Back to Bangkok!

Sunday, February 7th 

If you aren't quite caught up on Tina and I'd whirlwind adventure through Thailand and Cambodia, you can check out some of my previous posts if you'd like!

We flew back into Bangkok late (like super late!) Saturday night, barely found our hostel, and then awkwardly helped ourselves to 2 empty beds (the man in charge of the hostel wasn't there anymore and so a guy staying there told us where he knew of 2 empty beds...thanks buddy lol).

Sunday morning was a lazy start for us. By this time in our trip we had been like the Energizer Bunny on caffeine high for a little over a week and coupled with the lovely limp I had recently acquired due to my fall, we weren't in a HUGE hurry to be out the door before 6am ;) {ok maybe it was almost noon by the time we got our tushies moving...a girls gotta sleep you know!}

Our goal for the day was to go see the reclining Buddha in the Wat Pho temple in Bangkok, but silly us, why would we have thought that any plan we had would work out THAT easily! We decided to walk the 1+ish miles to where Wat Pho was, only to get there and have a guard inform us that they would be taking a break for and hour or two and we should just come back at 3...okey dokie...now what. (Us: 0 Day: 1) Let's drag our tired selves and my swelling knee to the nearest floating market just under a mile from where Wat Pho was...perfect idea! {OK, stop reading if you get as squeamish as I do! But, in hindsight, if I would have known how infected my knee had become that morning, I'm not sure I would have left the hostel at all....but hey, I lived to at least type this post right?!}

So we start walking towards the market, it's about this time our joint data plan decides to run out though...bye bye Google Maps...so we resort to asking just about every other person on the street for assistance. Sadly, our luck allowed only about 5% of those people to actually understand our English; we were praying we were going in the right direction. On our way to the floating market we passed the huge flower market that I had read about before hand. I was a little giddy inside since it had sounded cool but I wasn't sure if it warranted a trip of its own...score for the day! (Us: 1 Day: 1) Well, long story short, we were glad we got to see the flower market, because the floating market we were told was already closed for the day...bummer (Us: 1 Day: 2) But seriously, the piles of orchids, yellow carnations, and flower buds they had was unreal!

 

Hey look, it's 3pm...back to Wat Pho we go! We get in line, buy our tickets, check out the maps, and realize instantly that this place is HUGE! You see all the pictures of the reclining golden Buddha, but you never really realize how many other buildings are also within the temple grounds besides the famous Buddha himself! We walked around for a while trying our best to hit each of the smaller temples {shoes off, shoes on, shoes off, shoes on lol} and then happened upon a small Chinese New Year celebration that they were holding. We sat down for a bit to rest our legs and watched a little of the musicians and lion dancers in the meantime. 


Then it was time, you didn't even have to look on a map to find the Reclining Buddha, it was the only building at the temple with a line! I'm not 100% sure what I was expecting, but guys, this Buddha was huge GINORMOUS! Like you couldn't even begin to get his whole face in a single picture let alone his whole body type of ginormous! While laying down, at the tallest point he measures 49 ft tall and from head to toe he is 151 ft long and apparently he's not even the biggest Buddha statue in Thailand?!?! We walked around Wat Pho for about 2 hours total checking out the smaller "temples" including a court yard containing over 400 Buddha statues {when I say we saw a lot of Buddhas in 2 weeks I wasn't lying!}


By the time our stomachs started growling  and we remembered we had a good 20 to 30 minute walk back to the hostel, we decided that we were "templed out" for the day and the smells of pad Thai were quickly pulling us in! With our bellies full and happy we could think of nothing better than a nap! Waking up later from our naps Tina and I both agreed that after all of the days walking we had more than earned ourselves a 30 minute Thai massage {and kudos to my masseuse, her eyes about bulged out of her head when she saw my knee, but she did great and never once touched it! haha}

After we were nice and relaxed, we spent the rest of the evening exploring Khao San Road. This lively street is packed with young local, tourists of all ages, all the Thai foods you could ever wish for, enough beer to drown a fish, and enough oddities to keep you scratching your head long after your night ends! Some snacks, some shopping, and lots of sight seeing were complete before we climbed into our beds like a pair of exhausted street dogs.

Bangkok, it was great seeing you again!

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