was enough meat and the guy running the show was more than accommodating for both of us.

I will list food here once I have it handy.

There were acouple of ladies who danced to some Thai music while we ate.

2 hrs later and we were back at the dock and made our way to our waiting mini-van.

It was just about 11pm when we got back to our hotel. We took our showers and went to bed.

Today we planned on visiting different temples. The plan was to walk to them because they looked pretty close on the map. Keeping on mind that we are walkers and close has a lot farther range than most.

We started the day by having a western-style breakfast (at the same Indian restaurant no less!) and then booked our trips for the rest of the week with the travel agent beside the hotel. The agent was a very nice girl and helped us plan based on the few things we knew we wanted to see.

When we told her that we are walking she suggested to take the water taxi. There is a big river that goes throuh through Bangkok and it is a main form of transportation for the locals.

I find that I am saddened be the pollution the river gets but I am hopeful that one day we will have some sort of pollution free motors.

The ride was a neat way to see another part of Bangkok. Not good and bad. Like every city, you have your pretty sites and you have your regular not-so-clean views. Sadly, Bangkok seems to have more of the latter than the former.

We get to our pier and get off. A short walk through some trinket stores and a permenant makeshift food market and we were on the streets once again. I pulled out the tourist map the travel agent gave us and checked our bearings. As I we looking a ‘helpful’ cabbie gave us the suggestion that we should start at the furthest temple and make our way back. Of course he was quite willing to take us there. We politely declined.

We crossed the street and went into the closest temple.

I should add a note here regarding the lack of pictures you are all probably wondering about. The reason I have very little pics up is because I have taken a lot of then with our regular digital camera. We also left the USB cable for said camera back in Korea….along with the battery charger….DOH! Pics will be up after we get back.

The temple was beautiful. We got some cool shots of the giant reclining Buddha statue and other amazing pics of the ornate designs. You’ll have to trust me on this for now :)

When we left we went out a gate where it seems that you have to pay to visit the site. The gaurd on the way out asked to see our tickets. We apologized and told him we didn’t know that we had to buy. He said no problems and asked where are we going next. I showed him the map of the other two temples and he said that the next one is closed for lunch till 3pm. He suggested we take a tuk tuk to some other places and make out way back as it was about 1pm now. There was a tuk tuk right by us, of course, that could take us around and we could rent home for 20 Baht, the equivalent of $0.67.  We said sure and off we went.

Now, I read about thee tuk tuks and generally they didn’t recommend them mainly because you are sucking in a lot of fumes from other cars, not to mention the tuk tuk itself when it stops and the wind is from behind. Luckily our tuk tuk was CNG powered. I was surprised at this but otherwise not bothered too much by the fumes.

Essentially this ‘side trip’s was an attempt to get us to spend money on jewelry at 2 different places. The ride around town itself was an experience to be had but not one I will probably repeat any time soon.

By the tome we got back to our original area e got told by one of the other locals that the Grand Palace was now closed. Go figure. Ah well, oh and now we were getting dangerously low on the amount of cash we brought. Luckily we had enough for the boat ride back to our area were we could grab some more money from the safe to get some supper.

After we just walked around the local area and I spoke with the people at the tattoo studio about my next tattoo. Then off to bed to get up at 6am the next day.

View the whole album, with a lot more pics, here.

Thailand Trip Part 5