After a few days in Singapore, we caught a flight back to Bangkok, to apply for Chinese visas (!!!) and begin the northern part of our travels. We were looking forward to visiting Chinatown and exploring parts of the city we hadn’t visited before.
Imagine being packed in shoulder to shoulder with a mess of hot, sweaty tourists and bustling Thais, while being completely surrounded by large quantities of food, jewelry, house wares and knick knacks—that is more or less what Chinatown is like. Anything you can imagine, and in immense quantities, is within arm’s reach. For instance:
Beautiful necklaces and strands of beads
Industrial sized steamers filled with dumplings
Three foot tall bags filled with dried mushrooms
Plastic buckets in every size, shape, and color imaginable
But one of the most amazing things about Bangkok, is that you can be surrounded by absolute chaos, and then turn a corner and be greeted by this:
A breathtaking Wat (temple), or in this case, Wat Suthat.
Before you can go in, you must do the following:
The interior of the complex:
Along the corridors there were gold Buddhas, as far as you could see
The biggest Buddha of all, inside the central part of the Wat.
With visas in hand and our packs on our backs, we left Bangkok to head north by night bus to Mae Sot, a town on the Thai/Burmese border. On our way out, we passed this Buddha getting shined up on the street.
great photo of you gillie!
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