Our mission for today was to find the Golden Mound and climb it, we had been told it was well worth the visit, but it did have 300 steps to the top. I reassured myself that the steps were winding around a hill so wouldn't be too steep or daunting. Using our trusty map we headed off, we are starting to get the hang of the local train network so soon found ourselves at the right place to start our walk. Luckily most of the walk was what we had done the day before so no problems there, and once more we headed up through Chinatown . It was baking hot so it was hard going but soon we saw this huge golden dome glistening high up in the distance.
David was puggled by the walk, the heat really gets to him at times, but a quick glug of coke and he was raring to go. At the starting point and David has a smile on his face.
As you can see this was not a gentle meandering trail around a hill at all!
On the way there were various statues and shrines. A good excuse to stop and get a breather.
There were also lots of bells which peoples rang as they walked past them and even a couple of big gongs, which gave a lovely low tone.
The view from near the top.
The dome it is made up of small gold square mosaic pieces.
At each corner of the dome were these figures which people were hanging blessings on which had been written on gold leaves.
After a rest and looking out over the city of Bangkok, you do get brilliant views from the top, we headed back down.
After this we headed off to Vimanmek Museum, we got a free entry ticket to this place when we went to the Grand Palace, so thought we would give it a go.
The walk here was even longer although we did go up a very pretty, wide street which had these arches going over it all the way up.
There were different designs of arches which made it more interesting. All over Thailand there are huge pictures of the King and Queen, who are extremely well liked by the Thais, and each arch had a photo on. The king and queen each have their own flag and these are seen all over the place, along
with the Thai flag.
Actually finding the museum was quite hard as there were so many other touristy places up there, and big impressive buildings so close together that they all seemed to blur into one. Luckily there were many soldiers on guard at these places who could point us in the right direction, or in one instance, the wrong direction. David was not impressed with that soldier's map reading skills. I think he just pointed randomly to get rid of us.
We eventually got to the museum at twenty to three, one of the guards who saw us sauntering up the driveway, starting gesticulating to us, waving three fingers in our face. Turns out he was telling us to get a move on as the place shut at three! Great we thought all this way and it's shutting but we kept going, too late to turn back. We then got to another gate, where David was told he couldn't be showing off his hairy legs to the world so needed to cover up. Luckily he has the trousers that you can zip on and off the legs and we had the bottom parts in our bag so he started putting them on. I was getting concerned about the time so mentioned it to the lady who told David to cover up, but she said that last admission was half three and you had till four to see the house. Relaxing a little we headed on. Oh my lord , why did we bother, see the next time you get a free ticket to somewhere, don't use it, not worth the hassle.
First of all we were basically herded, between large tour groups of what I think were Koreans , we have seen a lot of them on our travels, into this large area where we had to put our bags into lockers. So there was this huge melee of people trying to store their stuff, while we didn't even have change for a locker. So we had to find change, then once that was done, we were herded to another area where we had to take our shoes off, again big crowds and the large tour groups seemed to be so panicky and determined to get to things first, so were pushing and shoving.
Then one of the tour guides shouted his group to get together but some were still sorting their shoes, so I nipped in front of him and headed on towards the museum and David followed. Leading up to the museum, are stairs which you go up single file as there is a security check at the top. So there was me, then David, then the tour guide I had nipped in front of, who had about 30 in his group behind him. At the top we were split into two rows, me and David were split up by one of the security people , with David still having the tour guide behind him, who kept trying to push in front of David, but David kept blocking his path. We really do not know why he was trying to push in front, as his group was still behind.
Anyway we set off into the museum which was basically a walk around this house, with nothing tremendously exciting or interesting in it, so goodness knows what all the security, and not allowed to take photos was all about. There was really nothing to take photos off! We stopped at one of the cordoned off rooms to look in the doorway, I was stood with David at my side , when I was aware of this strange noise beside me, it sounded like sneezing, angry sneezing and then I realised words were being said. It was the tour guide shouting "f you " to David pointing his finger to his face. I just turned and said " Excuse me, there is no need for that language" , at that one of his tour group came up, apologised and dragged him off. David just stood there smiling! Goodness knows what it was all about but it did make the tour more interesting but of course we were then following that group basically around the museum, we have never seen such a quick guided tour given by a guide before.
We were through the house in about twenty minutes, could have been less. We took longer sorting the locker out and taking shoes off and on than we did touring the museum and then off course we had the long trek back to the hostel.
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