The next morning, I breakfasted with 4 Hungarian students and their professor going to study Sanksrit in Cambodia for a month, and then headed out to town. A pickup truck, 2 trains, and a boat ride later, I was finally at Wat Arun (The Temple of the Dawn), the first Buddhist temple I actually walked in and around.
I was immediately amazed by the number of golden Buddhas, the pagodas, the statues, etc. Maybe I'll make a post about my thoughts about temples in general later. This temple in particular features a huge prang up which you can climb about half-way. The steps are about 2 feet high and 6 inches deep, making the climb very precarious.
It's good that I started with Wat Arun, because Wat Pho was even more spectacular. Wat Pho features a 45m long reclining golden Buddha, one of the main attractions in Bangkok. This Buddha had black feet with mother of pearl inlays depicting some 108 attributes of the Buddha. As soon as I had left this main attraction though, I stumbled upon a school in the back of the temple. At one point I found myself sitting in single file like with 20 kids between 4 and 8 years old and clapping along as some kids performed some nursery rhyme and dance (before starting to dance Gangnam Style). I couldn't stop smiling. Wat Pho is also said to be the first university in Thailand, with medical, agricultural, spiritual knowledge engraved on stone tablets and inset into the walls. In particular, there were statues depicting ways to stretch and meditate, and (not-so-safe-for-work) pictures explaining the pressure points on the human body. Lastly, all of the gates at Wat Pho are flanked by statues of different sorts of characters; one of these is The Westerner, with a top hat, huge eyes, fat lips, and dressed like a dandy. It's pretty funny to see eastern caricatures of us for a change.
At this point, it's about 5:00pm and I have nowhere to go. I wander to the park, and spot a girl alone reading and English-language guide to Bangkok. I say hello, we hop on the back of a tuk-tuk (a motorcycle-drawn cart), and soon we're walking up the Golden Mountain. We get lost, eat quail eggs, I buy a shirt, and we finally find ourselves in the most touristy street in the world: every other building is a hostel or a bar, all of the signs are in English (or Hebrew - there's a Chabad there too), and everybody wants to sell you food, clothes, a massage, or a tuxedo. After a long day's walking, Sarah (it took us about this long to exchange names) and I decide to let fish eat the grime off our feet for 15 minutes - not something I'm eager to do again. When I get back from Myanmar, I think I'll get a proper Thai foot massage.
Tomorrow (yesterday as of this writing), I leave to Myanmar, a country with at least one ATM.
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