I started the day taking a river boat to Wat Arun. Bangkok has a very good boat transportation system that it's easy to navigate and very cheap. Each stop has a number and many guidebooks list the stop number most convenient for the main tourist attractions. An important thing to check is the flag that the boat is waving. The flags indicate which kind of boat it is (express, fast, local) which determines where the boat will stop. Occasionally, the boat will leave you on the "wrong" side of the river (like in the case of Wat Arun) in which case one needs to take a cross river ferry which cost just 3 Bahts (about $0.01).
Wat Arun is a beautiful temple with incredible steep staircases that take you to the mid level of the spire. Wat Arun is named after the Indian god of dawn (Aruna) and it's 82 meter high. The temple complex has other buildings as well that are used for worshiping and praying. A particularly impressive one is built after a Greek temple (although I couldn't find any reference confirming this). Most worshippers were at that temple rather than at the spire.
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As I was leaving Wat Arun, I was surprised to see some of my group (Terry, Richard, and Gemma) on the boat I was about to take heading to Chinatown. They were also heading there, so we decided to stick together. Chinatown is a very busy area of the city. In a way, it looks like the way I was expecting all Bangkok to look like. There are small shops everywhere selling clothing, toys, electronics, jewelry, raw ingredients, and lots and lots of food. You get a sensory overload from all the neon signs, smells, sounds, and if you get a bouza or two, the flavor of the food. In Chinatown, we were heading to see the Golden Buddha. Unfortunately, it turned to be closed for repairs, so we couldn't see it.
From Chinatwon, we decided to take the subway and the Skytrain to check them out (Although, it would have been cheaper to take a taxi given that there were four of us). Bangkok has a very clean, air conditioned, subway with very nice trains and easy to follow signs. Cost is based on number of stations and whey you pay you get a reusable RFID token that you use to enter and exit the subway system. The Skytrain, a separate system which connects with the subway but requires additional payment, is also modern, clean and air conditioned. Our destination with the Skytrain was the MBK shopping center. This shopping mall is very modern and a bit upscale. It has 7 stories of shops in an interconnected maze of buildings that span a whole city block.
Not far from the MBK center is the Jim Thompson house. Hew was an American that exported silk from Thailand to the US. He mysteriously disappeared in 1967 in the Malaysia's Cameron Highlands. Nobody knows what happened to him and legends abound about his fate. He built his house by combining several traditional Thai houses and adding a bit of western style. The result is incredibly harmonious helped by the original furniture and the Thai art throughout in the house. The nice garden and the canal behind the house is a good place to relax and it just amazing that it's so close to one of the major shopping areas of Bangkok.
After some hard negotiation with taxi drivers (we had to get off three until we found one that reluctantly accepted to use the meter), we got back to our hotel to get ready for the overnight train to Chiang Mai.
The train station is not very modern, but it has lots of shops and a spectacular stained glass windows over the tracks. Our train, the Express Bangkok-Chiang Mai train departed on time and it was schedule to arrive 11 hours later at Chiang Mai. Dinner is available in the train and served on your seat at 7pm. Some people bought dinner at the train station which is slightly cheaper, but not as good.
We traveled 2nd class soft sleepers. The setup during the day was two facing seats that are converted into a pair of bunk beds at nighttime. The beds were setup by the car attendant around 9pm. After a restful night of sleep, we arrived at Chiang Mai at 7:20am.
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