March 16th 2002
We woke at 11am so missed farewell to Matt and Anna, and breakfast too. Went
out and walked for a while, there are street markets everywhere around here.
Decided to catch a Tuk tuk {a modern day version of a rickshaw with a motorbike
front} rather than taxi as they look more fun.
We headed for the Grand Palace where we had extreme difficulty persuading the tuk tuk driver that we did not want him to wait and take us
shopping and one hour is not enough for "the look at Palace." This is
such an amazing place a plethora of buildings each more glitzy and spectacular
than the last. Hollywood has nothing on this! Almost every building is in gold
and mosaic. We visited the
Emerald Buddha who has three different jackets, one
for each season. He is much smaller than we thought he'd be and is in jade not
emerald, {mistaken identity of stone by person who first found him
again after he spent years encased in plaster to hide him from the enemy.} I was
very taken with him though, and bought three postcards of him one in each jacket. Walked
miles around the Grand Palace complex, Andrew taking loads of pix and me miles of vid.
We found a shop selling
delectable sorbets lime and passion fruit - yummy.
As we leave we are accosted by a man intent on us having a boat trip down the
Chao Phraya River, and another who is desperately trying to sell me a bamboo
parasol. We agree on a price for the boat and go for it, it's cooler on the
water and the longtail boat is very pretty, there is just us and the boatman, no
other tourists. The
parasol man follows us to the boat where we eventually buy one so he doesn't get
on the boat too. It is very pretty, and is now a third of it's original price,
though in this case not due to haggling skills but to the fact that we didn't
intend to buy as we couldn't be bothered to carry it all day.
Fascinating how the grand houses and very shabby little huts are side
by side, even the river side huts with no front walls have a television, the
reality of living in Bangkok. Our boatman stopped at the Buddha's Royal
Barge Museum, we clambered out to explore. These are the Barges only used for
special ceremonies now and are breathtakingly beautiful, and very well
preserved, with such detail at the front and all inlaid with gold and precious
gems. Can't take pix so bought postcards of them instead. This is one of the places I wanted to see, and wouldn't have missed it for
anything. We tour the river for about an hour, stopping alongside another boat
with a lady selling souveniers and cold drinks. We buy a really cool hat and 3 beers. Our
boatman dropped us of at a market where we browsed for a while, tried to get a
feel for the prices as you have to haggle here. The currency is Bahts -
60 bahts
to �1. We found another tuk tuk to take us to the hotel to freshen up and go to
meet Wi and the other people going on this tour.
First Impressions you guys! Jonathan and Peter both seem quite
friendly open people, should be easy to get along with. Amir is quite formal but
also reminds us both of our good friend Nick {affectionately known as
Bullshit} Riordan, will he grow on us too? Glenn is quiet, rather shy, the
unknown quantity? All
these lads are much younger than I, late 20's to early 30's ? Wi is very
organised and straight to the point but seems friendly. We went out to Tuptim's
for dinner and beer, chatted a fair bit trying to find common ground.
Discovered that Jonathan and Amir both work for UBS where Andrew used to work,
although different depts so had never met. Peter works for an pension company
and Glenn works for the N.S.P.C.C. {ahhh, what a sweetie} Early to bed as we
are up at 4.45am to catch our flight to Cambodia.
