After an uneventful night..i woke up a bit late in the morning..spending sometime to ponder what my plans would be today…hmm..visiting The Royal Palace, Wat Pho, Wat Arun, MBK, Don Muang Airport n Chiangmai..It’s my last day travelling with the teachers and the beginning of my own trip to the Northern and Southern of Thailand..yeah..it’s gonna be a long day…
After packing we started our trip today to the Royal Palace, the place where the King of Thailand conducts his ceremonial duty. It was hot that day..(or is it always hot in Bangkok?)…we arrived at the back gate of the palace and along with us,flocks of tourist crammed the place waiting for entrance.Yeahh..this palace has always been a place for tourists to visit especially those who r interested in culture and history..”Come..Come..Hurry over here….before we go inside of the palace i want you all to listen to me and follow me…” said our tour guide, a middle aged woman with bulky body and stern attitude. She stressed on the importance of following her and of course, TIME..and she took this matter seriously…she asked us to go to the toilet first so we wouldn’t be left behind during the tour..She was like the SS Officer dressed in a tour guide uniform ordering us n forbidding us from doing what we shouldnt do..but she also shooed some Chinese tourists from obstructing our pose…too bad i forgot her name hahhaa…
The Royal Palace complex consists of the palace itself, some temples including Wat Phra Kaew where a highly revered Buddha image carved from a single block of jade enshrined, the famous emerald Buddha. Some of the buildings in the complex are off limits for tourists regardless none of the royal family lives here. The buildings are adorned with sophisticated decorations shining in glory under the gleaming light of the sun..so pretty..enticing us to take pictures despite of our tour guide’s strict instruction to go on..haha..finally she had to give in to our vain pleasure…:p…
Our next destination was Wat Pho, atemple which housed the Reclining Buddha..a statue of Buddha covered in gold and pearls which probably the biggest golden Buddha i have seen in Thailand..well i saw one bigger in Ayutthaya but it wasnt covered with gold..we didnt spend a long time in this temple due to the lack of time..i had been here before so it was okay for me.Besides, what interests me most about Wat Pho is not the reclining Buddha but the massage center..Wat Pho has been known to produce the best traditional masseuses in Thailand. The masseuses have been trained since the old times to give a remedy healing towards the soldiers. I tried that during my previous trip and well..they have an unorthodox way of massage…One of their moves made my back curled like a shrimp..results??well i felt like a jelly after the massage n slept soundly afterwards…
Walking out of Wat Pho, we went to a pier just on the side of Chao Phraya River to catch a boat to our next destination, Wat Arun (The Temple of Dawn)..waiting for 15 minutes n no boat came, we decided to walk to another pier and took a ferry across the river..and there..stood majestically the Temple of Dawn..it was said that the temple was built on the site where King Thaksin passed during the dawn after the fall of Ayutthaya.. The temple itself has three storeys n the stairs are quite nerve-taking to be climbed upon…old people and those who have disabilities or even those who are afraid of the height should avoid going to the top of the temple..Of all the teachers, only Wuri, Geraldine, Suyanti, Bipin and i went to the temple..others?well they preferred to go to the shops around the temple..like i said..Indonesians love to shop..even in a place where we should put the pleasure of sightseeing first..but oh well…from the top of Wat Arun, we can see the view of Chao Phraya..This temple used to be the highest building in Bangkok…well time to go now..i met some of the teachers carrying some plastic bags of shirts..apparently they got a really good bargain over here..I managed to buy one shirt with a Thai flag on it for 90 bahts..pretty decent shirt with a good price..
We continued our trip to a local dimsum restaurant near a BTS station. As a dimsum lover, i didnt like the taste of Thai dimsum..again some of the ingredients inside the buns made my appetite ruined..but i needed the food anyway..our next n last destination was MBK shopping mall…some of us had made plan to go to Madame Tussaud’s but i had been there anyway..spending quite sum of money to a place i had been to was not really my piece of pie…so i went with Suyanti,again i followed the cinkoest friend of all as a shopping guide, to MBK and looked around..nothing impressed me..MBK is just like another Mangga Dua to me…and finally my time was up..i had to say adieu to all my fellow friends from PIS TD…they had to go back to Jakarta in a few hours and i had to go to Chiangmai to continue my journey..i had to meet Richardo, my backpacking friend on the bridge near MBK. Together we went to Mochit Station by train and continued on bus to Don Muang airport to catch a flight to Chiang Mai…well that sounded like a easy plan to do right..well it was..if u had the time…apparently, we made a mistake..
Well..our plane was at 7 pm and we met at 4:30 pm…Richard who had taken a bus from Don Muang to Mochit Station told me that we only needed 30 minutes to reach the airport from Mochit. Apparently the bus that we took had taken a different route. We were on the bus for more than an hour causing us to run in the airport, Amazing Race style..my heart was beating fast, what if we got left by the plane..shoot!!!..my mind was filled with many simulations n plans…luckily we had already checked in via web and all we needed to do was running to the boarding lounge in time….running n dashing…panting and sweating..we arrived just 10 minutes before we boarded the plane..that was so close…
It took us an hour to arrive in Chiang Mai, feeling so tired after all the events today…i became disoriented and so sleepy…we took a taxi from the airport to our hostel..So Hostel near Kalare Night Market..i was so tired that i only had the power to walk and find some padthai to eat..then we headed back to the hostel and took a deep sleep to regain energy to face days of adventure in Chiang Mai, the Rose of the North….