Before you get yourself all pumped up ready to read about
another exciting day in the life of Jenna let me just warn you that this will
not be nearly as exciting as my post from yesterday. In fact it might be a bit
of a let down, but I have exciting plans for tomorrow so while today’s entry
might be a bit disappointing tomorrow’s is sure to be a good one.
I woke up this morning and after lying in bed trying to find
the energy to move for quite some time I got up and headed to the sky-train
station to buy a day pass. In my mind I pictured myself spending the whole day
wandering the city, visiting temple after temple but that is not how my day
turned out at all. It turns out the
sky-train system was built to connect people to shopping centres not cultural
ones.
The other day someone told me that there are some good
street vendors near the National Stadium station so I made that my first stop.
Things got a little interesting here because today is Children’s Day in
Thailand (apparently Canada celebrates this event on November 20th
who knew?), a day to give children the opportunity to have fun and to create
awareness about their significant role in the development of the country.
Because of this the area around the National Stadium was full of large tents,
bouncy castles, a mechanical bull, and other crazy activities for kids to
enjoy. Let me just offer you a piece of advice: if you ever want to look like a
pedophile you should walk into an event target at children and don’t bring a
kid with you, oh and be sure to have a camera in your hands at all times. If
you really want to draw attention to yourself while doing this make sure you
are a different race than everyone else in the vicinity and are wearing very
brightly coloured clothing to ensure you stand out. Needless to say I did not stick around long.
I walked away from the events area at a rather brisk pace in
search of the street markets I was told about without much luck. I’m not sure
if they moved because of the Children’s Day events or if I was just misinformed,
in any case there was nothing left for me to see here so I was off to my next
stop. I can’t remember where exactly I went next, I went to a few different
stops and all they had to offer were malls. I wandered around one of them
trying to find something to eat and it was definitely the strangest mall I have
ever been in. it was called Terminal 21 and was supposed to be like an airport
or something? And every floor had a theme from a foreign country. It was really
strange.
By this point I had figured out that the chances of my
finding something actually worth seeing were slim but I wasn’t ready to give
up. My next stop was the Victory Monument, with a name like that there was
bound to be something worth seeing. That something was a large phallic shaped statue
in the middle of a roundabout. Actually getting to the statue would have been a
kamikaze mission so I took some pictures from the stairs leading to the
sky-train and was on my way again.
I decided to take the train to the end of the line, thinking
for some reason it would get me close the river that all the temples seem to be
located on. I was wrong but I was happy I took the chance because I found the
weekend market; something I didn’t even know existed before I arrived. This is
probably the craziest street market I have ever seen. I was gigantic and there
were vendors selling everything! You could by food, clothes, luggage, cutlery,
electronics, pirated dvds. You could even get a massage in some of the stalls.
I kind of wanted to find a nice light pair of pants to wear into temples so I
don’t have to wear jeans in the sweltering heat or rent clothes that who knows
how many people have worn since the last time they were washed but I couldn’t
find a pair that I really liked. I enjoyed the market but ended up wandering
around longer that I had wanted to because I got lost in the maze that these
markets always seem to be. They want you to get lost so you end up spending
more money, didn’t work on me though all I bought was a bottle of water.
I made my way out of the labyrinth and back to the sky-train
where I decided the only reason those things have air-conditioning is because
people would probably die, or at least pass out, on a daily basis if the
didn’t. The train was so packed I couldn’t move an inch and I was sweating my
ass off. I was relieved when I was
finally able to switch trains. My feet were getting sore and I had definitely
sweat out more liquid than I had consumed so I headed back to the hostel to put
my feet up for a few minutes and chug a litre of water.
When I headed back out I decided to head towards the water
and see if the train actually cross the river or if it turned and ran parallel.
It crossed and I got super excited hoping I would be able to walk to the
amazing temple I saw from the boat a few days ago when I went to the palace. I
couldn’t. Well maybe I could have but it would have been a crazy long walk and
I would have ended up lost because not only did I not have a map but I also had
no idea where I wanted to go except that it was on the water. The map of the
area around the station did show a temple and I walked for several minutes
trying to find it with no avail.
While I was waiting to board the next train I noticed what
appeared to be a temple right next to the sky-train off in the distance. It
wasn’t the temple I was looking for but it was a temple dammit and I was going
to see it. Getting there wasn’t easy. For some reason you need to change trains
every station to keep moving forward. When I got to the next station a member
of staff asked me where I was headed, I told him I didn’t know and I just
wanted to go see the pointy thing (I wasn’t positive it was a temple) in the
distance. I looked incredibly confused I made a triangle above my head with my
arms and pointed but that didn’t help. He directed me to a list of station
names and I just got on the train, I had a day pass I wasn’t on a train I wasn’t
supposed to be on, it was going to be ok.
I disembarked from the train and could see the temple from
the platform. I was finally going to visit the one thing I had been trying to
do all day. Or so I thought. I walked in the direction the temple appeared to
be located but it disappeared. I couldn’t find it anywhere. I wandered in a few
different directions but I just couldn’t seem to find the thing. Maybe there
was no language barrier with the guy at the previous station, maybe there was
no pointy thing and the heat was really getting to me. Maybe it was a mirage
like in the movies. It wasn’t I know there was a temple I just couldn’t get to
it for the life of me.
I was feeling incredibly defeated by this point and decided
to head home.
The rest of my day was pretty low-key although I did head out
around 8pm to go buy some cargo shorts. Yeah that’s right I’m a real party
animal and spend my Saturday nights shopping for cargo shorts and make sure I'm
in bed before 10pm. Chasing imaginary temples is pretty exhausting after all.
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