mARTin-on-tour.demy travel blog

After a nice full breakfast at the Reflections, we check in at the Le Fenix Hotel for the following four nights. The hotel stands as one of the newest and hippest hotels in Bangkok, however I personally prefer the individuality of the Reflections much more. Another huge difference is that there is no free wi-fi access at Le Fenix and they charge you approximately 700 THB (14 EUR) internet per day, which is unbelievably sad.
So on this second day of Songkran, we decide to go to the city centre to see what’s on there. There is an outdoor music festival but the weather is too hot for us to enjoy it.
We then decide to do a boat tour along the river. We get a day pass for the tour, and our first stop is Wat Pho (Temple of Reclining Buddha). We walk around a bit, and on the way back to the pier, we are stopped by a tuk tuk driver. He says he can take us for 20 THB, which we think is a good price to go on this special kind of vehicle of Bangkok. So, we are first brought to a temple with a fat Buddha or something, we do not stay long cos it’s nothing interesting. Next, he drives us to a silk shop and we do not stay at all cos we don’t want any tailor-made silk clothes. So we just tell the tuk tuk driver to drive us to the pier, and then he says he would get a commission of 100 THB if we stay there for 15 minutes. I determinedly say no to him and tell him that I would pay 100 THB if he drives us to the pier now. After he hears this, he finally starts his engine, but he is actually taking us to the last stop of the ‘sponsored’ tuk tuk trip – the Golden Mount. Since he does not take us to the pier where we wanna go, I just pay him 20 THB in the end which somehow upsets him, but that’s the way it is. Sin Sze thinks I’m so cool.
So there we are, at a place that we have not planned to go. We take a walk around and find out that it’s actually not a bad place like the other two stops. There are some street stalls where we get some nice food from. We take a walk up the hill where you see a nice view of the town.
After some breezy time, we decide to go back to the pier but somehow we get a bit lost in walking. The maps we have are useless cos not all streets are shown and that the road system of Bangkok is a bit complicated to understand. However, we have a good time walking in some unknown places. We pass by a canal where there are some simple local housing. We also pass by China Town but since it is a public holiday, all shops are closed. Eventually after 2 hours or so, we get back to the river side. We have some small pizzas for dinner and then we take the BTS Skytrain back to the hotel.