Bangkok, my gateway to Asia!
My acquaintance with Asia began in this metropolis!
Departed from Perm at the end of November 2010. Chartered by NordWind Airlines, through the operator Pegasus. Flight at night, delayed for two hours (no way without it). Travel time is about 9 hours, I slept most of the flight.
The main airport of Thailand met with coolness and grandeur.
Suvarnabhumi was put into operation in September 2006 and today remains one of the largest air hubs in Southeast Asia. The building is made in the Hi-Tech style, glass and metal, despite its size, the whole structure looks airy. The building has a lot of air and light. The floors are connected to each other by a bunch of escalators, travolators. There are Asian paintings on the walls.
There are many exchanges along the way out.
A visa for citizens of the Russian Federation is not required, when passing the border they put a stamp in the passport, take away your completed arrival card, and put the departure card in the passport (do not lose it! ! when
you will be required to fly back at the border of Thailand), take a picture and you can stay in Thailand for 30 days.
Having received my luggage, I go down to the first floor to the buses, Pegasus representatives are already meeting there, I sit down in a comfortable chair of the minibus and follow the paid autobahn to the Grand Mercure Park Avenue Bangkok hotel. The autobahn is mainly located above the ground, smoothly rushes to the center of Bangkok, periodically flowing into multi-level road junctions, where a train goes to your left, under it the road streets turn into bridges over numerous canals. The road from the airport is 30-40 minutes to the city. As soon as you drive off the autobahn you get into terrible traffic jams, flocks of scooters scurry around.
On the streets there is an insane contrast from a mixture of Hi-Tech, expensive cars, chic skyscrapers and poverty, cardboard boxes, bizarre interweaving of all possible information and power cables hanging in absolutely free access to the word lianas in the jungle, in the stone jungle. Countless macaroons line the roads offering exotic treats.
Driving along Sukhumvit Road, you can see how the huge pillars of the bridge, dividing the traffic lanes in half, hold the subway platform, as if covering the road with a huge cover. The driver turns onto Sukhumvit 22, a narrow street runs along high-rise hotel buildings. Massage parlors and fruit/vegetable stalls offer services everywhere.
The Grand Mercure hotel staff greeted us with a traditional smile, quickly checked in, gave us the keys and helped with the luggage.
The hotel is very pleasant on the ground floor restaurant, bar (live music plays in the evening), reception and spa. The room is pleasant, medium in size, clean and comfortable, the bathroom is decent. View of the skyscrapers from the window. In the same place, I changed a small part of the dollars to Thai baht. By the way, bills of greater denomination are valued higher (those for 100 and 50 dollar bills are much more profitable than for bills of lower denomination). After settling in and resting for about 20 minutes, I set off to explore the sights. Having previously asked the hotel for their business card, I highly recommend doing this, especially in such megacities as Bangkok. This will help you a lot in communicating with taxi drivers when you decide to walk back to the hotel. One name of the hotel will not help - there are a whole bunch of similar hotel names.
As always, my Nokia N900 helped me with my pre-loaded maps of Thailand in my movements around the city. The first thing was to eat.
Going outside the hotel, I immediately stumbled upon a macaroni who was cooking something, asking “what is this? " useless. Having ordered most of what she had there in the amount of one copy, she began to try it all. All orders were neatly packaged in small plastic bags and bags of sauces were given out separately.
All food is very spicy, you need to be prepared for this. On the way, Thai girls are lured into massage parlors, and passing by the bars, despite the not yet evening time, you can already see how the Thais are taking new farangs into circulation.
Upon reaching the BTS Skytrain station, Phorm Phong headed towards the National Stadium station.
The subway is clean, ticket sales are as automated as in Singapore, so keep some change in your pocket and don't throw away your purchased ticket - you will need it when you exit the subway.
The subway cars are air-conditioned, the trip offers gorgeous views of the city, the train quickly rushes over traffic jams, not forgetting to stop at the designated stations, having previously clearly named the station. Having reached the Siam Central station (which is on the Sukhumvit line), I change to the Silom Line to get to the extreme National Stadium station. All transitions are signed, you will not get lost.
Near the National Stadium station is the MBK Shopping center, where I went for lunch. I recommend the food court, at the entrance you get a plastic card, on which all purchases are recorded and you pay at the exit. The food court offers a large number of dishes, Japanese, Thai, Indonesian.
Having had a delicious lunch, I ran through a huge, 7-storey shopping center. More than 100.000 people visit the 89.000 square meters of this wonderful center every day.
