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DAY 3 - Pattaya 12/23



THIS... is where I will be living next year.

After a night of doubt over my choice to move to Pattaya next year, the following day reconfirmed every reason why I decided to go there in the first place. Actually, there is only one reason - to have an apartment right on an azure ocean and to spend absolutely every single day SCUBA diving in that ocean.

While Pattaya itself has become a haven for hedonism, Poseidon's bordering kingdom remains the peaceful refuge that it has always been to me. No, it is not the best SCUBA spot in the world, heck it's not even the best in Thailand - but with top class wreck and cave diving, and diverse sea life and coral, I know that despite all else, I will be glad to call the waters around Pattaya home.

As I will be living there for a year, I will save my normal SCUBA diving style entries for that time when I will focus much of this site on my adventures diving around Southeast Asia.

That night, we left Pattaya and headed back to Bangkok. This is where we met Bee.

We had returned to Khaosan road again hoping to find a cheap place to stay. We planned to spend the following day taking the cultural tour of Bangkok's temples.

After walking around for a while, we ran into a woman holding a price list for Thai massages.

I think it was about 80 Baht for a full body hour long Thai massage. How could you go wrong? The answer is you can't. For one hour, this woman of small stature cracked every bone and twisted every muscle in my body until I was able to walk out feeling like jello. Anyway, about an hour later while Icy and I were eating dinner at the Sawasdee lounge, we saw her walking around and invited her over.

Bee used to live in a small village in North Thailand before moving to Bangkok. She works as a Thai masseuse, but doesn't like Bangkok all that much. Bee speaks English quite well, though with a heavy accent which is impressive considering she is completely self-taught.

While we were eating, a French lady was sitting behind us. She was drunk to the point of embarrassing her date who was very quiet and noticeably uncomfortable. She insisted on having me listen to her iPod which was playing a French song that I was unfamiliar with. The lyrics were "Je vous dit (something something something) des yeux." I would not say that my French has gotten rusty since high school, as much as it has become non-existent. After she learned that I was from New York, she just gave me the finger. Her boyfriend apologized for her, although I wasn't about to mind the ignorance of a drunk. That was the last we heard from drunk French lady.

Day 4 - Bangkok 12/24

Prior to setting off for, I had a throng of people tell me about all the Buddhas I HAD to see (they were emphatic about that HAD). I was told of the 'Standing Buddha,' the 'Sitting Buddha,' the 'Reclining Buddha,' the 'Happy Buddha,' the 'Lucky Buddha,' and the lesser known 'Received a Birthday Gift That He Doesn't Like, But Has To Feign Surprise and Excitement' Buddha. Not one to take admonishment lightly, we devoted day 4 to a tour of Buddha and the many positions he is capable of (except for the silly one.)

While trying to plan out our day, a man stopped to ask if we need help. Naturally, despite the fact that we certainly needed some sort of direction, we did not miss a beat before answering "no thank you."

In my experience, most people who try to perform random acts of kindness are looking to make a buck. Such is the sad world we live in. This fellow, however, happened to be the exception to the rule. Completely disregarding our response, he started writing some temple names down.

"You want to see Buddahs?" His intuition was less precognitive and more a good observation of the particular page my Lonely Planet was opened to. He continued. "If you want to see Buddhas, you MUST go to Wat Intharawihan to see the Standing Buddha, then to Wat Sampaya to see the Lucky Buddha. Then go to Wat Saket to see the mountain from which you can see all of Bangkok. Finally, to Wat Po to see the Reclining Buddha." He said all of this in a really animated way. We let him do his schpeal figuring that there is no harm in attaining information. We would just wait for the part where he tries to rip us off, and excuse ourselves.
"Today, you are lucky because the Thai Government is sponsoring a push for tourism and is subsidizing the tuk tuk drivers." ...sure they are.
"I can arrange for a tuk tuk to take you around for the day. He will drop you off at each temple and wait for you for only --" ...here it comes...

"60 baht."

Hold the phone. 60 baht. That is about $1.80 (split between the two of us.) For a guy to drive us around all day? It seemed too good to be true. I patted my pockets to make sure my wallet wasn't stolen while this guy was talking to me. It was still there. I know, the guy is going to insist on being paid up front, and then ditch us at the first temple. Not that 60 baht was too big a risk, but just to be sure...

