Bangkok Again, Day One: The Grand Palace

This was my second trip to Bangkok, you can read about my first trip here.

Friday morning, Bangkok. We were staying at the Hotel de Moc, which is a great place--the best part about it was their tour desk. We had been trying to finish planning our trip for weeks with no success, but we sat there for about an hour and the guy there made all our arrangements, booked our train and plane tickets, etc. Sweet. They were also having a pool party for some reason, so free snacks and drinks. Also sweet. We ate in the hotel restaurant, which was pretty good for a hotel restaurant.

After breakfast at the hotel (receipt: "Free Breakfast Buffet!!!!!"), we piled into a taxi to go to the MBK, my favorite Bangkok mall. Sadly, it didn't open until 10am, and so we got on the Skytrain to Sukhumvit to visit the U.S. embassy.

One of the things about living in Southeast Asia is that your passport fills up fairly quickly--every visa and visa extension is a full page. My passport was out of regular pages, and I was tired of having to bribe consulates to put visas on my "amendments" pages. I had heard that the U.S. embassies abroad can put in extra pages in about ten minutes, no fuss (in the U.S., you have to mail your passport somewhere, it's expensive, and takes weeks).

Apparently the embassy was closed to U.S. citizens because it was the last Friday of the month. The guard acted like I should understand why that is, but I just smiled and asked a few more times and finally they let me in. After quite a bit of security, I was back on American soil, and a nice lady had me fill out some forms and then sit and wait for an hour while she "checked my name".

Waiting in the U.S. embassy citizens' waiting area is kind of fun because you get to listen to all the other Americans who have come in for various reasons. There weren't many because the embassy was "closed", but a few other people talked their way in too. The first was a couple whose passports expired in four months (you need six months validity to enter most countries, for some reason). They got a rather patronizing lecture about how they should have planned in advance, but the embassy eventually agreed to issue them emergency passports. The next guy was trying to get a U.S. visa for his Thai girlfriend so he could bring her into the country. I'm told by a friend with extensive visa experience that the U.S. hates it when someone tries to get a visa for one purpose (say, a migration visa), but their actual intent is another (to marry someone), and this seemed true here--the embassy guy told the American that his girlfriend was denied a visa because she had no economic ties to Thailand (and so no reason to return), and that she was welcome to apply again, but she would be probably just be denied.

Finally I got my passport with 24 new pages stuck into the binding and headed back to Thailand. It was almost lunchtime, so I took a taxi back to the MBK and ate some more great pad thai at their food court, then back to the hotel.

Trying to get a cab back to our hotel was a little tricky. Bangkok taxis are metered, and the rates are very low--a 30 minute drive across town might cost 50 baht ($1.50). But drivers have figured out that westerners are expecting much higher rates, and so they often try to negotiate a fare instead of using the meter (illegal). I usually just refused to take cabs who did that, but sometimes I couldn't find anyone who would use the meter. Outside the MBK, a driver demanded 300 baht ($8.50), but the actual metered fare was 40 baht ($1.10).

We grabbed a tuktuk to the Grand Palace. The Grand Palace is where the kings lived from the 18th century until fairly recently (now the King lives just outside Bangkok). The Palace is part of a large complex of buildings, including various wats (temples) and shrines, bureaucratic offices, and the royal family's living areas. The Palace is interesting, but the complex is very large and we only had an hour, so we didn't make it through every part of every building (whew).

Seeing the Grand Palace explained why gold is so valuable--it's scarce because Thailand has bought all the gold in the world and used it to cover all their buildings. I even saw a guy painting more gold onto some of the murals, and can only imagine that he got yelled at yesterday ("you call this a gold mural? Get more gold on there right away!").

The ticket for the Grand Palace came with a ticket to see Wat Phra Kaew ("Temple of the Emerald Buddha"), which houses, well, the Emerald Buddha--apparently a very important Buddha icon. I guess if I appreciated the culture a little more, I might see what's so interesting about it, but it just looked like a small Buddha figurine. It's made of jade, not emerald, and it's clothed in a ceremonial robe (apparently the King changes the robe each season). Its slightly suspect history states that it was made in India and given as a gift to the King of Ayuttaya (a pre-Siamese kingdom), was stolen by the Burmese, recovered in northern Thailand, stolen again by the Lao and taken to Luang Prabang, and finally returned to Bangkok by King Taksin. Apparently many Cambodians believe that it should be in Wat Prah Keo, in Phnom Penh, while many Lao believe that it belongs in Haw Phra Kaew, in Vientiane.

The Grand Palace also had a model of Angkor Wat, I'm not exactly sure why. There were riots in Cambodia when a Thai actress was reported to have said that Angkor belonged to Thailand, so apparently that's a point of sensitivity--maybe the model was there to subtly suggest their claim to it without starting any more riots.

Most of the complex around the Grand Palace is made up of structures with shrines, thrones, or other regal or religious items. There was an exhibit of the King's weaponry, but I didn't walk through it--I got the message, which is that the King has a lot of weapons. The guards at the Grand Palace did the Buckingham Palace thing where they stand absolutely still no matter what, and so there were crowds of tourists standing around each one taking photos of each other standing next to the guards.

After the Grand Palace, we walked through a little market. For unclear reasons, amidst the fabric and Thai food on offer was a series of grills where vendors were making and selling french fries and chicken nuggets.

Getting back to the hotel from the Grand Palace was surprisingly difficult. The first few taxi drivers demanded absurd fees to take us. The next driver refused to take us at all, suggesting we try a tuktuk instead. Finally we found a driver who agreed to take us there--but halfway to the hotel, he kicked us out. Figuring we were close enough, we walked the rest of the way. I'm glad we did--we got to see another side of Bangkok. A few blocks off the main road are much poorer areas. It's interesting that poverty looks the same all over the world--these shacks could have been in Cambodia or Gaza or, I'm told, South America.

That's it for Arie's first day in Bangkok. You can go on to day two, the floating market. Also tigers.