The next day we just walked about Bangkok and situated tickets for transportation for later in our trip. The only real thing we managed on this day was to go see the Grand Palace which I had seen my first time in Bangkok. The Grand Palace officially opened in 1785 marking the founding of the new capital and the rebirth of the Thai nation after the Burmese attack. At this palace, there are 61 acres of gold and glittery goodness to feast your eyes on. Moreover, the mural paintings on the wall could take ages to look at there are so many of them.
This day was also the day before elections in Thailand. As a result, nowhere in the whole country was allowed to sell or serve alcohol. We were a bit disappointed that in our first day on vacation, we couldn't even enjoy a beer with dinner. We went to Khao san road, one of Bangkok's most famous. Khao san road is considered a traveler's haven. You walk down the street and you could forget you were in Thailand. Not only that, but you could forget that there are countries. This street has people from everywhere, different fashion, hairstyles, languages, beliefs, everything. I believe that if the world were just one big country, it would probably be a bit like this. The sides of this road are covered with neon signs, restaurants, bars, shops, people's good for sale on the side of the roads, cluttered. There are services to make you fake ID's, braid your hair, sign you up for tours. It's an abyss of craziness. Cars that try to drive down it, only a mere 100 meters would take ages to get through the floods of people walking slowly looking at everything. You have people shouting to you to use their tuk-tuk, take their taxi, buy their water, buy their fruit; constantly needing to say "no, thank you" - even though they never take no for an answer even after the first 5 times you tell them. I imagine men are also receiving offers of prostitutes at this point, although I can't confirm that for truth or not.
On Khao san road, we were given a flyer and actually took it. It was for a nearby vegetarian restaurant. We followed the map on the little piece of paper and found what I consider heaven. Atleast, a vegetarian heaven. The whole road was lined with vegetarian and vegan restaurants. If only my city in Japan had one of these. We enjoyed delicious Thai vegetarian food minus our desired alcoholic beverages. The steaming heat of the day made us feel overly tired. We were in bed before midnight.
Our other two friends, Kyla and Andres arrived in Thailand sometime in the middle of the night. They joined us the next day. I only really stayed in Bangkok this one day. The last time I was there - I didn't like it. I thought maybe because it was the last day of my trip, the weather was 10times hotter and we were all sick that were the reasons for that. However, this time, being my first destination with decent weather; I still am not a fan of Bangkok. It just seems that everyone there is trying to rip you off as much as possible, it's polluted, it's hard to get from point A to B because of all the traffic and people were generally rude. Once Kyla and Andres arrived, we left Bangkok to go North to a city called Ayutthaya.
Click here for all the photos of the Grand Palace
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