The first day in Bangkok

We started off pretty early today. The tour guide was late to pick us up, which wasn’t very good since we didn’t get much sleep. The guide was a big fat woman with a limp and a really lazy eye. It wasn’t very appealing at all, and her Japanese wasn’t that great either. Not that I could really comment on her Japanese, but I will anyways. We boarded a bus and it took us to our first spot, which was the Grand Palace and Wat Phrakeo. It really was grand and something that I really wanted to see in person. It was wonderful, even though they don’t let people wearing shorts come in. It was like me and every other American having to rent long pants. That was about 30 baht, but not too bad. Inside is a very sacred Emerald Buddha, it was cool looking, but much smaller than I thought it would be. It of course, is the number one place that is recommended in my guide book that I bought at the airport yesterday…in Japanese.

Then we hit the bus again and the next stop was to Wat Arun. It was a nice templish thingy. It has a very unique architecture that makes it famous. It really was very nice to see, and it was hot today and there too. We were very lucky because the forecast for the whole week was thunderstorms and temperatures around 36-40 degrees Celsius, and if you don’t know what that means, it’s hot. We got to walk around for a little bit. This is the number 2 place that was recommended in my guide book.

Then we went to the number 4 place, it is Wat Pho, which has a really large golden Buddha that is lying down. It was so big that I couldn’t fit a good picture in one shot. You’d have to take at least two to get it all in. It was pretty cool there, but everyone was getting paranoid about getting picked pocketed since there was a sign there saying that those types of things happen.

We then went to lunch at a nice fancy buffet style restaurant. The food was actually pretty good and safe I think. So that was something that I enjoyed very much. But I didn’t eat that much since I wanted to stay on the safe side. If you didn’t know, you can’t drink the water in Thailand because it’s not safe. So I stayed away from all things that included water in the recipe, which was very difficult.

Then we went to a big jewelry shop that had many things that are unique for Thailand. The sales people were a little too pushy. So much in fact that it was a turn off and we just wanted to avoid them and just ignore them. I didn’t want to buy anything from them since they were just getting on my nerves, but the other girls had bought some stuff. They were reluctant, but decided to. Then we went to another place where we could get some duty free items. It was called King Power. It seemed like a big company since you would see them everywhere we went and they had advertisements on buses and everything. I bought a ton of stuff, not for me but for other people. I only brought $300 for the whole trip. I spent about $100 today and in this hour alone.

Then we went to the Central World Plaza, which is a new building center that’s got a nice shopping mall. The tour group would drop us off on the 7th floor where there was another opportunity to buy duty free things. It was fun that we were on our own after that, but the guides really had us paranoid when we were out and about and always warned us to be careful and told us how to get back to the hotel. I’m glad that we made it back ok too. I thought that there were people who were looking at us funny and seemed like they were going to do something bad to us, but I found a way to avoid that situation and we made it out pretty safely. It was good to finally get back home too. I was happy about that and it was good to finally relax.