Canals, Temples & Sky Trains

We had another tour booked for this morning, so we were up early and at the lobby around 7:45. A lovely Thai man met us and informed us that we were the only people on the tour - yay!

We took a van to the pier where we loaded onto a skinny little covered boat and set off on the river before making a turn into the canal system where many Bangkok residents live. If your house is on stilts in the canal, you don’t have to pay any land rights, so as you can imagine, many poor people live right on the river. However, the rich have started to move in and build big canal-side palaces right next to the run-down houses.

Along the way, we saw huge monitor lizards (similar to the Komodo dragon but not dangerous)! We also stopped at a canal-side temple where the catfish are considered protected from fishing. These catfish have been well trained because as soon as our boat stopped, they were clamouring at the surface because they knew we were going to feed them - and we did! A little kitschy, but pretty fun to see! From the maze of canals, we also got to see a huge Buddha emerge from behind the houses.

After leaving the canals, we made our way to Wat Aron to see the temple that is covered entirely by Chinese ceramics. It is not like any other temple and was so beautiful!

Then, back on the boat, we went to a pier so we could get back in the van and drive to the Royal Palace. The palace and grounds are so big that I’m glad we had our guide. He manoeuvred us through throngs of tourists so that we could just see the important things like the emerald Buddha! We also found out that 10 monks are being ordained by the King tomorrow so the palace would be mostly closed, so we were glad to have made it there today. The King is not very popular at the moment as he basically ousted the elected prime minister (a young man) because the prime minister wanted to reduce the power of the King. Also, the King has been divorced three times and that’s a big no no in Buddhism.

Our tour ended with a ride back to our hotel. It is great to have air-conditioned vehicle transport in the city because it’s always so hot.

We decided to go to a restaurant called Bona for lunch. We hired a tuk-tuk driver, some after some shrewd negotiation by Brad. For 100 baht we got to our destination. For lunch, we had the green curry with winter melon, morning glory sautéed with oyster sauce, and a pork stirfry. Everything was excellent, and only a little bit spicy for our palates. After lunch was over, we began to walk back to the hotel, but one of the temples we wanted to see was on the way. This one features an entirely gold Buddha, as in solid gold. It was a quick stop but well worth it.

Back at the hotel, we decided to make use of the rooftop pool and the happy hour. We went for a little swim (while trying to stay in the shade). Then we had two for one draft beers poolside. There are probably not too many days that we get to sit at the rooftop pool, drinking Sigha beer and looking out at the Bangkok skyline.

Supper was going to make us go far away from where we are staying. We had to navigate the subway, which we had done before, but then get onto the skytrain which was new for us. It was also kind of rush-hour, so this was a bit more complicated, but we eventually found our way to Err Bangkok. We had seen Err featured on an episode of Somebody Feed Phil, so we were excited to try it for ourselves. Our cocktails were so good (Flower market no. 1 for me and a spicy passion fruit drink for Brad). In SE Asia, food just comes out when it’s ready and all our food came at the same time. We had satay with a spicy sauce, red curry with chicken and winter melon, a pork dish with a runny egg, Chinese style BBQ pork ribs. Everything we had was solid.

After dinner, it was still pretty early so we decided to walk a little ways to a craft beer bar. There’s a high taxation on craft beer, so these are hard to come by. This one was a heavy metal/morgue themed craft beer bar, and we were the only people there when we arrived however, it quickly filled up. Here, you can order what they have on tap or select a canned beer from their many refrigerators and they pour it for you.

We had lots of fun at the craft beer bar, but had to get back to our hotel. We have learned everything in Bangkok is really far apart and while they have good transportation, it can often be challenging to connect the different types of transportation to get from one place to the next. It took us 45 minutes to get home on the subway and we were exhausted by the time we got here but it was another great day in Bangkok!Läs mer