August 27 (Monday)
In a Word: Gilded
Having survived our first night un-humbled we set out to explore the city. Our first stop was the Grand Palace, official home of the royal family. Before we could get there though, we had the first of what would be many encounters with a scammer. Near just about any major attraction in Bangkok will be an array of friendly folks informing you that the site you're trying to visit is closed, but that they can totally hook you up with a ride to something even better. After a block or two of chit-chat I guess it became clear we weren't the marks he was looking for, so he bid us farewell and we proceeded to the palace. The guard at the front gave us a quick look to make sure we met the dress code (no exposed legs, no exposed shoulders and--I'm not kidding--no see-through shirts) we were in.
This place was amazing (the word of the day was "gilded") and the awesome free tour we got from "Jeffery" (real name: Krishna) made it even better. He lead us, along with 8-10 other English-speakers, around the grounds and gave us the low-down on all the structures, Buddhist and Hindu mythology, as well as Thai history. After the tour ended we spent a bit of time hitting the museums also on the palace grounds before heading out for our next destination: Wat Pho
The Road To Wat Pho
Just outside the palace we ran into our second scam artist of the trip. I have to give her a lot of credit too, because she was pretty convincing. She kindly explained to us that we shouldn't trust people offering to help us out unless they were wearing a pin like the one she happened to have on. She was also doing this while we were within earshot of the loudspeaker repeatedly informing us to not listen to anyone trying to offer us a tour. Brazen.
Partway to the Wat we stopped at a small park on the river for a sit and had another exciting first: our first GPS fix! I don't know how Thai builders do it, but we could not get a fix indoors for love or money.
Wat Pho
Wat Pho is probably most famous for housing one of the world's largest reclining Buddha statues. If that's not enough to impress you, then what if I were to mention that it was also the site of a Fast Forward on the first season of The Amazing Race? Pretty great, right?
If you saw that episode you might be familiar with the 108 bronze bowls along one wall. It's good luck to drop a coin into each one, and I'm never one to turn down a bit of luck.
Wat Pho also contained an area with a huge number of flags (nearly all of which Charlie could name). While my vexillological knowledge was being put to shame we ran into a British gentleman who asked us to take his picture next to his flag.
Post-Pho
Once we'd seen about all there was to see at Wat Pho we decided to grab a quick bite at one of the restaurants opposite the temple. I had some stir-fried vegetables and a lime juice and Charlie went with pad thai and coconut milk served in a coconut (exotic!). Pleasantly full of Thai food we decided to head back toward our hotel, find a prepaid SIM card so that we could get in touch with Nikki, and maybe change into shorts because, just in case you weren't aware, Thailand is really, really hot.
On the way we happened upon an altercation between a tuk-tuk driver and a woman who was shoe-throwing mad. It's not clear exactly how things began (we think the driver may have clipped her), but it ended with her shouting and hurling both shoes at him as he tried to speed off. It was...intense.
Now only a few blocks from our hotel, we encountered three girls in school uniforms asking if we had a minute. I'm pretty sure our first thought was something like "this is the strangest scam yet," but what the hell, sure, we decided we did have a minute. Turns out they were doing some sort of assignment where they had to find tourists and get some basic information ("where you're from," "what you do," "what your favorite thing about Thailand is", etc). We agreed that we'd either helped them totally ace that assignment or had been duped by some sort of top-tier scamming (it was probably the former because we later learned that we were right outside of a school).
Khao San Road
We left our hotel in search of two things: a Thai SIM card and Khao San Road. This ended up being a piece of cake because we found the SIM card at a nearby 7-Eleven which, coincidentally, was right next to an alleyway that lead to Khao San Road. Using our now-useful cellphone we made plans to meet Nikki somewhere on Khao San Road in a few hours. That left us time for some exploring.
Khao San Road is definitely somewhere you should visit if you're in Bangkok. There are several streets and alleys in the area, all packed with shops, restaurants, and backpackers. On each block you'll find dozens of places where you can eat, drink, get a massage, buy a suit, buy knock-off designer underwear, sleep on the cheap, and more. Interestingly, the street isn't closed off to traffic, so your browsing will occasionally be interrupted when you need to step out of the way for a motorcycle, taxi, or tuk-tuk. At night the tables are turned as the throngs of people make driving the streets a very slow process.
Because Khao San is a popular tourist destination it's also a great place to hear people speaking all sorts of languages. We'd heard quite a few during our first day (French, Spanish, Russian, and English in a variety of accents), but the best was a German girl bidding farewell to her friends with an exuberant "tschüssie!" It was pretty great.
It was getting close to when we were supposed meet Nikki, so we started looking for somewhere to grab dinner. We picked a place more or less at random and ended up being seated near their...I guess you might call it an atrium. This probably sounds a little silly, but it wasn't until this point, when we were just sitting and watching the tourists stream by, that it really hit me: we were in Thailand. It had been fewer that 48 hours since we boarded a plane in Chicago and in that time we'd traveled halfway around the world and gotten in a full day of sightseeing. I think it's hard to not be a little amazed that that's possible.
The time for marveling at modern transportation was over though, because Nikki had arrived bearing the gift of SIM cards with a better rate than the one we had found. Now that everyone was here dinner commenced and it was a casual affair. We ordered a few items off the (perhaps too) touristy menu, tried some domestic Thai beers, and generally just enjoyed the evening. We were still adjusting to the time difference and it was a work night for those not on vacation, so after eating we opted to call it and made our way back to our hotel.