Bangkok

Bangkok is a very large city! Each different section seems like a different world from the next. We've managed to stay out of the backpacker central that is Khao San road and I'm quite happy we did. (We had enough of backpackers in Australia and Bali. Actually, not all - just the noisy and inconsiderate ones.) Khao San is insane with hundreds of guest houses and restaurants jammed into a street that is much smaller than I thought it would be. We visited the other day, but decided we were quite happy on the other side of town.

It's embarrassing to admit, but I haven't been having the greatest time in Bangkok. I couldn't wait to get to Thailand, but so far it's been rough. It's very large, dirty and polluted. It's not uncommon to see people wearing surgical masks here. At first I thought this was leftover from SARS, but then realized that they are trying not to breathe in all the pollution. All of this would be much more tolerable if I didn't have a bad cold. I've been to dirty and polluted places before, but I was also feeling much, much better. My stomach is no longer bothering me, but now I have this stupid cold and I've been miserable. There have been good times, but for the most part, dealing with the city has been made much more difficult since I've been sick. The heat here is incredible. I've never sweated so much in my entire life! And watch out if the sun comes out! We are hopefully going to Chiang Mai tomorrow and my opinion should change. Chiang Mai shouldn't be this crazy.

Here are some of the interesting things we've seen here:

There are numerous options for getting around the city, however, there isn't one that will take you throughout the entire city. It's often necessary to use many different modes of transport. They have a subway, a skytrain, buses (regular and with air-con) and river and canal boats. Sounds pretty crazy, huh?

We set off to take a canal boat trip the other day and it was pretty neat. The canal boats are smaller than the river boats. Those things dock and leave within a matter of seconds. People are just so used to jumping on and off that I didn't want to be the one holding everyone up - nor did I want to end up in the canal. The boats are long and just have benches across. There's no room to stand up in the boat. There are normally 2 guys who stand on the outside edge of the boat that are in charge of collecting the fare and docking the boat. They must have incredible balance to do this job as the wake that the other boats create is pretty big. I had wanted to get a picture of these guys in action, but they work so fast there was no way we could get them. These guys also wear helmets. We realized what they were for once we passed under the first bridge. The boats are small, but when going under a bridge, the guys on the side of the boat need to duck and they actually have to lower the roof of the boat - which is really just a tarp attached to a metal pole. There are also tarps on the side of the boat that can be raised and lowered. These are so you don't get wet as the boat is zooming through the water.

Yesterday, we visited the main temples in Bangkok. We only saw 3 and apparently there are about 300 temples in the city! It's very interesting architecture and some of the statues actually look Chinese. One of the temples we visited was Wat Po. It has a huge statue of Buddha. Buddha is lying on his side and it's just enormous. He's covered in goldleaf and his feat are decorated in mother of pearl. It's quite a sight. We also saw the Emerald Buddha is another temple. It's not actually emerald, but jade. It sits high up within the temple and is quite small compared to the huge Buddha in Wat Po. But, what I found interesting is that the emerald Buddha has his own wardrobe. They change him 3 times a year according to the season.

That's about all I can remember for now. Mark has me on so many different medicines so that I can feel better my mind is a bit fuzzy right now.

Pictures of Bangkok from April 22 - 25, 2005:

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/album?.dir=fe0b&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/my_photos