Holidays in Thai: Bangkok on February 7th, 2016

To keep continuity, this post should start from the day before, after we got off the plane.

We arrived at the brand-new domestic arrival hall of Dun Muang airport. Hoping to experience domestic train in Thailand and being told that taxi services in Dun Muang airport are expensive and unorganized, we headed for the Dun Muang Train Station, whose location was not known to us. After consulting to the locals (and thinking of conspiracy theory that the taxi driver union removed all signs of railway station in Dun Muang Airport), we walked north to the old terminal (which seemed like a coach station compared with the modern Suvarnabhumi Airport), up the stairs in a remote corner, across an overpass, down and through some noonbathing locals to the ticket station of Dun Muang Railway Station, only to be told the last train downtown had long departed.
P.S. With baggage in both hands and mom's nagging in both ears, there's no time left for photos.

Since anyway that's a train station, so we stood on the express way (in traffic jam) and started hailing taxies. After about 10 taxies refused to take us because the drivers didn't read our hotel location in Google Maps, or was not willing to take us there (not very likely) or didn't understand English we finally boarded a taxi. After a brief 2 minutes, the driver took us to the airport departure hall, stopped and asked as seriously where we were heading.
P.S.We finally resolved this problem by calling the hotel.
P.S.P.S.Our very friendly taxi driver welcomed us to Bangkok and asked where we are from. Having been told "China" he asked us: "Thaiwan"? #HowIWishedICouldAnswerYes
P.P.S.S.There seemed to be a 100THB "Taxi Tax"(I admit I invented the name of this tax) at Dun Muang Airport, since we hailed that taxi outside the airport, no extra fees.
P.P.P.S.S.S.Given the cost of taxi, the price advantage of Dun Muang Airport to Suvarnabhumi is really negligible ok, that's because domestic flights in Thailand are all that cheap, for the latter has much cheaper metro connection.

Now it's official February 7th.

It's Chinese New Year Eve, also our first full day in Bangkok. I was eager to see how a foreign festival was celebrated in Thailand.
We were to spend the day visiting sites like Grand Palace, where any other holidaymaker would visit. For the night, my mom had been complaining about the lack of shopping malls for days.

Morning, we took a taxi on the main street near our hotel to the Grand Palace. It seemed that taxies waiting in the alleys never used the meter, and named whatever price they could imagine.

Due to traffic jam, our cab driver dropped us off not far from the Grand Palace visitor entrance. Yet I failed to manage Google its entrance, instead we tried to walk its perimeter. Unfortunately we tried the wrong direction, so after 7/8 of its perimeter we finally reached its visitor entrance.

Contrary to North Thai a couple of days ago, Grand Palace was swarmed by people, a majority of which belonged to Chinese tour groups.

On my entrance to the Grand Palace one guard pointed at my shorts which barely covered my knees and led me to a small but equally swarmed room to borrow a designated trouser provided by Grand Palace which looked utterly terrible. So that day I need to painstakingly instructed my mom to keep it out of the photos. More importantly, there’re no packets in that trouser.

I shall say that the Grand Palace stated that photographs in it should only be for “individual or educational” purposes.

The main attraction of Grand Palace is its affiliated temple Wat Phra Kaew, plus only a few palace buildings.

Ubosot and the Emerald Buddha holds the Emerald Buddha, the photography of which is not allowed. By museum description, His Majesty routinely changes the Emerald Buddha.

Then we passed through a narrow doorway out of Wat Phra Kaew, into the perimeter buildings of the Grand Palace.

There’s a museum next to the palaces about the history about the Grand Palace, and a museum about royal coins near the entrance of Wat Phra Kaew. The former one is inside Grand Palace / Wat Phra Kaew and is thus free, the ticket to the second one comes along with the ticket to Wat Phra Kaew / Grand Palace. In fact, we were attracted to the museums by air-con, avoiding the Chinese tours is another plus.

Having left the overcrowded Grand Palace, we headed for the nearby City Pillar Shrine.

Compared with the previous Wat Phra Kaew, which is more for tourists taking photos than for pilgrims seeking solace(By the way, who could visit a royal temple if it’s not open to the public as a tourist attraction?)(And by the way, not far from all the clamoring photographers, there’s a corner in Wat Phra Kaew reserved from nannies chanting Buddhism Bibles), City Pillar Shrine pretty much lived up to its name of a shrine. To be honest, I thought the people were drawn more to the shrine than to the not-so-splendid city pillars. Maybe it’s Chinese New Year Eve, and the choir service of nannies were attended by many, mostly local patrons.

It’s half past 2 when we came out of City Pillar Shrine. Having enough of the spicy “Thai Salad” in Chiang Rai, we knew what our lunch would be after spoting a Subway across the Grand Palace.

Maybe it’s due to the location, Thai Subway wasn’t much cheaper than in China, which is to our surprise.

After lunch, we walked along Chao Phraya River to Wat Pho.

Before our trip, I thought maybe the only attraction of Wat Pho is the reclining Buddha, then we found the reclining Buddha only consists of a small portion of the overall Wat Pho. (Although most visitors seem to be only interested in the reclining Buddha.)
I was quite fond of the Phra Chedi Rai (which by Wikipedia is a kind of tower for the ashes of the royal Thai family), which come in various sizes, all beautifully decorated.
Plus, we witnessed how Chinese New Year’s celebrated in a Thai Temple. The whole Wat Pho is filled with speakers broadcasting festival speeches from the monks.

We spent such a long time in Wat Pho and took quite a lot of photos, till my camera battery went out and I used my cell phone instead.
After leaving Wat Pho, We sat beside Chao Phraya River watching sunset and finishing the leftover of our Subway lunch. Having realized we haven’t tried Thai city bus, with Google indicating traffic jam back to hotel which would make taxi drivers reluctant to take us, we decided to take Bus No.2 to the shopping malls near our hotel.

We waited quite a long time (probably due to traffic jam) for bus No.2 at the nearby bus stop. It’s right after some fellow Chinese visitors gave up on waiting for bus No.2 and took whatever bus that came, that our long-awaited bus No.2 arrived.

Then there’s the nightmare. The bus conductor asked us “where are you going?” in her Thai-style English. I tried to answer also in English, she shook her head; I pointed out the destination in Google Maps, her head kept shaking… One bus stop later, I found a place near our destination that has Thai display on Google Maps, problem resolved.

Having stuffed our bellies, mom had the Gala on China’s state-run television to watch, and I had my camera battery to charge, so we walked back to our hotel.

Having resurrected my camera battery, and not subjecting myself to propaganda on state television, I decided to hang around in downtown Bangkok.

END