Thailand

Dec 31, New Year's Eve: Christi writes:

Today, we headed out to Wat Po (meaning: 'to have a secure and peaceful life') to see the famous housed 'Reclining Buddha'. We took a taxi from Nan's to the boat docks, and the taxi driver pulls over onto the side of the freeway pass and tells us that this is our exit! That's a first. Well, he did drop us off right by the stairways to the docks, so we can't complain too much. When we get to the bottom, near the ticket counter, once again, there are two lines: one for the Thais, one for the tourists. Guess which line we stood in?

We overhear a guy telling one of the tourists that they were charging 100 baht because you get a 'full day's ride' on the water taxi. Well, no one uses that thing more than a round-trip anyhow. We were in the 'Thai line', so we only paid 20 baht for our ticket!

When we arrived to Wat Po, there were already massive amounts of people. Thais were there to pray and burn incense to the Buddha, as well as tourists that were there to gape at the immense Buddha statue.

Once you get into Wat Po, there are yet, another two lines: One for the Thais; one for tourists. Anyhow, Thais get to enter for free, whereas tourists pay 50 baht. Not hard to figure out which way we entered.

At the bottom of the Buddha's feet, there are pictogram carvings all made out of mother-of-pearl. They were just amazing to behold.

Back to Chatuchak...

After our Chatuchak excursion (we still haven't seen everything!), we headed back to Nan's to figure out what to do for the countdown. In the meantime, we played with her slow loris, which someone had abandoned at the zoo, and she was taking care of in the meantime-- by the way, this has been more than 6 months and counting.