Tantalizing Toes

Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Bangkok, Thailand
We decided to do the tourist thing today and even decided to take a taxi. That's where things started to go wrong. We tried five times but nobody would take us to the Grand Palace because It is a holiday and there is a mob", "too far", "traffic too heavy", more than one offered to take us to the riverboat which goes to the palace but is almost as far from the palace as our starting point and about the same distance from the palace as our starting point - unless we paid B400, about five times the correct fare. We jumped on the skytrain and caught a taxi at the other end which was probably faster overall and cost about B90.

The Royal Grand Palace is like a fairytale but the king only stays there on important holidays and official duties, he has more sense, who'd want to live for ever under the gaze of all those tourists. We were even prepared to pay the outrageous entry fee of B250, outrageous considering the Thais pay nothing. What we were not prepared for was the curious idea that the king might be offended if he saw my lower limbs or toes. There's something odd going on here, The temples, I think there are seven in the palace grounds are looked after by monks (this means they supervise non-monks doing the work) and they wear mid calf robes, about the same length as my shorts and nobody wears shoes in a temple, ever; and what would they do about a kilt.

We know the buildings are in different styles and absolutely outrageously decorated with copious amounts of gold - you can see that from outside. I can live with the knowledge that the king is unlikely to invite me to tea because I wear sandals, he'll never know what he's missed either so we are quits. I can't see how one Wat differs so much from the next one; it's the people that count not the building. I know I would be disgusted at the amount of gold used and imagine how many people could eat for a lifetime on the value of the 75cm emerald Buddha!

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