We set our alarm to wake up at 7 am. That did NOT happen. Turns out jet lag hates us a little bit and our bodies decided we needed more sleep. So we slept. Until 10 am. Oops.
We caught a taxi into the city and arrived at the Golden Palace around 11:15 am. When we got there, there was a man outside who offered to help us figure out where we needed to go...even though we were right outside of the Golden Palace. He told us the palace is actually closed from 11-1 pm and that there was a temple not far away that we could go to that was free and open all day and that we could come back at 1.
Sounds helpful, right?
False.
There are a HUGE number of tourist scams around Bangkok (one of several reasons why people will tell you it's not their favorite city...). This scam involves telling tourists that tourist locations/temples are closed for holidays/religious observances, etc., and then convincing them to go elsewhere. The person usually works in conjunction with a tuk tuk driver (similar to the rickshaws of yore, they are basically small carts that usually seat 4 people, attached to the back of a motor bike), so that once they convince you against your original plan you will ride their friend's tuk tuk and get a portion of the money. UGH. I must say, Bangkok, not your finest moment.
So here we were, confused and flustered, standing outside of the Golden Palace. We left our "friend" to go to the ATM before heading back to the palace. Where we were confronted with a sign that said "Temple open every day from 8 am to 16:30 pm." WHY DO PEOPLE LIEEEEEEEE. I must say it is one of the most frustrating things to be deliberately lied to and swindled so that people can make a few dollars. GAHHHH.
We bought our tickets and entered the Golden Palace and were confronted with...a WALL of Chinese tourists. The Chinese New Year is February 7 and so a lot of people there have off now to celebrate the new year. THEY WERE EVERYWHERE. For those of you who don't know, I am fairly claustrophobic. The Golden Palace with a BAJILLION people in it = no bueno for my claustrophobia. There were several times I had to go stand in a corner to get away from all the people!! And not only that, but legitimately pretty much every tourist in the palace was SUPER rude. Walking directly in front of you to take pictures. Sticking their camera directly in front of yours. Not paying any attention to where they were going because they were looking at their pictures. There were several times I saw parents actually ignoring their young children because they were setting up selfies. I think if I see another selfie-stick I might explode. FOR REAL. FOR. REAL.
Demons (wearing shoes, closed mouths) and monkeys (barefoot, open mouths) guard the Golden Palace
Oh heyyyyyyyyy
I could not handle it. We stayed in the palace long enough for me to get the shots I wanted before peacing out...but not before heading to the textile museum next to the palace :).
For some reason unbeknownst to me, I have a strange fascination with textiles and traditional dress from different cultures. I can spend (and have spent - ask my Mom) HOURS looking at dresses from different places. Several decades ago, Queen Sirikit of Thailand decided to bolster the textile industry in Thailand by creating a modern Thai style which combined traditional Thai dress with western style. The results are pretty beautiful, and created a more formal look for modern women. Here are some of the more formal looks from the museum (pictures taken from Google search: "Thailand Queen Sirikit dresses"):
Next we were off to Wat Traimit, a temple we had read about in our guidebook (Southeast Asia on a Shoestring Budget). We hailed a tuk tuk to take us there, got what we thought was a good price, and agreed to go. Our driver then told us that, for the same price, he would take us to 3 stops instead of just 1: the standing Buddha, another textile museum (hooray!), and Wat Traimit. Jon agreed. I told him that something was a bit fishy about it, but figured, why not? So we climbed in and were off!
We arrived at the standing Buddha in about 5 minutes. And it. was. big.
Next stop - textile museum!
Or so we thought.
We got back in the tuk tuk and rode for another 10 minutes before stopping...outside of a store. A shirt store. We told him we thought we were going to a textile museum and he said "yes, inside". Scam. Love it. So we went in to amuse him.
Inside were tons of nicely dressed men hawking handmade suits. After 5 minutes of trying to sell Jon a suit we said we were done and started walking towards the door. Then he said they also make custom fit dress shirts and would we be interested? One of Jon's co-workers had mentioned that it was super cheap to get custom clothing in Thailand, so Jon said, "Why not?" We went upstairs to see the materials and get prices. Turns out the rumors were true - 4 custom fit shirts in Thailand cost the same as about 1 1/2 in the US. Jon decided to go for it, getting black, grey, white, and blue striped custom shirts! The guy said they'd be delivered to our hotel tomorrow, and handed me a "cashmere scarf" (like the ones you get on an NYC sidewalk for $5) as a "bonus" for us coming in. We paid for the shirts and went outside to find our tuk tuk driver.
It was fairly evident that he must make commission on the sale for dropping us at the store, because he kept asking Jon explicitly what he bought and how much exactly he spent. While he seemed disappointed Jon didn't buy a suit ("Don't you need suits for work?? Do you want to go back to the shop???"), he was pretty happy Jon had purchased 4 shirts. So that made 2 of them!
