Birthday celebrations, massages, fishspas and tattoos...

Having just spent 10 days in silence i seemed to be on a slight reaction from that and just wanted to talk and be on the internet as much as possible. I met Els on the retreat, only chatting on the last day of course! She is from The Netherlands, and was going to be celebrating her birthday alone in Bangkok, so i decided to join her in her celebrations. We went and had a massage – not full thai, but some clicking was done! - which was very welcome after 10 days of sitting!! We then went walking around the Khao San Rd area (very, very touristy!!!), and Els took me to dinner, convincing me this was her birthday party. After a lovely day, with lots of interesting conversation, we decided to meet up the next day as well and go and visit some temples.

I had wanted to go the Emerald Buddha Temple, but her guidebook advised us it was about £7 to get in – i decided to give it a skip for the day! The other one i wanted to go to was the reclining Buddha – and that was only £1, so was more in budget. We spent hours walking around this temple complex. I found it a bit strange though, as some of the temple buildings were used as storage rooms for unused tables etc. That is fine if it is an ordinary room, but these were rooms with buddhas lining the walls, so was like a shrine room. People were also able to drive their scooters into the temple grounds... just things that seemed quite irreverent. It made me wonder if this was just a tourist attraction now, or if it still was used for religious purposes.

The temple buildings were huge and impressive, but the most impressive of all was the reclining Buddha statue. You walk into the room and are almost overwhelmed by the magnanimity of it. I don’t know the exact measurements of it, but i am sure you could google that question and find out. It was just breathtaking!
By this time, Els and i were both hungry and hot, so we headed back to her guest house, which also had a nice restaurant. It started tipping it down with rain on our way back, so we got an overpriced tuk-tuk which protected us from the rain – mostly! After our energies were restored we headed for the fishspa... We had stuck our hands in the previous day to see what it felt like, and so we were trying to decide whether to do it or not. Els was trying to convince me to do it so that she could take pictures – so in the end i decided i would do it while Els stood by taking the pics. It is the most weirdest sensation – i don’t know if i could actually describe it. When you know that you are being eaten by fish, and you really feel the sensation of it – it is immensely ticklish – to the point of sensory overload. What helps is to block off some of that awareness to enable you to stand the experience for any length of time.

 

After surviving being eaten alive, we went back to the chaos of Khao San road so that Els could get her Henna tattoo, then it was ice-cream, goodbyes and then I headed back to my guest house to pack my bags.