There was a lot of prayer. We wern't sure if people do pilgrimages to the many wats in Bangkok or if they were strictly locals, but people prayed everywhere: wats, make-shift temples on street corners, in parks, etc. People would bow to a two inch buddha when entering a massage place and we easily (Without exageration) saw 5k buddhas in our 3 days. It was a bit shocking and we almost felt uncomfortable not doing it.
The city as a whole lacks proper mass transit, housing and other things that really could improve their quality of life. Steve joked that if you reallocated all the effort and rescources that went into building gold covered buddhas and temples you could have a pretty comfortable city! Just about every corner had this many powerlines.
There was a heavy police/military presence, which surprised us for buddhist nation. Tibet, clearly buddhist, was easily taken over by China simply because they didn't have any army because they were committed to buddhist teachings, and Thailnd contrasted quite a bit by appearance. Maybe we need to do some more wikipedia reading on Thailand politics and history, but if anyone has the cliffnotes version, we'll take it.
There we also lots and lots of pictures of the King all over town. Reminded Steve of Maoist China.
That's all, just a few thoughts!
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