Carly & Dave’s World Adventure Blog

Bangkok, Thailand

Sat 17 October 2009

After recovering from the traumas of the last week we flew to Bangkok!  We are pleased to be staying in a nice hotel just out of the centre of the city.  The hotel was our preferred option because of Dave having been ill and also because hotels seem to be nice and cheap here!

We spent our first day looking around various Buddhist sights in the town centre.  The first thing we noticed was that the maps we have are pretty awful and it is hard to work out where anything is, or how to get to it.  However, we ventured out and found pier number 13 by the river.  A tourist river boat took us near to the sights we were heading for.  Upon disembarking we had to walk up a main road, where many random people wanted to chat to us.  One lady bypassed Dave, came straight up to me and said “aren’t you so white,” whilst putting her arm against mine to compare!!  Having worked on this tan for a while now I was a little offended, but won’t take it to heart too much!  Other people started telling us that the Grand Palace we were heading for was closed and we should go somewhere else.  Nevertheless when we got there it was open!

The Grand Palace, a royal building for special occasions, is very ornate and very very gold!  There is gold everywhere in the complex and you can visit various temples.  In the same vicinity is Wat Phra Kaew, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha.  This is a sacred Buddhist site and we joined many other tourists and monks to take a look at the big green Buddha looking down at us in his gold coat.  It is pretty hot (extremely humid) here, so we were kind of relieved when a dramatic rain shower came and cooled the air a little.

After lunch we went down the road to Wat Pho.  This is where you can take a look at the reclining buddha.  This guy is massive and gold, and you can walk all around him.  Surrounding him are many little pots and the idea is to go round and add a coin to each pot.  We thought we should join in the tradition and therefore did so!  Not sure what the meaning of this is yet, but am planning to find out.  If anyone knows, please tell us!

That evening we were both really hungry and really fancied some ‘safe’ food.  We headed to the Rembrandt Hotel in town, which was lovely and still a reasonable price.  Yum – pizza!!!

Today we wanted to check out the markets so we went to the weekend market at Chatuchak (as recommended by the tourist boat commentator we spoke to!).  This was really good.  It was where a lot of locals go and there were loads of bargains!!  I really liked all the bags and purses they had (think I bored Dave a bit)!  The market was huge (apparently one of the largest in the world), we have never seen one so big and it was really nice to walk around without being harrassed.  Speaking of harrassment, we later went to a smaller market at Khao San Road.  This one was much more touristy and the locals knew it!  However, it was really interesting to compare the two and we enjoyed walking around both of them, despite the immense heat.  At Khao San Road I embraced my inner hippy and got myself a hair braid!  The things we do when travelling hey – don’t worry it’s in tame colours!

We finished off the day by visiting the big standing ‘Buddha’.  This was another impressive gold Buddha!

Oh and by the way, we got our first Thai tuk tuk.  I was so frightened in the open air, on an 8 lane road, with a crazy crazy driver!

Entry Filed under: Thailand. Tags: Bangkok, Buddha, Chatuchak Market, Emerald Buddha, Grand Palace, hair braid, hot, Khao San Road, Reclining Buddha, Standing Buddha, tuk tuk.