One Day in Bangkok

Now that I have walked part of the city and understand the relative size, I am equipped to start negotiations and use the local tuk-tuk transport. In order to get a fair price, you need to first understand both the fair market value of what you are haggling over, as well as what you are personally willing to pay for such service. Then you can’t let your desire for the service cloud your thinking regarding the fair price. And sometimes this means walking.

Especially in the backpacker area of the city, everyone is quoting outrageous prices. The favorite price for anywhere in the city is 100 baht. No Thai would pay this much money for a tuk-tuk anywhere in the city, let alone to travel a few blocks. But the problem is westerns convert the amount into local currency (100 baht is about $3.30) and think that this is a fair price because it is less than they would pay in their home country. Unfortunately, you can’t travel for very long if you pay the US price for everything.

Unable to get a fair price in the backpacker area, I began to walk to my destination despite some pain in my leg caused by sleeping in an odd position. I actually ended up finding a nice, quiet neighborhood in Chinatown and a tuk-tuk driver who was willing to take me to my destination for a fair price. He originally quoted me 40 baht and then 30, but when I walked away, he came down to 20. I confirmed “no stop, no shop”, which is key since a favorite tactic is to take you to a shop so they can get a gas voucher or a cut of your sale.

I visited the Grand Palace, a former royal residence, which also has a large wat (temple). The grounds of the wat include several stupas marking the remains of important royal figures, but the real draw for most is the temple containing the Emerald Buddha, which is actually made from jade. It is a small Buddha figure, but is revered by the Thai people. It has a long history of being carted off and returned.

Every surface on the buildings of the temple area are richly decorated and gilded. But a picture is worth a thousand words… And a few pictures, well, you get the point...

The palace complex itself is made up of many buildings used at one time for residences, coronations, and receiving visiting dignitaries. These include a mix of traditional Thai and Western styles of architecture.

Many of the buildings were closed during my visit because the king’s sister, who died recently, was laid out for people to pay their respects and there appeared to be a related event that day. In fact, here is a military guard unit arriving at the palace…

Next, I visited Wat Pho, which is famous for its giant reclining Buddha, which is 15m high and almost 50 m long.

It’s tough to tell how big he is from the picture. To give you an idea of his size, here are his feet…

Most people seemed to come to see this statue and then leave, but I wandered the grounds for a while and came across this artist. He was carving this wooden decoration entirely by hand with a hammer and various-sized chisels. I spoke with him briefly and he told me that this piece will take him an entire month to complete.

At this point, my leg was starting to hurt enough that I was limping along. Since Wat Pho has a traditional Thai massage school associated with it, I thought I would give it a try. They set me up in a room with about a dozen beds, which is not an issue since you keep your clothes on. It started out to be exactly what I was looking for, with a lot of stretching and large-scale pressure. But soon, the masseur started pressing strongly on pressure points with his thumbs. It may come as a shock to some that I am but a delicate flower that bruises easily. No matter how many times I indicated that this was painful, he would back off on the pressure and then start digging his thumbs right back in. By the time it was over, I still had my limp, but now I had some bruises to go with it. At least now it looked like I was limping for a reason.

Wanting to catch one more sight today, I limped over to the pier for the ferry and crossed the river. It was really nice being out on a boat – I always enjoy this. I actually have better sea-legs than land-legs, but maybe this is because my land-legs don’t work so well.

Across the river, in the old part of Bangkok, is Wat Arun (picture on the left), which is decorated with broken Chinese pottery. This was widely available because Chinese freighters at the time used old porcelain as ballast (to weigh down or balance out an empty ship), which they unloaded when they took on new goods. I love the attention paid to patterns and shapes.

You are allowed to climb halfway up the central prang, but the stairs are quite steep, especially with a leg injury. Here is a look down from the top.

This is definitely a situation where you grab the steel pipe railing and ascend hand-over-hand.

The views from the top were worth it, though. Here is a view of modern Bangkok.

I climbed down very carefully and some guys at the bottom said, “Go slowly.” I said, “Carefully”, and they said, “Yes, careful or you could roll all the way down.” This will also come as a shock to some, but I think this is one of the rare instances where falling down stairs is NOT funny.