I was still pretty beat from the trip over so I snoozed my alarm that went off at 9am and didn’t wake up until housekeeping came knocking at 10:30. At which point I finally got up, showered, and headed out the door. My first stop was Wat Phantao, but it was under renovation so there wasn’t too much to see. Next stop was Wat Chedi Luang, but they wanted a fee to get in and women weren’t allowed inside the temple buildings. Kinda dumb to have to pay a full fee but only get to do half the stuff because you were born with a vagina, so I took some pictures of the outside and left. I ain’t up for that full priced misogyny even if it is cultural. On my way to the next stop, I passed by a pad thai place so I took a seat and had some delicious chicken pad thai and hydrated up, then continued to Wat Phra Singh and this one was really cool. You could go into all the areas, everything was covered with gold plate/leaf, and some of their statues and buildings dated from around 700 years ago. They also had these plaques with popular wisdoms and phrases all over the place that were neat to walk through and read, plus they had temple cats to pet. The next stop was a little over a mile away and in the 90+ degree heat I didn’t feel like walking so I took one of those “crash waiting to happen” red taxi zippy cars to Wat Suan Dok. At that temple, the buildings with the relics were are all painted pure white, with the gold plated main temple and pagoda on one side. The contrast was really stunning, and I paid the fee to get in the temple to see their three massive Buddha statues. The monks were all out walking around too, but I wasn’t sure if taking pictures of them was allowed so I didn’t, but man there are a LOT of them in this city. While I was walking around there were a few other smaller temples I stopped in too, but I didn’t catch all of their names. After Suan Dok, I decided it was time to go back to the hotel to cool down for an hour before I went for my night tours, and I eventually found a red taxi of death back to the hotel.
The Full Moon Company small group tour picked me up at my hotel, and drove us first to Wat Umong Suan Phutthatham which was built about 630 years ago, and wasn’t much to look at outside since war, earthquakes, and typhoons had worn everything down or collapsed it. But underground were a series of tunnels and temples for the monks to get around and meditate in absolute dark and silence, once only lit up by candles. There were elaborate decorations and paintings on the walls in the past, and some of the frescos were still there since they were in the dark so long. Our final stop was Wat Doi Suthep, the temple on the mountain, following a little zig-zaggy road all the way up. Our group decided to be lazy and take the tram up to the top rather than going up the 306 step naga stairway, and we spent about 45 minutes walking around, taking pictures, enjoying the gorgeous city views from that elevation, and completing our three laps around the pagoda before making a wish per tradition. The only other single traveling girl and I opted to walk down the naga steps rather than take the tram down, and I guess the line for the tram was long because we all ended up getting down to the base at about the same time. The drive back to the hotel was uneventful, although there was a very nice older German man in the group and we were yapping about cameras, and how travel has changed with social media and cell phones, and how much we all hated Trump (everyone joined in on that topic, there was a consensus between the German, Singapore, Philippines and Thai folks and they kept looking at me to explain and I was just like…I don’t fucking know. Hate and fear are powerful, I guess.) Anyway, tomorrow is elephant day, gotta get up EARLY in the morning…somehow.
