You have no idea how happy I was to see Ang. We've been friends for practically forever and I haven't seen her since Christmas so it was really great to see her again. Also, its unbelievably nice to see a familiar face. Don't get me wrong. I've met some really amazing people and had such a great time traveling together. Its half the fun of traveling! But I only have a week or usually less to get to know the people I meet and that's hard. You're barely scratching the surface with that amount of time and constantly having that "Hi! My name is Jane!" face on is really tiring after awhile. Its like living freshman year all over again. Finally, I really miss home. I mean really. Traveling for an extended amount of time means having to leave your friends and family and sometimes I can feel so lonely and disconnected from my support network. So being able to be with a close friend again is priceless. We can joke about stupid things, talk about real things and enjoy all the comforts of being with someone we love. Its a good thing.
Yay!! Ang is here! We went to this amazing roti (kind of like Indian pancakes) place that had great curries and even better banana-covered rotis. Sooooo good.
But since Ang is only here for 2 1/2 weeks (boo), we have to move pretty quickly to cover a lot of ground. Our plans are pretty ambitious. We want to see Bangkok, Northern Thailand and Angor Wat before finishing in Phnom Penh in Cambodia. Yeah, its a lot but we're pretty intelligent, capable young women so it should be fine. With my hardened experience and her fresh enthusiasm, it'll be a piece of cake, right? We'll see.
We at least did everything we wanted to do in Bangkok. Our plan isn't to spend a lot of time in the cities so we sped through Bangkok in just 2 days. Well, at least through the Grand Palace and the notorious weekend market. The Grand Palace was appropriately grand. Its the home of both the royal family and the Emerald Buddha, which is really made of jade but considered very holy nonetheless. When we walked into the palace, all we could do is stand in awe. And squint. Every building has such incredible architecture but are also completely covered in shiny, colored glass pieces. You couldn't look anywhere without 10,000 glass and crystal shards winking back at you. It was very impressive and beautiful is a bit gaudy. We tried to see every impressive building but it was just so hot, we gave up after a couple of hours. The heat just zaps you out here. Fortunately, we splurged on an air-con room so we quickly left and escaped into our cool oasis. Air-con is precious.
So impressive. Its probably the most impressive, amazing palace I've seen though its hard to tell. It was so shiny, it was hard to look at it for very long.
There's Ang, always ruining my shots!!
But really, the intricate work on the buildings were pretty amazing. The patterns, the statues and all the gold. It was way more impressive than the Forbidden City!
The Grand Palace even had a miniature of Angor Wat, a sign of good things to come!
There were a zillion workers, constantly upkeeping the palace. The entire place looked as good as it did over a hundred years ago.
We even saw this huge reclining buddha. Its gotta be at least the biggest indoor reclining buddha in the world. I love that about buddhas. Each has its own claim to fame. Its always the biggest something or other, not matter how ridiculously obscure.
Me resting by the reclining buddha (the coloring of the photo got a little messed up. Oops.).
We originally planned on leaving Bangkok the following day but we realized it would be a tragedy to leave Bangkok without shopping at the immense weekend market. So we left early in the morning to "beat" the heat but because we were desperate for an air-con bus, we left much later than we had hoped (after seeing innumerable regular buses pass us by). But don't worry! We still had plenty of time to shop. And shop we did. And shop and shop and shop. There are over 8,000 stalls at the weekend market, hocking everything from fake flowers to trendy clothes to every type of souvenir to puppies crying loud enough to break your heart and your ears. In the end, it was way too overwhelming. I would love to spend my time, coming and going, to figure out what to buy but to try and accomplish that in a single day is impossible. But we did come back with a few good finds so it was worth it (lots of people will be receiving "silk" pillowcases as presents!). We bought some fruit shakes to celebrate the end of another long day. Too bad they were Thai shakes that came with salt. Yuck. Word of advice: make sure they don't put salt in your shakes if you ever come to Thailand.
Tomorrow we head out of Bangkok to Kanchanaburi to see some caves and swim in some waterfalls. Finally out of the city!! We had planned to spend a bit more time out there but because of flooding in Chiang Mai (damn monsoon season!), our train was canceled so we have to buy bus tickets instead. It was a nightmare trying to figure out a contingency plan in very little time and I'm so glad Ang is here to help figure things out. But we have a plan and we're leaving (sort of) on schedule!
Yum!! Pad Thai and ice coffee in a bag. Probably 2 of my most favorite things about Thailand!
2 comments:
Jane was always laughing at me because I was constantly taking pictures of all of our meals! It was just that good! The food alone could be worth the trip to Thailand.
I apologize for always ruining Jane's shots.
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