"Do we pay you now, or--"

"No, no, no, you pay at the end of your tour. "

I thought about it. There was absolutely no way this guy was ripping us off. Icy and I were shocked and speechless. We tried to imagine any scenario in which this can go wrong, but came up with nothing. This was really an honest offer. More over, the guy who was talking to us was not the tuk tuk driver who was about to benefit from the deal. He was just a guy interested in helping us. He did not expect anything in return.

Some of you may wonder why I have devoted so much to this seemingly mundane part of my trip. Really, this encounter was anything but. You have to understand how refreshing it is to encounter a purely helpful and honest person. I don't mean to sound jaded, but for the most part, people don't go out of their way and devote time to help others. Some do, but it is just sadly not the status quo. This was like a soothing zephyr on a sultry day. In a moment, the skanky sleaze of Pattaya and Bangkok at night melted off in the face of pure generosity.

I say this after patting my pockets for the rest of the day.


Anyway, we get into our tuk tuk. To any of you who are unfamiliar, a tuk tuk is a tricycle motor-scooter with an open-aired covered cab on the back. For some reason, I never bothered to get a picture of these, so this one is courtesy of Wikipedia.

Tuk tuks are great in Bangkok not only because they are cheap, but they also can get around the typically congested streets easier.

I wish I wrote down or remembered the name of our Tuk Tuk driver (as he makes a cameo in the next post) but I didn't and I can't. For the sake of storytelling and as our time with him was spent over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, I'm going to call him "Nick." This is the back of Nick's head.

Wat Intharawihan - The Standing Buddha

When the Buddha stands, he stands tall - 32 Meters Tall and 10 meters wide. Named Luang Pho To, covered in gold foil and extremely difficult to photograph, this is Bangkok's Standing Buddha. According to one of the gentlemen at the temple, within the Buddha's top knot are actual relics of Lord Buddha brought over from　Sri Lanka. With that knowledge, I was pleasantly surprised to see that not many tourists flock to visit this particular temple.

One thing that I found unsettling was the large yellow sash around the Buddha that seems to be advertising something.

I did a Google search for "Benz RVT" and I found this website. If you scroll down a bit, you can find the words Benz RVT written among the Thai. I am assuming that this is a private company that perhaps paid for some sort of temple upkeep or restoration. If that is the case then this 32 meter sculpture of a deity is being used as a giant billboard. I am not a particularly religious person, but to advertise on a deity who preached about the necessity to turn away from material things just　doesnt seem right. Heck, even the idea of advertising on a sculpture seems like a misuse of art. It would be like throwing a pair of Nikes on Myron's Discobolos. I think it's great that this company donated money to restore this temple because it really is beautiful. There is something to be said for doing a good thing without letting people know you did it, but I know many people would scoff at my idealistic world view. Still, I　imagine there are less gaudy ways to advertise at a temple.

At the base of the statue, offerings in the form on incense, flowers and gold foil are placed. Presenting such offerings to Luang Pho To is supposed to grant success.

The gold foil is interesting and something that I have only seen in Buddhist temples of Southeast Asia. The idea (as it was explained by our friend at the temple) is that we can share our wealth with the Buddha and his temple.

The temple itself is quite nice with several statues not only of the Buddha, but also of the various Abbots and Gurus who restored and taught at the temple.　
　　

Really, really beautiful place.

At this point, I was feeling a lot better about my decision to move to Thailand.

Wat Sampaya - The Lucky Buddha

The Buddha at Wat Sampaya is Lucky. We were not and got there about 5 minutes after they closed the doors to the temple. Irony abounds.

Wat Saket - The Mountain

Boy, did we drop the ball here. To be honest, it was not completely our fault. We were told about a mountain from which one could see a great view of Bangkok.

I cannot stress enough that the word used was mountain as in a natural elevation of the earth's surface having considerable mass, generally steep sides, and a height greater than that of a hill.

As you can see, in a country that is not especially mountainous, Bangkok is situated on a pretty flat piece of land. As we are both from Japan where the concept of "mountain" is used very literally, we were both expecting something more along the lines with the above dictionary definition.

