Bangkok Day 2: Rags to Riches

While I have been reporting on the beautiful architecture and temples on my trip here in Thailand, I feel that I would be cheating you if I didn't include our day to day encounters. Today we took the subway to Chinatown, attempted to walk to the seafood market and stumbled into the richest area in Bangkok.

In an attempt to immerse ourselves in the daily lives of the people of Bangkok, we wanted to try out as many forms of transportation as possible. Tuk tuk, cab, train and of

course the subway (they're different). The tuk tuk was easily the most exciting/scariest form of getting around out of all that we tried. More often than not I found myself white-knuckling the "oh s***" handle and pushing my right foot into the floor as I ghost-braked for our driver.

Anywho, we exited the subway and was immediately bombarded by people attempting to "help" us out. Only 40 baht and they would take us to the floating market. There we can go on a boat tour around the river and through the market. What they are not advertising is that it costs a pretty penny for the boat tour. We are NOT getting swindled again on this trip! So we proceeded on our quest through Chinatown as we heard the market there was like no other.

Just as we were told, the Chinatown market was insane. That is compared to the famous Bangkok Chatuchak Market that we visited the day prior! The streets were packed with street food, walking was hardly attainable and if you were over 5'10 you had to duck underneath every umbrella you passed. All-in-all, great experience. Below are a few photos of the streets and what we saw there. 360 degree photos can be seen on my Facebook.

After Chinatown, we stumbled upon a stunning marble laden temple. Now we have seen maaaany temples thus far but this one was just as breath taking, if not more, than the first temple we laid our eyes on. As we learned in the pamphlet, this temple housed the largest golden Buddha in the world at 15 ft and 9 inches tall and over 14 ft in diameter. It ways 5.5 tons and is worth $250 million dollars. I also want to include the Dragon Temple that we happened upon in Chinatown. We were lucky enough to witness a ceremony carried out by monks while we were there. Below are the pictures of both temples as well as a quick video of the ceremony.

Once we finished ogling the temple and golden Buddha, we walked around a bit and witnessed what the average Thai person may see on a daily basis. When planning this trip, we certainly aimed to see the tourist spots but we also wanted to see the real, day-to-day living situation for the population living there. One can still find beauty in the imperfections and that is exactly what we did when witnessing the outskirts of Bangkok.

Lastly, we wanted to visit the famous Bangkok Seafood Market. Long story short, we arrived late to the market but stumbled upon the most boujee shopping mall surrounded by some of the most well-known hotels brands including the Hamptons, Hilton among many others.The mall, Siam Paragon, is a luxury shopping mall with names I have only heard of in rap songs. Truly a stark difference from earlier on in the day. Quite interesting to imagine that some tourists will lodge in one of these skyscrapers and have an entire vacation without seeing the daily struggles of the lower class population less than a mile from their hotel.

Next stop: Siem Reap, Cambodia. Home of the 8th wonder of the world, Angkor Wat. Subscribe to be the first to get updates on our trek!