On our own again this morning, after a familial farewell breakfast. We headed to the Grand Palace, where people were shouting “hurry, hurry, gates close in ten minutes!” Um at eleven am? But still, we hurried… to wait in line.
There were a ton of people milling around. The guy behind me was apparently so anxious to see the place, he was crowding me something fierce. So much so that I finally turned, said “you are much too close to me,” and put my hands on his shoulders and pushed him off me. He was impervious! It didn’t even give him pause, and this time he was pushing me forward. Miserable.
We gleaned that since it was a holiday, the princess would be worshipping there – hence the early closure. The temples in the grounds would be closed all day, as well. This mean we weren’t able to see the Emerald Buddha, but once I learned it was carved from jade and not literally a giant emerald I wasn’t too bummed too miss it. (Hey, we’ve been to a lot of temples so far. This is day 8.)
Next we walked to Wat Po to see the giant reclining Buddha. And when I say giant, I mean GIANT. The funny thing is, the building he’s in is barely big enough to house him. Visitors can only stand up close.
While we were walking around the statue (traffic flows one way, because there is little walking space between the wall and the statue), I wondered aloud if Scrooge McDuck was counting his pennies somewhere in the temple. The sounds of coins clinking was overwhelming, especial given the small space. Apparently your drop these pennies in all these copper bowls for good fortune or something? We skipped it since we weren’t exact sure what that was for, and didn’t want to intrude on any Buddhist ceremonies, just in case. I’m not going to lie, the long line of penny droppers holding up the flow of traffic was also a factor.
Next we walked to the riverside, having heard about a tourist boat that will take you down the Chao Phraya river and tell you what you’re looking at. We started at a long boat pier, which were noisy and expensive, so we walked a little further and got to a public boat dock, where we learned that the tourist boat really only started and stopped at two different docks and we were right in the middle of both. So we hopped on a public transit boat, took that to the sky train, took that to the hotel, grabbed our bags and headed out to the train station.
A funny thing happened at the train station. My mom and I share a love for Agatha Christie novels, and in fact were watching a documentary about the television adaption of Murder on the Orient Express right before we left on this trip. The old platform sign said our train would be departing from 3, so I went out there and The Orient Express train was sitting in platform 3! I was so excited, I thought there had been some train mix up or we got tickets on a certain leg of the trip or something. Taking a ride on the Orient Express is supposed to be like taking a cruise – it’s luxurious, you are pampered and everything is taken care of. I go tell Mom the good news, and she thinks there’s a mistake somewhere, there’s no way this is our train, but I remain optimistic. I go ask a station worker, just to be on the safe side.
The sign is broken. Our train departs from platform 8. It needs some cleaning, a new paint job and some WD-40. It is most definitely not The Orient Express.
Oh well, an overnight train is still an adventure, just a less luxurious one I let myself imagine for about three minutes. We got on the train at seven, and the attendant started turning our seats into our bunks at 7:30! We were riding second class, which meant we each had a bunk with a curtain, but the car was open – we were across the aisle from two more bunks with only curtains separating us, and so on throughout the whole car. Luckily, we heard that to eat in the dining car is more fun, so we sat in there a while instead of just going to bed at eight. Hardly anybody was in the small dining car, most having opted to eat in their seats (or beds). The dining car had blinking Christmas lights strung up all over the place, and some 70s (maybe?) German pop band reunion concert was blaring on the tv. Side note: I think I may be really into 970s German pop music.
After dinner, we resigned to our perspective bunks where I was relegated to the top bunk. I definitely got the short end of that deal, as the bunk was on an incline, and I felt every pitch and roll the train car experienced for the rest of the night. Also somebody had candy up there at some point which had melted and got green sticky stuff everywhere. Not the greatest night of sleep, but a bad night of sleep in Thailand is much better than a bad night of sleep in Texas!
Meredith R. Allen 