Bangkok & Phuket

Wednesday night I hopped on a flight to Bangkok with P-Kik at the last minute. We stayed at Asia Hotel in Bangkok (http://www.asiahotel.co.th/asia_bangkok.htm) for the night. Asia Hotel is expensive (from a poor college student’s point of view) and looking a little old, but it’s still quite nice. One great thing about Asia Hotel is that you can walk straight from the hotel’s second floor onto the Sky Train.

Thursday morning I hopped on the Sky Train and headed over to the famous Siam Paragon shopping center. Just picked up a few things of course.

I spent the afternoon flying down to Phuket, the largest island in Thailand. This is where the tsunami hit back in 2004.

I chose to stay at Sugar Palm Resort located just 100 meters from Kata Beach. I was told that the beaches on the west side of the island are much better than those on the east. I thought that Kata Beach was a good compromise between the crazy tourism at Patong Beach and the isolated feel of Nai Thon Beach. And oh what a great choice! Kata Beach turned out to be one the most beautiful beaches on the island and the Sugar Palm Resort (http://www.sugarpalmresort.com/) was so amazing!!! I highly recommend Sugar Palm Resort and Kata Beach; it’s the best in Phuket.

Thursday evening I saw the Simon Cabaret show. This was an exciting show filled with lip syncing transvestites. Somehow I ended up with a front row seat to the show. Many of the lady-boys were quite beautiful and more than convincing. The Simon Cabaret show was quite entertaining, however the dancers seemed less than enthusiastic. After the show all of the lady-boys lined up outside begging for photographs. Of course every photograph you take with them costs about $2. If you want to see the Simon Cabaret show make sure to call ahead; they will pick you up from your hotel in a minibus and drop you back off after the show for only 160 Baht.

Bangkok Part II

Monday morning P-Kik met me in Bangkok. We started our day off with a visit to Wat Phra Kaew and the Grand Palace. Wat Phra Kaew is home of the famous Emerald Buddha (which is actually made of jade!). The Emerald Buddha has a different royal robe for each season (hot, cool, & rainy), which the King himself changes. The Grand Palace is a former royal residence. Today the Grand Palace is only used for certain ceremonies.

Palace guard that eats humans:

Next up, we walked over to Wat Pho. This wat has the largest reclining Buddha image in the world (46m long & 15m high). In the temple you walk a circle around the big Buddha. When we first entered the temple, I asked P-Kik what all the jingling noise was because the place was nearly empty. On the way out of the temple there are eighty metal bowls where you can donate 0.25 Baht into each bowl, filling the wat with this wonderful sound.

After the rain died down, we left Wat Pho and hopped on the river bus to Wat Arun. Wat Arun is named after the Indian god of dawn (Aruna). We didn't get to stay for too long due to the all the rain, but it was great to see one of Bangkok's landmarks.

Monday night I was lucky enough to see the award winning Traditional Thai Puppet Show with traditional Thai singing and a traditional Thai orchestra(http://www.thaipuppet.com/core/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/lang,en/). This is the only place in Thailand to see this dying art. The Traditional Thai Puppet Theater Company is also the official authoritative guardian of Thai puppetry. The show we saw depicted the story of Ganesha's birth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganesha). I loved it! I recommend to everyone visiting Bangkok to see a puppet show.

After the puppet show, I had to book it to make the 10pm overnight train back to Phitsanulok. I had rented a bed on the train in one of the non-air conditioned cars (it wasn't very hot that day). I was expecting the sleeper train to be similar to what Kelly and I travelled in Egypt with private rooms...However, it was no where near as nice! I slept ok despite the fact that they never turned off the lights in the train...

Bangkok Part I

Friday I decided to catch the bus down to Bangkok for the weekend. I was lucky to stay at Kay's house for the weekend (P-Kik's friend). We woke up early on Saturday and headed off to visit many temples or wats surrounding Bangkok:

After lunch, we went to the famous floating market. The floating market has many boats on the river where venders cook and serve food delicious meals and snacks:

Coconut-something wrapped in banana leaf...so good!

Sunday we visited the huge JJ market in Bangkok. I was glad to have Kay with me to help me get Thai prices on all the items I bought. Sunday night I was fortunate enough to attend a real Thai wedding reception. It was quite similiar to a western wedding ceremony, but no etoh or dancing...