After getting back in the tuk tuk, we told the driver we wanted to go see the golden Buddha (Wat Traimit, aka our ORIGINAL desired destination). We drove in the tuk tuk for about 5 minutes before arriving. When we got there, he told us that the temple was very beautiful, but it was not worth it if anyone asked us if we wanted to pay for a tour. We thanked him for the tip and walked into the temple. It was quite beautiful with two large golden Buddha statues inside.
However, after sitting in the temple for a few minutes, we were pretty convinced it was not actually the temple we had been looking for... regardless, we decided to make the most of it, enjoying the walk around the grounds before heading off in search of food.
We left the temple and began walking...eventually finding a sign pointing us towards the Golden Mountain, a temple on top of a large mount. That placed the nail in the coffin that we were NOT in fact at Wat Traimit, our intended destination, but rather at Wat Bowonniwetwihan...aka the tuk tuk driver just took us to a temple, dropped us off, and told us not to ask questions/get a tour because he knew he had intentionally dropped us off at the wrong place. Awesome. Really gives you faith in humanity.
We decided to begin walking in the direction of the Golden Mountain to figure out our dinner plans. Along the way we encountered yet another tuk tuk driver, who told us the Mountain was best viewed for sunset at 6 pm. Since it was 4:30 we had plenty of time to stop for some food. Jon wasn't feeling all that well so along the way we decided to stop for a little American fare (pizza) at a Jazz bar. He ate while I decided to hold out for more Thai food. When the pizza arrived, I used the bar's free wi-fi to look up the Golden Mountain. It closed at 6. It was now 5:30. And we had no idea how far away we were. Awesome.
After quickly finishing the pizza we headed off to try to get to the Golden Mountain as fast as possible, arriving at about 5:50. We got there and it turns out it didn't close until 7! Huzzah! Finally a win for us! We climbed the great number of stairs and watched the sunrise from the top of the mountain.
After climbing back down the stairs I decided I was finally hungry! Nath had told Jon the name of a place not far from the Golden Mountain that supposedly had the best Pad Thai in Thailand - sign me up! We walked over there and were quickly seated and ordered. The menu had a few pages dedicated to the history of the restaurant, including the fact that Pad Thai was supposedly first created there! WHHAAAATTTTTT?? As we looked around the SUPER busy restaurant, we saw that the walls were covered in newspaper articles from around the world (New York Times, BBC News, Al Jazeera, etc.), all raving about the restaurant! The Pad Thai arrived after just a few minutes and with the first bite I knew:
I would never find a better Pad Thai in my life.
It was absolutely delicious. I've had PLENTY of Pad Thai since arriving in Bangkok (and in my life) but none I have had (and probably ever will) will compare to this Pad Thai. If you ever find yourself in Bangkok, make sure you head to Thip Samai (also known as Pratupi) to check out their delicious Pad Thai!!!
After eating quite the satisfying meal, we headed out to the street to catch a cab back to our hotel. We hailed one quickly, got in, told him where our hotel was...and he didn't understand. He didn't speak English and didn't understand where we were trying to go. So we got out of the cab. We found another - he didn't understand either. We got out of the cab. We found a tuk tuk - they laughed at us when we said we needed to go to the north of the city (we were in the southwest corner) and wouldn't even entertain the idea. The biggest problem? We only had the name of the hotel and not the address... SERIOUSLY stupid.
We went to 7-11 to try to soak up their wi-fi so we could get the address and hopefully get back. After walking 15 minutes to 7-11, they didn't have wi-fi. In fact, no place did. And everything was starting to close as it was now about 8 pm. So at 7-11 we decided to cut our losses and pay for the wi-fi to get our address at our hotel. We got the address and phone number and went back outside. Another 2 cabs refused to take us, 1. because it was about a 40 minute ride away, and 2. because we're pretty sure they couldn't read the address since the Thai and English alphabets use different characters.
So we were stuck.
We decided that we were going to get a taxi to the metro station, take the metro to the north of the city, and then try to catch a taxi from the north of the city to our hotel. We found a taxi and asked him to take us to the metro and he agreed. We were driving to the metro station when I asked him if he knew where Park Chatuchak was (which was close to our hotel). He asked us where we were actually trying to go and we told him the name of our hotel. He gave us his phone and told us to put the name of the hotel in his GPS/google. He then called the hotel, got directions from them, and asked if we wanted him to take us there. THANK HEAVENS. Seriously. Our wonderful taxi driver took us allllllllllllllllll the way to our hotel in the north of the city. We were so grateful we gave him a huge tip and he was equally happy to accept. WOO!
We got back to the hotel around 9 and we are ready to pass out. So as I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Bangkok won. After just 1 day here, I now understand why pretty much every person we talked to about this city told us that you only need a max of 2 days here. I wonder what we're going to do in the next 2...
Jess' highlight of the day: the best Pad Thai in the world!
Jon's highlight of the day: finally getting a taxi back to the hotel after an hour long search.
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