Thailand: Good Luck for You. - Day 14 (Back to Bangkok - continued)

We went across Bangkok to see Golden Mount temple. Bangkok I think is one of the few capitals where “I live right in the city center” doesn’t sound as such a great thing – once the skyscrapers end, getting back to the parallel world of Bangkok slums can be pretty traumatic.

Golden Mount Temple is a mountain shaped structure with a spiral walkway that brings the visitors to its golden top, the temple itself. On the way up people ring a series of bells suspended on racks and finally strike forcefully a large metal gong with a thick wooden mallet.

Reaching the top one can’t but marvel at arresting 360-degree panorama of the whole old town, an incredible Thai soup of pointed pagoda roofs, shabby huts, trees and faraway skyscraper skyline. I’ll miss this place.

At night a tuk-tuk gave as a refreshing drive through Chinatown and main roads with myriads of shining lights to our favorite bar to crown the day with farewell cocktails and shisha.

It definitely won’t be an ‘adios’, but an ‘HASTA LUEGO’.

Thailand: Good Luck for You. - Day 2 (Bangkok - continued)

Getting back to the morning: it was less adventurous but incredibly beautiful. The Grand Palace and the Emerald Buddha Temple is a huge premise, generously embellished with chedi towers, big and smaller shrines,  temples, passages, dragon-faced 3-meter tall guardian statues and bowls with water lilies.

By the way, some signs in English can sometimes be mildly confusing, like ‘Beware! Your belongings!’ & ‘Marry Holidays!’. Another funny sign I saw in the bathroom at the Grand Palace area said ‘Don’t wash your feet in the sink’. How many have tried, I wonder?

Entering any temple one should take off their shoes and do not walk around but rather sit on the floor. Pointing your feet soles at Buddha is disrespectful as well as stepping onto a high doorstep when entering, in fact should be overstepped.

At one of the temples where was a large bowl filled with water, so people grabbed water lily flowers dipped them in the water and then touched their heads with the flower as a sign of a blessing.

It got windier and bell jingling could be heard all around: the bells were hung on the borders of the temple roofs, sensitive to the wind’s mood swings…

After a half-day’s wandering, ahing, ohing, look!-ing and wondering how in the world they created all this beauty we got tempted by the colorful sign at the café door next to the exit, which said: ‘Try the best ice-cream of coconut milk in Thailand!’.  The list of flavors available was impressive and included, among others, corn and red bean flavors! However, there were just a couple of them in the fridge, so I grabbed the first one that came at hand: who cares, I’m sure I’ve never tried any of these! That ice-cream had a durian flavor. As I read the name I was wondering where I already heard this name… It’s exactly one of those cases when no matter how hard you try, you can’t put your finger on it. But as I unwrapped it, I kind of had a bad premonition: the ice-cream smelled awful. So, the light bulb of revelation switched on in my head as I remembered that THAT was the famous smelly fruit that you cannot even take into a hotel room or on board of a plane! I still resisted and ventured to try it… After 3 weak attempts I couldn’t overcome the taste of reminding of sweet rotten onion, so, ashamed of failing so miserably, I had to throw it to trash.

It made me feel a bit better though when I noticed that the trash bin was already full of uneaten durian ice-creams.