Here comes part 2 of our adventure in South-East-Asia. We rejoin the action on day 2 in Bangkok.
We woke up early in our room, which, by the magic hand of our air conditioning, had chilly 27°C. Immediately after leaving the refreshing shower, my body decided to pour out yet more sweat. That wouldn’t change in the coming days. We went to what apparently is Bangkok’s Main Station and what looks rather run down (it is to be replaced by end of the decade), and had breakfast. I also bought my SIM card there, I was online from that time onwards (woohoo!).
Afterwards, we headed to Wat Traimit, a massive temple dedicated to the Golden Buddha statue. The statue is believed to be cast from gold around 700 years ago, but otherwise its origins are unknown. The whole statue weighs a whopping 5.5 tons and contains between 40% and 80% gold. In case you haven’t noticed, that’s a lot. The face is made from pure gold (also a lot).
Altogether that accounts for around one buttload. Later on, the statue was lacquered, covered in plaster, which in return was coated in leaf-gold. It’s believed that this was done to disguise the statue in order to hide it from enemies. It’s believed that this took place in the 18th century when the Burmese invaded.
In the beginning of the 19th century the statue was brought to Bangkok and installed as the centerpiece in a newly constructed temple. The temple fell into disrepair and the once proud Buddha was moved into yet another temple. Confused yet? Here’s the story in short: the Buddha was built, disguised in plaster, moved to Bangkok, moved into another temple in Bangkok.
Then, a new temple was constructed to house the statue and in 1955, the Buddha was to be moved in. As stated above, that thing is huge and quite heavy. As it turned out, it was too heavy for the rope it was hanging from. It snapped, Buddha fell and he got bruised: a piece of plaster broke off, revealing the shiny golden interior.
Quickly, the greedy little bastards authorities started to investigate the statue, breaking of the plaster, cleaning the metal and thereby revealing the whole Golden Buddha. Rather ironically, they also discovered that the statue could be disassembled into nine parts for easier transport.
When in 2010 a newly constructed building was inaugurated at the Wat Traimit, the Buddha was finally placed as its centerpiece, thereby ending its tour around the country.
I can highly recommend visiting Wat Traimit. Apart from the Buddha itself, it holds a museum where you can read about the history of the statue yourself. And then, there a third perk to it: there are always groups there who offer free food and drinks to the visitors and tourists. That stuff is great! Noodles, rice, grilled something, wontons, soup, vegetables, the whole nine yards.
Later that day, we went to the movies. James Bond doesn’t watch himself…
A rather interesting experience, as before every movie, cinemas in Thailand show a short clip about the king (for which you have to stand up – not that I mind that). Also, later in 2015, this movie is coming to a cinema most certainly not near you:
I’m just gonna let that sink in for a moment. … Right.
Another thing I wanted to elaborate on, are tailors in Thailand. Thailand is, just like Vietnam, famous for its tailors. As a western tourist you can get a custom tailored suit for a pittance. So I did just that.
On wednesday we took the Skytrain to the MBK mall, which is a huge space full of… everything. From a cup of coffee to clothes and even snail secretion (yeup.), you can get everything.
There where quite a few tailor shops with various degrees of shadyness in the mall and we quickly settled for GM”C Tailor (yes, Gee-Emm-Apostrophe-Apostrophe-Cee), because it made a serious impression and the online reviews were quite good.
After a quick discussion I settled for a style and a garment (cashmere!) and then let a man touch me inappropritely in order to measure me. I also ordered a shirt (egyptian cotton!).
The whole thing cost me (after a bit of bargaining) 6200 BHT (5000 BHT for the suit and 1200 BHT for the shirt), which roughly translates to 160€.
That’s considerably less than I’d normally spend on a jacket.
Because of that I was a bit anxious but the man certainly seemed to know what he was doing. The next day, I went for a fitting. In my opinion, that’s astonishingly quick. When I arrived, my pants were ready (although they had to do some adjustment as I’m quite tall), my shirt was done (and fitting perfectly) and my jacket was around half finished. I honestly have no clue how they managed to do that in such a short period of time.
The tailor, who I was told did all that, fitted the sleeves, measured the placement of the buttons, the lapel etc. and I was told that my suit would done on thursday.
Thursday. Thursday was busy. We wanted to go the Khlon San Market and therefore rose early again. The market for me was the opportunity to get all the stuff my family asked me about. Remember: if you want to go abroad, don’t let the family ask you to buy stuff. My family asked about curry powder (because they like to cook) and silk (because they want silk). Okay, apart from the fact, that curry is a dish, not a spice (although sold as such in Germany), that should be possible.
We went to the pier and had the worst breakfast in the history of humankind (what is so hard about scrambling a few eggs? But I don’t want to rant.). Then we paid the 2 Baht (around 2,5 Euro Cent) fee for the ferry, boarded the boat and around 24 seconds later stood on the pier on the other side. Just a few steps away lay the market, which… was closed. Most booths were already shut or were about to leave. It certainly explained why most of the time, ferries were transporting people from the market, not to it. So, we turned on our heels (after Arne bought some fried Coconut stuff), went back to the pier and took the next ferry back. So much for “buying the stuff for the family”.
After that disastrous adventure, we took a taxi and went on to visit Wat Pho, the Temple of the Reclining Buddha. But first, we had lunch there. There were many many street vendors and the food was great. The gist for street food in Thailand: you choose the stuff, they fry the stuff, you pay and eat the stuff.
So, for the Buddha. Well, that’s a big one. Not in a sense of obesity, but rather sheer size: 46 metres. That’s around 300 bananas! We payed our fee and went on to have a look, amidst around 2/3 of the population of China and India.
The whole place features an astonishing level of detailed worship, that I just can’t put into words. But let’s try: the whole place is basically a giant complex of temples, Buddhas, pagodes, other buildings, monks and so on and so forth. And every single part of it is beautifully crafted and maintained, so most of it is on top condition.
Our time in Bangkok ended on Friday, when we packed our bags, checked out of our coffin-like hotel room and headed for the “Bangkok Bus Terminal (Easthern)”. There, we bought our tickets and hopped onto the blue carriage which brought us to Ban Phe. From the city center, the bus drove what seemed to be hours through the suburbs from Bangkok. Bangkok has a population of 8.2 million people and the whole metropolitan area has over 14 million. Around one fifth of the population of Thailand lives in or around the capital and the result is, that you can drive quite a bit until you can seriously state that you’re in the countryside.
The best thing about the bus pictured above is, that it wasn’t ours. I took a picture of the bus parked in the spot printed on our ticket and labeled Ban Phe (where we wanted to go). Silly me. Of course, the bus we took was the one in the background. But believe me, that one was just as bus-y as the one in the picture.
More about the next few days in the next blog post. Cheers!
Heshsum 