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We spent some time just wandering around, taking in the festivities. We entered a fairly large temple complex and watched as people prayed and gave offerings along with the monks in their orange robes. The temples here are a beautiful sight, and always covered in glittering gold and multi-colored mirrors and stones.
We had just enough time to catch a cab back to the Hilton, take a quick shower, checkout, and then get back in another cab headed for the airport. We flew on a small propeller plane, mostly packed with an Italian tour group, to Siem Reap, Cambodia. We'll spend 4 nights and 3 full days here touring the large number of temples, including the world famous Angkor Wat. We had arranged for our hotel to pick us up at the airport and we were pleasantly surprised to find a driver waiting with our name :) We had a short 15 minute ride into town where we checked into the Auberge Mont Royal d' Angkor Hotel ($30). We'd read mostly good reviews on the hotel online and were not disappointed with the contemporary style lobby, inviting new pool, and well-decorated room. Our only complaint is the shower in the bathroom with no tub or curtain, but this seems to be common all over Asia for many budget and mid-range hotels. They do have a deluxe room with a tub-shower that we might upgrade to tomorrow.
Final thoughts on Thailand:
Beer of Choice: Tiger Beer (of course, because we are cat lovers!) Memories: no cab drivers knowing how to find the Millennium Hilton b/c its new, crazy party river boats floating on the river in Bangkok, Bangkok Airways Thai Iced Tea (the best iced tea with milk we found), getting ripped off by the ferry people going to Ko Phi Phi, our furnace of a bungalow on Phi Phi, the bathroom in our bungalow (yuck!), longtail boats, loud cicadas in the trees, beautiful warm blue-green waters, hitching a ride with the locals on the street, scootering around Phuket, getting a $7 ticket for no drivers license on the scooter in Patong, posing with a full grown tiger at the Phuket zoo, sweet coconut water, sound-bites playing over and over at the Baan Krating restaurant, hotel people remembering us when we returned a week later, the hotel staff always greeting with a wai (hands together and bow), much needed relaxing!, intense heat, Songkran festival of water in Bangkok!
Economy: Industry, commerce and services (like tourism :) account for 80% of Thailand's economy. The weird part is that agriculture (producing rice, rubber, sugarcane and soybeans among others) is the #1 employer - go figure :) Overall, Thailand's economy is strong and growing. The unemployment rate is a low 1.5% and only 10% living below the poverty line (as of 2004 figures).
Exchange Rate: 1 US dollar = 38.6 Baht Safety Rating: Recommendation to friends: 10 out of 10 - Thailand was a beautiful and fun place to visit. It's only too bad we couldn't see more of it! We'll have to make another trip back someday as there are endless amounts of beaches and islands to explore. Not to mention, we didn't even see anything up North where many of the big tourist attractions are. Day 107 - Phuket/Bangkok < | Index | Photo Galleries | > Day 109 - Siem Reap © 2007 Blue Ocean Studios, LTD. All rights Reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Services | About | Contact Prints | Return Policy | View Cart World Travel Galleries | World Travel Blog | Links |
It turns out we made it back to Bangkok just in time to celebrate the first day of the Thai New Year today, in the Songkran Festival. The Songkran Festival, also known as the "water festival" is from April 13-15 each year. The festival is most remembered by visitors for its water throwing which can range from a light sprinkling, to water guns, to buckets being thrown from moving cars or politely dumped down your back! The water traditionally symbolizes a cleansing and purification for the New Year.
We got up early to take part in the festivities before our afternoon flight. We took a cab to Khao San Road, in a busy part of downtown filled with cheaper backpacker hotels, restaurants, and many of Bangkok's notable temples. The parade was scheduled for 9am and we watched the Buddhist monks initiate the festivities with a blessing. Many older women sprinkled flowers and scented water on the monks' hands as they offered their prayers. Next, a group of dancers performed a classical Thai dance - very slow and graceful in their movements. The parade finally started, but proved to be very short and unorganized, with many floats just driving by with no one on them. Weird. Either way, the focus of the day seemed to be on water and people from young kids to grown older women would spray or dump water on you unexpectedly from all directions! It felt really good, and provided some relief from the intense heat. Some also had small bowls of a watery clay mixture that they liked to rub unexpectedly on your face as you walked by. This happened to me once, but not too bad (only on my cheeks compared to some people who had their entire face covered). It was fun - when else can you randomly shoot someone in public with a water gun?
We had just enough time to walk along the road to the Grand Palace complex which houses the royal residences and many temples including the Royal Monastery of the Emerald Buddha. The Emerald Buddha is actually made out of jade stone, but was originally thought to be emerald when discovered in a Chaing Rai temple in 1434. The Buddha was then covered in plaster, with only a small bit of green showing through, thus the mistake of it being emerald. Along side of the Buddha, the walls are decorated in mural paintings depicting scenes from the Buddha's life. Unfortunately, due to the Songkran festivities, the entire complex was over packed with locals/tourists and it kind of took away from some of the beauty of the site. We did a quick walk through of the Grand Palace complex and could have spent much more time there if it hadn't been for our afternoon flight. 
After a quick jump in the pool to cool down (it was 95 degrees when we arrived at 4pm!), we walked a short 2 blocks to the center of town and surveyed the many restaurants along one of the streets. They all had pretty similar menus of Asian style cuisine (noodles/rice/curries with fish/meat/veggies) and all of them were super cheap. We picked one pretty much at random and had our first Cambodian meal. We rolled the dice a little bit with our fresh spring rolls - meaning shrimp and uncooked lettuce and veggies inside. We didn't realize until after we had already eaten them that we should have gotten the fried spring rolls to be a little safer - oh well. We are going to just hope for the best tonight! The food wasn't outstanding, but not bad either and for $2 a plate, you can't really complain. 
Food: We loved the food in Thailand, but not as much as India :) We tried out a wide variety of different curries and sauces. My personal favorite is red coconut curry, but green curry turned out to be almost as good. The Phad Thai was also really good. For some reason, we found the food made with fresh vegetables to be pretty safe to eat, and enjoyed tomatoes on bruschetta a few times
People: Everyone we met was very inviting and friendly. We left the Hilton in Bangkok and came back after 7 nights and they actually remembered us and asked how our trip to the beaches was! The street vendors are pushy, but not in an annoying way, and everyone seems to respect your personal space :) The only thing that made it a little difficult was a lack of English speakers compared to many of the other countries we'd been in. It didn't really cause any big problems, just some humorous confusion once in a while and promoted the use of more hand signaling :) 
Climate (April): Extremely hot and muggy. April is the end of the dry season and the hottest month before the rains begin. We enjoyed the afternoon or evening thunderstorms as it cooled things off a bit. Overall, we had very sunny weather with some clouds once in a while that were a very welcomed shade from the hot sun. 