Pick: sit in a traffic jam all day, or take a tuktuk and infest your lungs?

On the first day we got there, we decided to take it easy and go shopping. We ended up MBK...


... which was 4 enormous floors of nothing much in particular. Really, how could there be so much crap in one place?!?! Eleni and I were seriously not impressed. So we decided to do the boring tourist thing and stop by a donut place to rest our fed-up feet and we discovered Holethings...


What the hell are Holethings?! Well, exactly. The Thais invent a whole new world full of things you never see anywhere else. Like Thai Ronalds and Thai Geoffreys...



I'll bet you've never seen such polite, welcoming American trademark characters.

We also did an enormous amount of sightseeing and managed to cram 7 temples into half a day. We even tried to walk half of it before we got totally sick of how the map we were using didn't have about 90% of the roads. It says on the map that there's only two roads from Here and There but it ends up being a whole other labryinth a la David Bowie. We eventually resorted to putting our precious facial pores in the fury of Bangkok pollution and took tuktuks.

The thing about Bangkok though, is that when you step off a grotty street and into a temple, you kind of totally forget just how damn frazzled you were just a few minutes ago. Everything becomes still and beautiful and the Buddhas remind you how nice it is just to be chilled out.

First off though, I dragged Eleni out of bed at 6am and headed down to Banglarpur (spelling?) to give dana to the monks. We got majorly lost because I was convinced that the road we were supposed to go to was just next to Khaosan Road. But Bangkok being what it is had put about 3 other streets in between, and I'd forgotten that the roads never go straight up and down but curve all over the place to confuse you.

We FINALLY got there but it was a bit late and we only managed to catch up to a few monks. Still, giving dana to even just one monk is such a lovely thing to do.


I love how it's such a normal part of life there that monks wander around the city and people hop off on their way to work to give dana.


And monks, wherever they are in the world, have the best sense of humour. This lovely little old monk stopped to chat, even if it was in minimal English, and to find out where I was from.

Then it was off for a marathon route around all the temples by the river, where flexed our photography skills and tried to freeze all those lovely moments of being among the Three Jewels. Even the weather was in our favour - though it's supposed to be the hot season now, our whole trip was just cloudy enough for us to walk about all day without melting into jelly.










Then there are the Buddhas inside all the bejewelled temples and stupas.




I decided after seeing so many golden Buddhas that they all looked like you could eat them....

There were Buddhas that looked like they were made of butter:


others which looked like they were coated with honeycomb:



and one of Thailand's most famous Buddhas at Wat Pho, looks like a giant block of caramel. Yum!


Outside Wat Pho, Eleni noticed these statues, which look like Willy Wonka:


She asked, "What's Willy Wonka doing here!"

So I said, "It's to guard all the Caramel Buddhas!" (corny I know, but I thought that was quite clever...)

And then of course, the obligatory tourist photos, where we pose and look pretty and try very much to be as Thai as all the Buddhas there...



I really like how this picture captures the two monks walking from behind - a bit like how Dharma steps across a bridge into Eleni's life for the few days we're there.

Thanks to the Case of the Disappearing FlipFlops at Batu Caves, Eleni got real paranoid about losing the new Melissa Campana cheery-patterned ones she bought as a replacement. So the whole trip saw her carrying around a plastic bag to hide her shoes in before entering a temple. So you can imagine how thrilled she was to see this sign...

... it sure made her feel better about not being the only one who'd had her slippers nicked.

And speaking of signs, I spotted this at a toilet in the Grand Palace. I couldn't figure out what the hell it meant at first (I thought to myself, "no way, it couldn't be that! The audacity and grossness....!") So I snapped a pic and went to confer with Eleni...


So is it really what I might have thought it was? A sign telling people not to wash their butts in the sink?!?!?!

Eleni pointed out that if they had to put a sign up, then it must mean that people were actually washing their arses in the sink. So charming, especially in the grounds of the king and Thailand's most revered Emerald Buddha.

Finally, after all the seriousness and being cultural, we hit the shops! We discovered the Most Delicious Ice Cream In The Whole World in Bangkok, and ended up eating it three days in a row. I think that was probably the biggest highlight for me.

As usual, I was the one who ended up going mad at the markets even though I'm the one who lives only 2 hours away from Bangkok and can go back anytime I want.

I was just so damn happy to get onto KhaoSan road with all its tourist tack and loud, gaudy camp.

We also did the Suan Lum night market and got pampered at a lot of massage places (just because we could - and I don't even like massages that much actually...)

On our second last day there, we found ourselves stuck in traffic with a very talkative cab driver. We arranged with him to take us to the airport on the last day, and then decided later that we also wanted to squeeze in a few hours of Chatuchat market in the morning before flying off.

Then we did something very unlike our cautious, safe selves which was to ask him to pick us up from the hotel, take us to Chatuchat, wait for us with our bags in the boot while we shopped and then go to the airport.

But like, what if he runs off with our bags forever and sells all our clothes!!!!

We ended up spending only two hours at Chatuchat because we felt totally paranoid that we'd lose everything. But he was of the very honest kind and everything was in place. He really did just wait around the corner with our bags in the boot. Thai people are like that I guess - they just don't mess about the way people back home would. Funny how honesty becomes a bonus rather than a necessity.

Bangkok is always fun in that kind of chaotic sort of way because you never really know where you are... but we had to admit that we sure were glad to be flying out after the fourth day. The dust and traffic volume and that general stickiness you feel from being out and about in the city makes you really just want to go home and have a proper shower.

And heck, we'd worked hard enough what with all the walking and walking, and seeing and seeing, and worrying about tuktuk drivers ripping us off. It was time to go lounge by a big fat happy beach.