Adam Mallon Photography

Oct 24th Bangkok, Thailand – October 2010

With only a single day to explore Bangkok, we set an ambitious schedule.  We’d start at the Grand Palace, then hit Wat Pho, the Marble Temple and finish at Wat Arun.  As we toured the palace and visited the gigantic Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho, all seemed to be going to plan.  It was still monsoon season in Thailand though, and we got poured on as we left Wat Pho to the point where we needed to seek sanctuary in another of the temples.

When the downpour relaxed, we set out again, but realizing we weren’t covering enough distance, we decided to hail a tuk tuk – a three-wheeled motorized rickshaw – and asked to be taken to the Marble Palace.  Bangkok is famous for less-than-honest cabbies though, and this one immediately started up with a scam that I had fortunately read about, trying to convince us that the temple was closed, and that he could take us somewhere else instead.  We insisted on our destination and as we got close he admitted he might have been mistaken and it might be open (shockingly, it was).  He decided to wait for us as we toured the temple but when we climbed back in, he told us he was going to take us to a shopping mall en route to Wat Arun.  We refused and argued for some time, even after he told me about the money he’d receive for taking us to the mall.  Finally, frustrated, he told us to get out of his tuk tuk and find another if we weren’t going to go where he wanted!

We found a cab shortly thereafter who took us directly to Wat Arun with no fuss – and so we tipped handsomely for his honesty!

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