A Dance Of Mind Blossoms Surrounds The Golden Buddha.

Travel blog from Bangkok. An adventure through the busy streets of Thailand’s capital city.

We recently departed for a new nation, bidding farewell to Cambodia, our host country for the past few months, and arrived in the interesting and dynamic Siam, sometimes known as Thailand. We are eager to see what lies ahead.

In Bangkok for a week already. We walked 12 kilometres and drank 5 litres of water a day while exploring Chinatown’s vibrant and bustling alleyways and sampling new cuisine. Next, we went to several glistening temples that would have made Lady Gaga’s attire seem downright garish. We tried the local buses, rode an expensive tuk-tuk, spoke with a whole Chinese family, and pursued enormous Buddhas.

Food Is Everything.

You wish you had three mouths and three stomachs at this point so you could sample all the delicious street cuisine. I cannot recall how many Pad Thai meals I had. Rice noodles combined with bean sprouts, egg, lemongrass, toasted peanuts, fish sauce, and tamarind puree for the sauce. Then there’s the fiery Tom Yum Soup, which has prawns, tomatoes, coconut milk and leaves from the kaffir lime plant.

Then there was the street-grilled squid, the mango sticky rice, and the delicious Khao Soi, a curry-noodle soup with coconut that is popular not only in northern Thailand but also in Laos and Myanmar. It’s Jyl’s favourite food to date, and she ate an embarrassing quantity of it. It is served with a handful of crispy fried noodles as a garnish and consists of noodles and chicken in a thick coconut broth full of freshly ground spices.

Discovering Buddha.

We chased a 69-meter-tall Buddha across the city for thirty minutes. The golden statue was not lost, of course, but it is difficult to locate a clear space in a crowded metropolis like Bangkok’s small neighbourhoods where you can see the statue above the buildings.

On the tube, we travelled up, down, up and down again. As we meandered around little streets, we tried to remember where the Buddha was and hoped that an opening would appear at the end of the alley so we could watch him. When we asked to enter the opulent condo’s outdoor parking, security refused to let us.

Additionally, repeating a movement that you believe you have already completed can occasionally lead to finding the correct interlocking, as demonstrated by the Rubik’s cube. Thus, we had the opportunity to witness the Buddha enjoying the fresh air amidst the skyscrapers, possibly serving as a reminder to everybody that life is more than just living in skyscrapers and working like crazy people.

The Grand Palace and temple hopping.

Thailand is home to numerous temples,

Actually, there are more than 40,000, and each one is distinct. A lot of those temples are also home to galleries or museums. Here, guests can discover more about the background of Buddhism in Thailand as well as other facets of the community’s culture.

The Grand Palace in Bangkok.

Visiting the Grand Palace is among the most comprehensive experiences you can have in this regard. It is the official residence of the Thai king and a complex of palaces and temples. There’s no denying that the palace evokes the past of Thailand and its people. When it was first constructed in 1792, King Rama I lived there. Since then, it has grown to become a significant hub for Thai customs, religion, and culture. The royal grounds are home to numerous shrines and temples, including two of the most well-known Buddhist temples in all of Thailand: the Temple of the Emerald Buddha and the Temple of the Reclining Buddha.

A lavish and precise beauty, so perfect that it appears to be a 3D animation, so grandiose that it inspires everyone to bow down, even those who are unaware that bowing down to a Buddha is customary.

A certain sort of magic.

Under the June light, the gold and precious stones glitter brilliantly. The incense and prayers fill the stillness. Being detached from these locations on a religious level, we are able to view them differently than individuals who regularly visit them as sites of worship. It makes sense since this is one of the few temples that charges admission. Apart from an extensive complex of temples and a museum, there was a demonstration of Khon, the customary Thai dance.

The Ramakien is on stage this time. An epic that travelled over centuries throughout South-East Asia, originating from a Sanskrit literary work from ancient India. In an exhilarating, captivating, and tender performance, the entire production miraculously comes to life as the live ensemble recounts the tales to traditional music.

Chinatown Children.

In the unlikely event that you grow weary of craving the same foods, there’s a fix that can keep you occupied for weeks on end: visit Chinatown on an empty stomach!

The quantity, calibre, and hue of the food on offer are beyond words! We went through an already-closed market on the street that led to our destination. Our footsteps resounded in the darkness, and there was not a single living or dead soul. We were sceptical that we had chosen the incorrect route because everything appeared so still.

But then, Chinatown appeared around the bend, surreal and sweetened, overdone and welcoming. The experience is multisensory; you will eventually find yourself strolling around Chinatown like a huge millipede, swinging together with 400 other people without even noticing it.

The Serpent.

There’s nothing else for you to do but move in tandem with the other four hundred individuals. You will be drawn in, entertained, and perplexed by the lights because, in the event that everything else in Chinatown vanishes and just the lights are left, you will be able to see the striking exoskeleton of a neon metropolis dancing in the dark, displaying a variety of symbols, fonts, letters, and colours.

The aromas emanating from the cauldrons, the perfumes, the warmth of the grills, and the hints of spices would resurrect the dead. It will be a wonderful agony to decide what to eat, and you won’t be able to identify half of the items you come across.

Finally, you will be rewarded by the flavors—spicy and sharp like fried seaweed, sweet and round like coconut cakes, spicy and marine like grilled fish with lemon and chilli sauce, or exotic and otherworldly like shark fins or bird’s nest soup—when you are tired, exhausted, and a little dazed but happy.

Chinatown is a place to stroll, eat, and enjoy.