Bangkok - Ayuttaya - Jan 18, 2009

Hi Guys!

Today was the day with palaces, Budda's, tour guides, photos and a very long history as to why the buildings are the way they are...!

Our first adventure of the day was finding a carpark for our "mini-van" (which by the way is top of the range Izusu MU-7, complete with a DVD player amongst other things). The first people park in the designated angled parks. When those parks are full, the vehicles are then parked parallel behind those vehicles - left out of gear and the hand brake off. If an angled-parked car wants to get out, the car park attendees simply pushes the cars out the way, until there is enough room for the car to reverse. They just shuffle the cars back and forth all day!

Our first stop was the Grand Palace where our guide was the Umbrella Lady (a certified Palace guide with a very large umbrella that she just stuck up in the air half the time). And because it was Sunday, half of Bangkok was also at the Grand Palace. Before we went into the palace grounds, we had to be appropriately dressed. Tim and Jade's pants were too short, and Skye's were "too sexy". So Tim had pants that resembled the old happy pants, and the girls had Thai sarongs on that they struggled to take normal steps in, let alone handle the Thai-style of stairs where they seem to get bigger and bigger!

Umbrella Lady gave us a comprehensive history of most buildings within the complex, and the stories behind the types of statues. These statues are mixtures of chooks, dragons, monkeys, lions and a few other creatures. We also learnt that the statues without shoes are monkeys, while the ones that look exactly the same but have shoes on are demons. Now - not to confuse you, some times the monkeys are good, and sometimes they are bad in a story - depending on what they are referred to - monkeys or monkeys. We got confused too.

The guide had a habit of taking up both sides of the conversation. She'd say something like, "this is a Khmer (Cambodian) style of building. Why? I tell you! Look up and you can see...". We didn't even have to ask!

Here we saw the Emerald Budda, which has a very interesting story by itself and seems much smaller than I thought. However it is a fair distance away.

And yes - I had the obligatory picture with the monkeys holding up the building - and looked like a complete idiot posing for it!

Amongst everything else we saw was a miniature of Angkor Wat which we'll be seeing in about 2 weeks! I have no idea of what scale it would be on - but it's huge!!!

After the Grand Palace (of which we saw lots but way too much to mention everything) we headed for Wat Phra Keaw, the home of the big Reclining Budda. Here we had another guide who grew up being a guide here. Apart from the occasional rants about Buddhism and what we should believe, he wasn't too shabby. The also gave us a comprehensive history of most of the buildings in the complex, and once again it was quite interesting however we were almost passing out from lack of water, or oxygen or food by this time (or maybe a mixture of all of it?). The Reclining Budda was HUGE! His feet didn't even fit into a photo! And we politely declined to have out palms read (or which the guide said it was right 85% of the time, wrong 50%... but right 85%!).

Lunch was some random restaurant across from the Palace walls. Then it was time for out Thai massage! Instead of joining the long line at Wat Po, we went to the training shop front where they are trained for Wat Po. The 4 of us were taken to the back of the store, up some stairs and into a dark room full of mattresses (I was thinking it was a bit suss too...- but no!). Then the 4 masseuses came in, told us to lay down on a mat each and they cleaned our feet. The massage started off easy enough, and then the knees were used and the hands the elbows and the feet! Every time Tim looked over, she was walking on my back, massaging my feet while also using them to balance on. The next part of the massage was more like an advanced yoga session - without having to move yourself! I think I may have to stretch before I have another one. I thought it was pretty awesome, but we were walking out and they said that we had a 'really soft' one! I'd have to know what a normal one would be like...

Ayuttaya was an hour's drive away where our Guest House was on the river on the island. This city used to be the capital of Bangkok a couple of hundred years ago, and has many many Wat ruins to prove it. The air is still quite thick here, but not as bad as Bangkok.

Dinner was awesome! We had a beautiful old boat for the 5 of us, plus a waitress and the driver! Dinner was fresh chilli fish, chicken cashew, and sweet and sour veggies - and rice! It was here that we were introduced to Thai Rum...! Equivalent to 1/3 the price of most other alcohol, and commonly mixed with a glass full of ice, some soda water and a splash of coke. After dinner, we were introduced to another Thai past time - Karaoke! They had re-done all the film clips with Asian people, and turned most of them into soft porn! Woops! The cruise took us half way around the island and back again. Along the way we stopped to feed the fish - one of many things we will come to learn is considered as good luck. On the way back we were dropped off at a floating bar for some more Thai Rumbadada...

We were sitting there, and a lady pulls up in her boat - and it's a floating 7-11! She had everything there - including an onboard popcorn maker! Just like that she made us some sweet popcorn, and some savoury popcorn - and it was so good!

We got to land, and thought the bloke driving was taking us back to the Guest House - when we stopped on a street full of bars, with one serving Coopers! After a bit here, and us still somewhat on Australian time, we finally got home where I swear our tour guide kicked on at another bar!

But who can complain when you wake up to a view like we did!

(Photos when I get the camera cable...!)