Why is it called the cool season, anyway?

If you are ever thinking of traveling to Thailand, you should know that the term "cool season" is highly misleading. Sure, it's probably cooler than at other times (according to Lonely Planet, May is deadly), but it's 9pm right now in Bangkok, and it's 84F with 54% humidity. This is not my definition of cool.

So, anyways, we're back in Bangkok, this time for 3.5 days. Our last morning in Chiang Mai was nice, we wandered about, saw another wat (our "local" wat, which was on the corner of the little street we were on), went to a market in Chinatown, and eventually got on another overnight train to Bangkok. This one had kind of weird arrangements -- it was an old Japanese sleeper, and each room was a single, so we had adjoining rooms with a door between them. The room itself was pretty nice, wide bed, lots of lights, and even a fold-out sink and a tiny (non-working) TV and VCR thing. There was even a non-squat toilet in the car! Oh, the things I get excited about...but anyways, we had another long train ride (made longer than scheduled for some reason, by the fact that it took about 2 hours to go the last 50 miles. It's a mystery.), slept (though less well because the engineer in control of the train seemed to delight in sudden stops and starts), and finally arrived in Bangkok, at which point we hiked about 3.5 miles, with our giant packs, to our guesthouse. I'm not sure whose bright idea that was, but here we are. On the way, we had an authentic tourist experience via a man who told us he was a teacher and then proceeded to attempt to convince us to hire a tuk-tuk to go to a temple and a tailor, but we escaped unscathed. :)

We were determined to see the Grand Palace today, so after some time spent collapsed at the guest house, we set out again (thankfully, minus huge backpacks) to find food and see more wats and the palace. Food was a bit of an adventure, as the guy served us noodles with pork after cheerfully agreeing that they were vegetarian, but we got it straightened out eventually. We have also been learning that if you don't like spicy food, Thailand is not the best place for you. Our mouths were burning after that meal! We were, however, satiated, and moved on to our first sight, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha and the Grand Palace.

It's hard to convey how grand both of those places were. We have a ton of pictures (though only one of the Emerald Buddha itself, since photos weren't allowed inside the room, and we had to take some through the door), a few of which I've posted here, but they don't quite do the place justice. Everything was gold-painted or plated, covered with glittery things, with ornate statues and lots of other decorations. The grounds themselves were probably about 54 acres, densely packed with buildings and statues. The throne room was amazing, with more ornate glittery things everywhere. The temple that contained the Emerald Buddha was really incredible, as well. The walls were covered with murals of the Buddha's life, and the Emerald Buddha was at the front, surrounded by gold Buddhas and other decorations. Apparently, it has seasonal costumes and was at the time wearing its winter costume. This may be sacrilegious to say, but it kinda resembled Yoda. :) The grounds also contained a palace and several museums, all pretty awesome.



After this, we took the ferry across the river to see Wat Arun, the temple of Dawn. It's notable in that it has a very tall stupa (a mound-like structure containing relics, by definition, though this one was much taller than a mound!), and we climbed up, and then down again, the steepest stairs I've ever encountered! The 3 pictures below show the stupa itself, and the views up and down the stairs. Craziness!



It was getting late, so we took the ferry back and decided to go to one more Wat, Wat Po. This one is famous for having a huge reclining Buddha, and I wanted to see it. What I didn't realize was quite how huge it is! It took up an entire large building and was 160 feet long! It also had very large feet. :)


By this point, we'd been out and about for 5 hours or so, so we meandered back, stopping to eat yet more spicy food (for me) and a lemongrass omelet (for Mu). We also went into what looked like a dessert place, pointed at random pictures, and ended up with fried toast with condensed milk (me) and strawberry jam (Mu). Tasty, if random. We finally got back to our room at around 8pm and have been chilling ever since.

Tomorrow, we get to have more animal encounters! We're going on a tour of the Tiger Temple, where there are actual tigers! We're also going on an elephant ride, to add to the animal factor. Somewhere in there is a trip to the floating market and the bridge over the river Kwai (which I admit I haven't seen), so it'll be a packed day.