Last night train was the last one of the trip! Yeay! And also the best even though we didn't have our own private cabin!
The train was clean, the seats transformed into beds that were spacious and we got clean sheets, pillow, and blanket!
I still wasn't feeling good at all so I decided to go to bed early to get rid of the dizziness and the stomach pain... I slept for 11 hours straight and once I woke up I was feeling a little better!
At about 8am we arrived at our hotel and thankfully our rooms were ready for us! Yeay!
We quickly showered and by 9am we all left to do a little sightseeing!
Thailand right now is going through a tough political situation so there are many protests and traffic is a little crazy! We were advised by OLeang to stay away from certain areas and to be aware of protests around the city. Due to the protesting getting a cab to go to Wat Po and the grand palace was almost impossible so we all went on a little adventure! We ended up taking the metro, the sky train, and a taxi boat to get close to Wat Pho.
I was very impressed by the metro system in Bangkok, everything was clean, well signed, and most importantly easy to navigate!!! After a couple of stops in the metro we had to transfer to the sky train... OMG! the sky train was amazing! Super modern! It had big screens with advertisement in the waiting platforms and once inside it had air conditioning and even tvs! The announcement for the next stop was very clear in English and made it really easy for us to get around!
We reached our final destination and it was time to transfer to a boat! OLeang had explained to us that we only needed to pay 15Baht and not the tourist price!
Once we got to the dock we were directed to buy a ticket for 40Baht (tourist fee) but since we knew about the scam we asked were to go for the 15 Baht boat and we were sent to the locals boat!
The ride down the river was very nice! We got to see many beautiful buildings as well as all the fancy water front hotels! The boats on the river were very colorful and had flowers hanging at the end!
After 8 stops we finally made it to our stop! We walked for a couple of minutes until we reached wat po!
Oh my! Wat Po is beautiful! It is one of the largest temple complexes in Bangkok and it has a HUGE reclining buddha that measures 46 meters!!!!
The beauty of Wat Pho is breath taking, really! It is full of murals and beautiful temples, buildings, and a gazillion golden Buddhas.
One of my favorite pictures was this kitty relaxing on Buddha's lap :-)
After wondering for a quite a bit we decided to go to the Royal Palace! By now it was probably around noon and it was H.O.T HOT!!!!! It felt like we were melting! We were all sweating and kind of over the whole temple thing but we still decided to give the Royal Palace a shot so we walked for about 15 mins until we reached the palace!
Once inside the main gate we saw a ton of people standing around so we decided to stand and see what was going on! After a couple of minutes of nothing we decided to ask one of the people standing what they were waiting for but they didn't know either!!! Finally somebody said that they were waiting for the king's niece to arrive!!! Umm... We decided to skip it and walk to the ticket window.
The palace has some restrictions:
Once there most of us started to re think the idea of paying 500Baht ($17... That's like 2 days worth of food) to walk around in the heat to see the palace and be bored out of our minds! Haha so at the end we all decided to skip it and go to Khao San road and have lunch instead!
On our walk we found many of these:
So far I have not liked Bangkok all that much! I don't know if the heat and being sick has had an effect or if the city is just not what I expected!
We spent a couple of hours on Khao San road (aka Bangkok's party street for tourists) and then headed to MBK, a local mall that reminded me of metrocentro in El Salvador! Not impressed at all!
We decided to take a taxi back to the hotel so we went to the taxi point to negotiate the price for a taxi. Here in Bangkok many taxis have meters but the drivers refuse to use them because they know they can take advantage of tourists but we are smart so need to negotiate!
One of the taxi drivers asked for 500BAHT!!! And of course we said no because it was a ridiculous price (we were ok paying up to 100baht) but Griegan still said "meter" and the driver said no and then proceeded to scream "FUCKING YOU!" and left... I was shocked! Why on earth would he curse at us?!? He was for sure trying to take advantage of us and the fact that we said no and asked for the meter was a fair request! Anyway, the next driver took us and used the meter!
The drive was quite an experience! The driver spoke zero English and he was trying to explain to us that there was traffic the other way and he would pretend to fall asleep and snore to make us understand that he would be bored and stuck in traffic if he went that way! We were all laughing! And then he proceeded to tell us stories in Thai but we had no clue what he was saying! I decided to tape the whole conversation and show OLeang for translation!
At night, we went for our goodbye dinner :-( ... Since I've had no food since yesterday I was really looking forward to it! I was starving!!!!
After dinner some of us decided to go back to Khao San road and party a little bit before we had to say good bye!
So far I have not liked Bangkok all that much! I don't know if the heat and being sick has had an effect or if the city is just not what I expected!
We spent a couple of hours on Khao San road (aka Bangkok's party street for tourists) and then headed to MBK, a local mall that reminded me of metrocentro in El Salvador! Not impressed at all!
We decided to take a taxi back to the hotel so we went to the taxi point to negotiate the price for a taxi. Here in Bangkok many taxis have meters but the drivers refuse to use them because they know they can take advantage of tourists but we are smart so need to negotiate!
One of the taxi drivers asked for 500BAHT!!! And of course we said no because it was a ridiculous price (we were ok paying up to 100baht) but Griegan still said "meter" and the driver said no and then proceeded to scream "FUCKING YOU!" and left... I was shocked! Why on earth would he curse at us?!? He was for sure trying to take advantage of us and the fact that we said no and asked for the meter was a fair request! Anyway, the next driver took us and used the meter!
The drive was quite an experience! The driver spoke zero English and he was trying to explain to us that there was traffic the other way and he would pretend to fall asleep and snore to make us understand that he would be bored and stuck in traffic if he went that way! We were all laughing! And then he proceeded to tell us stories in Thai but we had no clue what he was saying! I decided to tape the whole conversation and show OLeang for translation!
At night, we went for our goodbye dinner :-( ... Since I've had no food since yesterday I was really looking forward to it! I was starving!!!!
After dinner some of us decided to go back to Khao San road and party a little bit before we had to say good bye!
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