Having explored a few old haunts on our first day in Bangkok, wed succumbed to jet lag and crashed early, which often occurs when travel exhaustion and unrelenting heat collide. Its such a heady mix. But here I was, wide awake at 3:30am the following morning, my body clock struggling to adjust to Indochina Time.
I decided to start work on a quotation request wed received hours before leaving Australia. It was a major project, and one we couldnt ignore. Unfortunately, the submission deadline was 29 January – the day before our return flight home. I had to prepare it as we travelled through Thailand and Laos, and my preference was it sooner rather than later.
We headed down to Siam Unique Hotels diminutive dining area for an early breakfast at 7am. The fried rice, fried noodles and crispy fried chicken were fantastic (because they were local), but the sweet toast, doughy croissant, orange cordial and weak tea were fairly ordinary. Why do people expect to be served western food in eastern countries? This human affliction that refuses to wane
– our incapacity to cope with difference, and our desperate need for familiarity. I felt so sorry for the poor kitchen staff who had to prepare unfamiliar food for the foreigners.
Anyway, we enjoyed of the efficient and affable old man in charge of breakfast. He was very talkative, and he wanted to share with us the best highlights of Bangkok. Unfortunately, we had to bunker down in our room until midday, but we listened attentively as he talked about his city. We were the only ones in the dining room, so he had a captive audience.
Having worked through the morning, we decided to visit Chinatown in the early afternoon. Our travel excitement was reignited. We clambered into a taxi and asked to go to Wat Traimit, but the driver didnt seem very sure about our requested destination. However, he did a great job to find it, and his metered charge was so much less than the prices wed been quoted since arriving in Bangkok. He was a grumpy old man, but we forgave his continual mumblings, because he dropped us within metres of Wat Traimit.
afternoon sun, so we picked up a couple of tickets and clambered up the stairs to the fourth floor of the temple. Wat Traimit – better known as the Golden Buddha – is home to the worlds biggest golden Buddha (according to the information on the back of my ticket). Weve seen many larger Buddhas in our travels, but this one is apparently made from solid gold – hence the biggest golden Buddha tagline. As I stood in front of this extraordinarily extravagant icon, which is costed at a whopping £28.5 million pounds in current world prices, I couldnt help but wonder what Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) himself would think of a solid gold image of himself? Especially given the poverty that was so apparent in the streets surrounding the temple.
The clambering of tourists to get photos of themselves in front of the golden Buddha became far more interesting than the sculpture itself. We wandered around the top of the temple for a while, but the searing sun was getting unbearable, so we descended the stairs to ground level and made our way towards Chinatown.
make that three words utter madness. We tried to navigate the sweltering, manic, crowded and anarchic streets, but progress was slow due to the sheer volume of people streaming through the place.
We escaped from the streets into an store to cool down, but heaps of others were doing the same, so we continued on until we found a less crowded shopping centre that was (thankfully)
At one stage, as were waiting to cross some traffic lights, a young local bloke behind us started taking photos of the backs of our heads at very close range. When I turned around to see what he was up to, he kept taking photos of my face, and there was less than 40cm between us. He didnt seem to care about privacy, and he was fascinated with Ren – the bulk of his photographic effort was targeted at her.
