Day 2 in Bangkok

Day 2 brought us lots more adventures. We had to check out of the Marriott today, but left our bags and headed back down to the river on the Skytrain. We hired a private longtail boat for a little cruise on the river and the back canals. Apparently Bangkok used to have many, many canals – in fact it rivaled Venice – but now they have paved over many of the canals. But there are still some canals which definitely showed us a different slice of life for the Thai people.

Now I have said how there is a huge discrepancy between the opulent temples and skyscrapers to the shanty shacks where the people live, but our tour of the back canals really highlighted this. I’ve never seen such poverty except on a National Geographic special – amazing, but in a whole other way to the amazing of the temples. These places were scantily constructed shacks built out of rotting wood and corrugated sheet metal or any other building scraps that could be found. And they stood maybe two feet above the festering river. And even though the river was filthy, kids still swam in it and fish still live in it. As well as people doing their laundry in it and who knows what else in it.

The longtail dropped us off at a snake farm, and even though we were doubtful that the boat would still be there when we returned (which it was!), we went inside to watch the show. Wow! What a show. That’s the closest I ever want to be to a cobra without a barrier in between. These guys were nuts the way they taunted the snakes to strike at them, but by the scars on their arms, they’ve probably been bitten a few times and were now no longer susceptible to their venom. I also now know that Emmy and London are not afraid of snakes, Cannon, a little bit. Before the show, we wandered around the other parts of the snake farm to see, monkeys, deer, a tiger and the biggest dag’ um crocodile I’ve ever seen. This was a monster and I was very glad there was a high concrete wall between us!

Back on the boat we continued our poverty tour (I took it as a chance to educate the kids about how the rest of the world lives) and then stopped by the very impressive Temple of Dawn. This is a beautiful towering structure that sits on the south side of the river. It’s supposed to just glitter at sunrise or sunset, but since we saw it in the midday sun I can’t attest to that. The reason it glitters is because the entire temple is covered in tiny pieces of glass and pottery – sort of like a huge mosaic. You can climb up the outside of this temple, although the stairs are REALLY steep. Cannon and I were able to go up and we smiled down at Steve who stayed rooted to the ground.

After our river tour we slowly made our way to the airport to catch a plane to Chiang Mai.