Jamie and I woke up fairly early to hit the town visiting some temples and the Grand Palace here in Bangkok. We waited around a considerably long time for the bus, but eventually found our way downtown. We had a pretty full day of just walking around Bangkok and visiting 2 smaller temples, eating the street food (chicken or meat on a stick, rice cakes, fruit), visiting Wat Po (Temple of the Reclining Buddha which is seen above), and the Grand Palace, where the King used to live but still conducts ceremonies. The Grand Palace is nice and also houses the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. The Emerald Buddha is in fact jade and they decorate him according to seasons, so right now he is wearing a "coat" for the winter season.
We are a bit frustrated with the hassle of the tuk tuk and taxi drivers and their constant pressure and haggling. Tuk tuk drivers will simply just not take you where you want to go, but instead will want you to visit their friend's jewelry store or tailor shop. The taxi drivers will not want to start the meter and instead "agree" on a price which will always be overinflated. Yesterday, a taxi driver wanted 200 baht to drive us back to our hostel. I adamently told him to forget it and took a real metered taxi that only cost us 82. So far, the tourist traps in Bangkok have been quite disappointing because of these people. And to think, they call this the Land of Smiles. I call it the Land of Smiles and Crooks. That must be why they are smiling. Another guy told us that Wat Po was closed at 3:30 and wanted to take us somewhere else. We walked around to check it anyway and of course, it was open until 6:00. It becomes a bad feeling when you don't want to trust anyone, but this is the territory when you travel to different places and become the tourist. We have been telling everyone we are from China and I'm going to start telling these people that I am a hired assassin. Perhaps that will back them off.
We found this little back alley restaurant of Thai food last night that was delicious. We retired early because of our exhaustion for the day, but I was able to upload a TON of pictures. I'll label them later.
I'm going to make post out of order concerning my touch rugby game, so don't think I played that in Bangkok.
Today, we are going to check out another temple or 2 and see some other sites in Bangkok.
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