Bangkok day two:

This was a day of Buddhas, and temples, and boat rides, and heat, and sweating, and sore feat, and the return of the chaffing meter (I know you missed this feature).

We started by going to the golden Buddha. A cab driver took us and dropped us off a block away where there just happened to be a tiny temple with a small golden Buddha visible from the street. We looked at it, huh, not exactly a giant golden Buddha. We looked at the map. Huh, yeah we’re in the right general location. Oookay, so not as impressive as we thought. Then we looked down the street and saw a few people milling about. Ahhhh, we were at the wrong spot. We were so close to flagging down a cab too. We almost missed it. The real thing wasn’t that much more impressive, but it was still pretty cool. It definitely was golden, and it was a Buddha. The best part about this was meeting Johnny as Angelica dubbed him. He was this old guy that wanted to practice his English with us. We told him we were from California and he told us he had relatives there, relatives in Las Vegas California. And he was going to go visit them, then rent a car and drive from Los Angeles up to Seattle where he had more family. He’d been saving for a long time and was ready to go in exactly one year. He was extremely nice and sweet and told us we should take a Tuk Tuk (This is a motorized cart, like a golf cart only street legal and with much more exhaust) to the pier and take a boat ride through the canals and up the river to let us off at the Grand Palace. He even went down and negotiated the Tuk Tuk for us. It was really heart warming to watch this old guy talking to the young guy manning the Tuk Tuk. He told the young guy twenty, the young guy shook his head no and said forty. The old guy gave him a stern look and held up two fingers. The young guy then nodded his head yes, and looked and Angelica and I, and we all laughed at how cute this old man was negotiating.

So we took the boat up the river and into a system of canals. We saw houses built along the river, the places where most of the people of Bangkok actually live. A different side of the city. This side of the city had houses and a river.

The boat let us off close to the grand palace. And although I did not jump off and swim in the river you wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at me. I am a sweater. I sweat. The heat was stifling. And what better thing to do in the heat than to walk around a bunch. We started by walking to the temple of the reclining Buddha. I love the reclining Buddha. He’s just this giant golden man, we’re talking near statue of liberty sized, just lying down on his side. But it’s inside a building and at no point in time are you more than a few feet away from it, so you can’t really take the whole thing in at once. One corner of the building had a great breeze coming through. We stood in that breeze for a good ten minutes and thought about cooler times.

We left the reclining Buddha and walked to the Grand Palace. Tuk Tuk drivers along the way tell you it’s closed and they know a great place to take you that is open. They say this despite the stream of people walking into the palace. Well, at least they’re not honest. The palace has a rule against shorts so for the first time in my life I rented pants. I’m sure it won’t be the last, no wait, yes I am sure. We got in and walked around the complex. The buildings to me all looked like giant golden birthday cakes, covered in rippling golden frosting, and colorful beads of sugar. But listen to me, don’t try to break a piece off and eat it, they don’t like that there. They also don’t make it easy for westerners to go to the bathroom. This is where I became an ugly American just a little bit. I’ll let Angelica explain. Sort of.