Saturday (1/8) – Lamphu Treehouse Rooftop Patio (Bangkok):

Man, I’m pooped. It has been a long (and expensive) but good day. We’re back at our hotel now enjoying fruit ice cream bars on the rooftop patio. I’m also sipping an A&W root beer and counting my bug bites.

After my coffee earlier, Ashlee took me for a little souvenir-shopping. She bought a small windchime of sorts – it’s a string of flying elephants with propellers on their butts – from the nicest old man.

From there, we headed back across town to Wat Saket and the Golden Mount. We hiked up a fair amount of stairs – ringing bells along the way – and we were rewarded with stunning views of the city. On the way back down, I got to pound on a gong for a bit. That sounds a little weird, huh?

This little boy had all the bells to himself and he was really going to town. He acted the way I imagine my brother, Shawn, would have had a young Shawn been in his shoes.

From the foot of the temple we headed south towards China Town. On the way we took a detour down a long and narrow alley to “Monk’s Bowl Village,” the only place in Thailand where people still make traditional alms-collecting bowls for monks. After walking down a series of twisting lanes populated by children, sleeping dogs, and adults taking tea breaks, we found a group of bowl makers. They were really excited about showing us the bowl-making process – and more importantly, getting us to buy one. The bowls themselves each take about a day to make. They are hammered together from eight separate pieces of steel (symbolizing Buddhism’s Eightfold Path) and then fused together with melted copper wire. They are then beaten, polished, and coated in black lacquer. Realizing that what we were seeing was not so much a tourist trap as it was a glimpse into a raw, poor Bangkok community, I decided to buy a bowl – my first souvenir of the trip!


Back on the main thoroughfare, it was another 20 minutes (we walked a lot today!) to China Town. I think we made it to where we wanted to go. It’s hard to tell because the streets aren’t clearly marked and the map we are using isn’t the most finely detailed. Anyways, the place we found wasn’t exactly what we wanted. After 15 claustrophobic minutes, Ashlee took pity on me and we tuk-tuked it back to our hotel – with a stop at 7/11 for some ice cream. I tried to also buy a beer, but apparently you can’t buy alcohol between 2pm and 5pm – maybe it’s because that’s when school gets out?

Now we are just killing time until dinner and plotting our moves for tomorrow.