Soon after we had gone to bed last night, we received a call from the tour company we’d booked with for this morning. They wanted to change the pickup time to 9:30am instead of 9am. When they arrived, it became clear why – the normal tour guide was sick and her substitute was a friend or relative who admitted that he had never worked as a tour guide before. He was accompanied by a driver in a Volvo 860.
They drove us to the temple complex about 20 minutes from the hotel. The complex consists of dozens of temples. The highlight is the huge reclining Buddha which is about 45m long by 5m high. Next the driver picked us up and drove us past other sites including the king’s current residence.
As you might expect, the next stop was a visit to a jewellery factory where they pressured Suzy to buy something. She resisted gallantly for ages but eventually she relented and bought a pair of very pretty earrings.
Next they took us to a large tailor shop. Suzy looked at getting slacks, jacket and top and I looked at trousers and a shirt. Several times we went to leave but eventually they brought the prices down enough for us to say yes. They measured us up and asked us to be back at 4:30pm for a fitting. We told them we had to leave our hotel by 8pm to catch our plane and they assured us they would deliver the clothes to our hotel by then.
After they dropped us back at our hotel, we packed up, checked out, had a quick lunch and caught a taxi to the Grand Palace which is where the kings used to live. The highlights were the emerald Buddha and the Grand Palace.
The concierge at our hotel had told us to be careful of the taxi drivers waiting outside the palace complex. He told us the taxi fare to the tailor’s shop should be less than 100 bhat. Sure enough, the first taxi quoted 300 bhat and wanted to take us to a jewellery store on the way. We got out of the taxi and hailed another cab.
This driver (who introduced himself as Mr Pol) drove down every back alley to avoid the traffic and eventually delivered us at the tailor’s shop. Along the way, he tried to convince us to go to a different tailor he knows to buy clothes. We said no. One-way streets were no obstacle to Mr Pol. If there is too much traffic on our side of the road, why not just drive on the other side.
We reached the tailor before the appointed time of 4:30pm but the clothes arrived in dribs and drabs from about 4:45pm to 5:15pm. We were surprised to find Mr Pol waiting outside for us to drive us back to our hotel. Naturally, he offered to take us to a jewellery store on the way but we declined.
After we got back to the hotel, we went to nearby shops and markets and then returned to the hotel restaurant for another very impressive meal. We had planned to wait in the lobby for the tailor – not expecting him to really arrive before 8pm but we were amazed when he ran in at about 7:30pm with the clothes.
The weather forecasts had been for thunderstorms and heavy rain yesterday and today. Instead it was just very hot and muggy – especially in the afternoon – until a thunderstorm arrived with heavy rain and strong winds in the evening.
I’m glad that I now can say that I’ve been to Bangkok but I don’t feel any great need to come back here again. But if we do, I expect that we will stay at the Vie Hotel again. It had excellent rooms, restaurant, services, etc. For us, it felt like a safe haven away from the heat, traffic, taxi drivers and pressure selling.
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