Bangkok: City of Angels
8/25/14
After 25 hours on traveling I finally made it to Bangkok with my mom. Thankfully all are traveling went extremely smoothly; even the flights were not as bad as I had expected. We first went from Fort Lauderdale to Atlanta, which was nothing, then Atlanta to Tokyo, which took 13 hours, surprising not all that awful, mainly because someone up stairs must love me because there was Wi-Fi on the plane! If the traveling stopped there it wouldn’t have been bad at all, but it was the 7-hour flight from Tokyo to Bangkok that was the nail in the coffin. By the time I arrived in Thailand I had lost of control of time, it could have been 2 A.M. or 2 P.M. at that point I was exhausted, but still awake because I was so excited to finally get here. My mom and I still had about a 45-minute taxi ride to our hotel, because like most big cities Bangkok’s airport is located just outside of the city. On our drive in I couldn’t help but be mesmerized by all the lights and activity going on. It was around midnight, but you would have thought it was the middle of the day, markets were open, people were eating outside and in restaurants, traffic jams, music playing, it was insane. Our hotel was not in the nicest of areas, but the hotel itself was very nice and extremely well located; my mom and I were able to walk to Wat Pho and The Grand Palace in under 10 minutes.
Speaking of those two places, holy moly, words cannot fully describe how beautiful and opulent they were and pictures did not do them justice. We had a tour guide for both places; both were very nice and informative. In Wat Pho they explained that it was the most precious temple in Thailand, it housed their largest reclining Buddha, which is the last position the Buddha was in before we entered Nirvana. Our tour guide was hysterical, he was a middle aged Thai man wearing Timberlands and a Boy Scouts of America shirt, he was so funny and kind, he kept telling us, “You are in Bangkok! The city of Angels!” He was so proud of being from here and excited about being alive that it made me even more excited. While at Wat Pho, I met with an astrologer / palm reader, I have never done anything like it before, but was always curious, he talked a great deal about my personality and character traits that both my mom and I agreed were spot on. He also talked about my future, which seemed interesting to say the least; I’m apparently going to live to at least 87! After about an hour and a half at the temple, we moved across the street to the Grand Palace, which was stunning, I could not take enough pictures. The thing that struck me about the temple and the palace was how colorful and sparkling everything was, every inch was covered in either some bright colored glass mosaic or gold leaf. We spent about two hours wandering the grounds and enjoying the majesty of it all.
After the palace my mom and I were extremely hot, the weather here is like very similar to Florida, just a little more warm, so we decided to take a boat ride, it cooled us off and allowed us to see another side of the city, we finished up the afternoon by having Pad-Thai at the pier and then walking back to the hotel. We got back and napped a little, then decided to go Sky Bar at the State Hotel, where they filmed The Hangover II, we heard it had amazing views, and it did not disappoint. The city at night was just as beautiful during the day. This city is crazy, crazy beautiful and just plain crazy.
