Temple Fever

Our second tuk-tuk experience was classic by-the-book (literally, Lonely Planet told us this might happen). We looked lost. A local man on the street stopped us to see if we needed help. He established a link with us--'i'm a teacher too!' We fell for it. then: 'The temple is closed for the next three hours but you can get a tuk tuk for cheap to the other temples in the city that are open. For you, make sure it only costs 60 baht. That's the local price.'

Crap. locals don't take tuk-tuks.

We ended up in an Indian Suit factory which, Jay, our Thai driver from Chiang Mai ('Ah very nice city!') forced us into, in one of those smiling, obliging sort of ways akin to mentally unstable people about to stab you in the eyeball with a fork. To be fair, it was mercifully brief and he did take us to the suit factory en-route of four of the city's hundreds of temples.

The whistle stop tour:
Wat Traimat (also known as, get this, The Golden Buddha)
this delightful deity weighs in at a delicious 5.5 tonnes of solid gold...
now that's some expensive footwear




The more minor Wats



Our tour ended when Jon guiltily gave Jay a 40 baht tip because overall, at 100 baht, our little three-hour tour hardly broke the bank. We arrived on the side steps of The Grand Palace and Wat Pho (insert joke here) where a pair of smartly dressed, crafty Thai men were trying to convince us of a similar swindle.

Wizened with age, we opted out and instead paid our admission fees at another gate. Inside it was a disneyland made of solid gold. Minus the rides. and the sticky food. and the mouse ears.





but no temple is complete without at least two ridiculous signs:

Thailand's my kind of country.