The next morning I slept in and rested most of the day. I grabbed a papaya salad at a restaurant off of Kho San and then decided if I wanted to see the Grand Palace that I had better do this today. I started walking there in the blistering heat while trying to avoid the scam artists trying to get me to go into their tailor shop. One person asked where I was going and I told him the Grand Palace, and he told me it was closed for Chinese New Year. What a crock of shit I thought. The Thai people would not close their most important and probably their most lucrative tourist attraction for one day much less a whole two weeks for Chinese New Year. I arrived there and sure enough it was teaming with tourists. The palace was absolutely beautiful. The Palace had many towers and statues all adorned with the most intricate gaudy décor. I took many pictures and then retreated to the shade.
After a while I left the Palace and started to walk south to see if there was anything else of note down that direction. A man asked where I was going and I told him that way and pointed in the direction I was going. He told me Wat Pho temple was closed until 4pm and that nothing else was down that direction. He told me the only thing down there was a flower market. I think he just made this up and said the flower market because he thought this would be the object that would be the most unappealing to me, so I would take a guided trip instead. I told him that I love flowers and kept walking. He busted out laughing. At least he had a sense of humor. I kept walking and arrived at the Wat Pho temple complex and it was a gorgeous set of temples. May be the prettiest I had seen yet. The man that told me it was closed until 4pm obviously lied as it was open.
I was beginning to understand their scheme for telling me that certain places were closed. If they saw you walking they wanted to tell you that places close by were closed until a certain time to discourage you from going. Instead they recommended a place farther away. Since it is so hot in Bangkok, it is difficult to walk long distances, so you would have to take a tuk-tuk. This is the way they tricked you in order to take a guided trip instead of going by yourself. Once you get a tuk-tuk, they probably try to take you to all types of places like tailors and massage places. Sometimes I like to be guided, but a lot of times I like to do things myself, so I found this deceit very annoying.
Inside the Wat Pho temple there was this huge likeness of Buddha that was reclining. It was naturally called the reclining Buddha. It must have been two hundred feet long and about twenty feet wide. We took off our shoes and walked around while taking a few pictures.
I had heard about a sitting Buddha on the other side of Kho San road, but I could not find it. Normally, I would just ask someone to show me where it is, but it can be hard to get a straight answer from people around here as they just want to steer you to the nearest tour. These people that hang out on the street must make commission from the people that they lure to these guided trips. They then also get commission if you buy from the tailors and any other place you get taken to and spend your money at. This is why it is more expensive when you buy items on these tours because everyone involved in getting you there gets commission. If you find places to buy things by yourself you eliminate about five middle-men.
I gave up on the sitting Buddha and instead walked to the Golden Dome. The Golden Dome was much easier to find. It is this huge Golden Dome that overlooks all of Bangkok. It is like Sacre Couer in France. I got there and walked the spiral staircase all the way to the top and was treated to a beautiful view of the huge city of Bangkok. Everywhere I looked was city. On one side you could see one hotel after another, which must have been the Suhkomvit with all its luxurious hotels for traveling foreigners.
At this point I was nearing heat exhaustion, so I limped home. On the way back, I stopped and took a picture of their Democracy Monument and then returned to Kho San. I took a long cold shower in order to lower my body heat. Sofia was coming over later that night for dinner, so I just relaxed until she arrived. My last day and night in Thailand was very uneventful. I left my hotel in a cost cutting venture and settled into another cockroach infested guesthouse for a couple of dollars. I lunched around the corner from the guesthouse where about three or four other foreigners were eating.
I returned back to the guesthouse and before entering they have a place where you take your shoes off and put them in this shoe rack. I took off my shoes and placed them in the rack and off to my left I saw movement right in front of me. I glanced up and right in front of my face and right on top of the shoe rack on the wall was one of the biggest spiders I have ever seen. Its body was not that big, but its legs were long and hairy. If he was on top of a basketball he would have covered half the ball. I then went to my room and in my room was one of the biggest cockroaches I have ever seen. Usually, bugs do not bother me that much although I am not very fond of big spiders (who is?) The combination of these two sightings within minutes must have unnerved me. I could not sleep. I kept waking up every five minutes thinking that something was crawling on me.
I tried to name the spider Alphonso in order to calm me. Usually giving an ugly big insect a human name is a strategy that works for me in order to personalize the insect and make it less scary, but this time it did not work. I still could not sleep. I finally gave up and woke up, showered, packed, and checked out of the hotel around 3:45 am. I turned in my key downstairs and went to get my shoes. The guy told me thank you very much, and he held the door open for me. The spider was not there anymore. I put my backpack down and got my flashlight out and closely inspected the inside of both shoes. Satisfied that Alphonso was not in either shoe, I sat down and put them on. I looked up and the guesthouse dude was looking at me quixotically. I felt like turning to him and saying “just making sure tyrannosaurus fucking spider is not hiding in my boot,” but I did not think he would understand.
After I left the guesthouse I walked around the corner and surprisingly the same lunch spot I ate at yesterday was open at 4am. Even more surprisingly, the same four foreigners that were eating there yesterday were still there. I do not think they had left. They were watching soccer at the bar. They all grinned at me when I came in and sat down and they remembered me from yesterday. The two that I started talking to were from Germany and Ireland. They were both shit-eating drunk and both beaming with drunken grins. They kept repeating things as well. I ordered coffee and an omelet and told these fellows that I was leaving for Cambodia that day. They were very interested in this and wanted to know about my travel plans. After awhile I bid them farewell and they wished me good luck in Cambodia, and I headed down to the travel agency where I bought my ticket to Cambodia to wait for the bus.
Tags: Bangkok, Cambodia, Grand Palace, Spiders, Thailand, travel