After returning home, I did research on this temple and learned that by "mountain," what was really meant was "mount" as in "The Golden Mount" a stupa containing more of the Buddha's relics. From the top of this stupa, one can get a pretty good view of Bangkok.

While we were at the temple, we saw the stupa and carelessly disregarded it as a part of a different temple as we chased our elusive "mountain." All of the temples that we saw had stupas, this one just happened to be enormous. Of course, now we understand why people smiled and said "right here" as we asked them, "where is the mountain?"

Anyway, we were strangely fortunate in spite of our careless mistake. While we never managed to climb the stupa, in our search for a mountain (within the walls of a temple) we stumbled upon a ceremony. Here, eighteen new monks were being ordained.

This is Number Eighteen (as we came to call him).

We saw a bunch of people taking pictures of and fussing over him, so we figured that he must be someone important. Maybe the eighteenth monk is the best monk. Maybe he is the one who will one day being unity to the force. We had no idea, but we saw the fuss and wanted to get a picture with him. We were surprised because when we asked a woman to take a photo of us with the Golden Child, the woman we asked gave us a look that begged to know why on Earth we want a picture with this kid. Maybe she didn't know that he would one day save the world. Later, upon seeing the rest of the ceremony, we figured out that the people fussing over Number Eighteen were most likely his proud family.

Then again, you never know. He looks holy. Doesn't he look holy?

We left the temple to find that Nick, our trusted tuk tuk driver was no where to be found. We looked around, figuring that maybe he was chased away from where he was waiting for us, and had to circle around the block. For 45 minutes we waited as he was a pretty nice guy and we didn't want to screw him over. Finally, we came to the realization that he had abandoned us which was a foolish move considering that we hadn't paid him his 60 baht. It was even more foolish considering the fact that Icy and I were so relieved about the arrangement and how nice and honest he was that we had privately agreed to pay him double that. We figured that 180 baht (about $3.60) was still a great price to pay for a guy to chauffeur us around Bangkok for a day, and if would show our appreciation of the fact that he was not out to rip us off. Alas he ditched us and we had to find another driver. This was done with great ease.

Wat Po - The Reclining Buddha

The Reclining Buddha of Wat Po is probably the most famous sculpture of Buddha in Thailand. It is an impressive sculpture, to be sure, however the temple surrounding it is itself absolutely amazing.

Besides the reclining Buddha, the temple is known for its 95 stupas which are distinctively square. Stupas (like the golden one at Wat Saket) are meant to house the ashes of deceased kings or important monks, or other people of note as well as religious artifacts and relics. The stupas at Wat Po are distinctively square and adorned with ceramic tiles forming intricate floral designs.



The original temple dates back to the 17th century, before the founding of Bangkok. It is the oldest temple in the city In 1801, King Rama I expanded the temple. In 1832, King Rama III enlarged the temple to its present size and built the reclining Buddha. Rama III also established the temple as a center of learning. Here, in Bangkok's first "university" students not only studied Buddhism, but also Yoga and medicine. Here, a type of pressure point reflexology named Nuat phaen boran was developed and it is still taught at Wat Po. It is popular all around the world under its more common name, Thai massage. Throughout the temple, you can see tablets that once were used to educate students in the ways of Thai massage.


This sculpture demonstrates the various ailments which are remedied by Thai massage.

Of course, we also have the obligatory fertility sculpture.


















The Reclining Buddha, an impressive 46 Meters from head to foot lies in the Wiharn, a building barely larger than the sculpture itself. The gold plated sculpture depicts the Buddha in the moment as it passed from this world to Nirvana. It is truly awesome.

Here are my feeble attempts at capturing it on film. Since the Wiharn is only slightly larger than the sculpture itself, it is damn imposable to get a good shot.





On the soles of the feet are the 108 auspicious scenes in Chinese and Indian styles. These are inlaid Mother of Pearl. The same is used to accent the eyes.























Our exploration of the temple grounds ended at the Wat Po Traditional Thai Massage School where students of Thai Massage perfected their craft on our achy bodies.






By the time all was done,the sun was setting. We hung around for a bit as the temple took a new form. The red Thai sunlight reflected off the white walled temples and ceramic encrusted stupas giving Wat Po a fiery glow.

We headed back to our hotel to pack and get set for the following day when we would head to Cambodia.

We'll stop there for now. Stay tuned.