From the shopping center to the next destination (Wat Pho) go quite far, there are two options. Take a taxi (use only Taxi Meter meter payment, taxi services in Bangkok are very democratic) but given traffic jams and very limited time, this option was not suitable for me. Near the center hangs out a large number of Thais on bikes, who are fluent in driving skills.
Further, my path followed to Wat Pho, the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, located in the very center of Bangkok, built in the 12th century. The main attraction of this temple is the statue of the reclining Buddha (symbolizes the expectation of reaching nirvana) 46 meters long and 15 meters high. There are 108 ornaments depicted on the mother-of-pearl feet of the reclining Buddha.
On the territory of the temple there are numerous stupas, statues of bearded creatures - these are the keepers of the temple were brought from China in the 19th century. A large number of Buddha statues (they say more than 400 pieces).
Near Wat Pho is the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, which houses a 66cm statue made of jade. I didn't manage to get into it.
I catch a tuk-tuk and go to the Intharavihan temple, in everyday life you can hear the name of the temple of the standing Buddha. Tuk-tuk is a fun vehicle and not expensive. Drivers often do not speak English, but based on my experience, you will need a map and an accurate understanding of what you want to visit. Approaching the temple, you can immediately see a 32-meter statue of Buddha, trimmed with a 24-carat gold mosaic. In the forelock of the statue are the relics of the Buddha.
My visit was in the evening, there were no tourists. At the very statue he took, for a small donation, offerings for the Buddha - incense sticks, a lotus flower and gold pieces of paper.
Due to the fact that I am not a Buddhist, I did not know the purpose of these artifacts, but the locals helped me figure it out - I put the incense in a bowl of sand, lit it first, a lotus flower in a vase, and glued the golden pieces of paper to the feet of the Buddha.
Mantras were heard from the temple itself, an evening service was held. Taking off his shoes, he went up to the temple, where Buddhists prayed, dressed in yellow clothes. The sound of mantras spread throughout the temple, penetrating inside, the vibrations of the voice of each monk were felt, which merged into one single theme. Periodically, the voices subsided, and after a pause, one of the monks began to sing, after a while the others picked up his chants. Having stood like that for several tens of minutes in a semi-trance state, he left it with a quite mundane desire to have dinner.
Khaosan Street is a 10-minute drive from the Temple of the Standing Buddha.
Here you will find inexpensive hotels, guest houses, so the street attracts backpackers, informals from all over the world. Here you can sit in a bar or restaurant, buy various souvenirs and just feel the atmosphere. By the way, the film The Beach begins from this street.
Fortified with Tom Yam - spicy and spicy, very spicy soup with shrimp, and rice with chicken for the second. I could not resist trying the local beer Chang (which means elephant in Thai) I can’t say anything good or bad, just beer.
I'm going on a walk in the evening Bangkok. The heat subsides, but the air remains the same dense, saturated with the smells of spicy food cooked by macarons, the smells of exhausts of numerous cars and bikes passing by.
Within a 10-15 minute walk from Khaosan Road, you can take a photo with the Democracy Monument in the background, erected in 1939 in honor of the 1932 Siamese Revolution, during which a constitutional monarchy was established.
From there I go along Thanon Dinso Street (direction south). Giant swings appear on the horizon (called Sao-chingcha), they still resemble huge gates, but let's turn to their history - they were built in 1784. Initially, they were used once a year during the Brahmin ceremony as a sign of the birth of a new world and expression of gratitude to the god Shiva for the rice harvest.
The ritual consisted in the fact that the believers swing on the swing higher and higher and, from a height of approximately 25m, try to grab a small bag of coins with their teeth.
The festivities lasted 10 days from the last days of December to the first days of January. Since 1935, the ceremony has been banned due to a large number of injuries and accidents.
Opposite Sao Chingcha is the beautiful temple of Wat Suthat.
The time was already quite late, and I was a little tired. I catch a TaxiMeter and say the name of the hotel - this is where the hotel business card came in handy, which I prudently took at the hotel. I show it and rush through the night Bangkok. Yes, now it’s really possible to drive a car, not a motorbike.
Fortunately, I had navigation on my phone (Nokia N900) turned on, and at the moment when the taxi driver, either for reasons of heating the tourist, or because he really got lost in the city : ) turned completely the wrong way, my phone notified me about it. He showed the phone with the route to the taxi driver and, making surprised, uncomprehending eyes, returned the car to the route.
Unfortunately, I was passing through Bangkok and there was a catastrophic lack of time. The city is insanely colorful. I highly recommend visiting it! Well, then my path followed to the island of Phuket. More on that later on the same pages : )
