February 27 - Bangkok, Thailand

Our first day in Bangkok, we began by riding a boat up the Chao Praya River from the dock at our hotel. Our hotel features a nice boat shuttle service, which guests can ride up to the Icon Siam shopping center to the north (which includes the Japanese department store, Takashimaya) or across the river to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel or to the Shangri-La Hotel (which is a short walk from the nearest BTS station, part of an above ground rail system). Before our ride, Ning provided some information. Our hotel is in the city of Thonburi, which was the third capital of Thailand. Across the river is Bangkok, which is the current and fourth capital. Bangkok became the capital in 1782. Our boat ride will take us to the Royal Palace, where we will see the emerald Buddha – no photos are permitted of the Buddha figure. The figure is made from jade and wears a different costume for each season. Today, he will be wearing his winter costume. The king does not live in the Royal Palace, and his name is Rama X. By the way, the king portrayed in the movie, “The King and I,” was Rama IV. This movie is banned in Thailand because the depiction of the king is considered to be disrespectful. On our boat ride, we saw many interesting sites, including the flower market, contained in a yellow building, a white Ceylonese temple, Wat Prayurawongsawat, and Wat Arun (which means temple of dawn). We also passed under the first bridge to span the Chao Praya, which was completed in 1974.

Arriving at the Royal Palace, we were overwhelmed! The site is sixty acres and has a lot of amazing architecture, which is in beautiful condition. Ning pointed out the many yellow decorations. Yellow is the king’s color, because it is the color of Monday, the day of the current king’s birth. Yellow was also the color of his father. The Thai flag, however, is red, white, and blue, representing the people, Buddha, and the monarchy, respectively. In the palace, Ning also pointed out the entrance, where the king enters on an elephant, for example when he was coronated one year ago. There is so much to see – hopefully the photos will do it justice. 

The emerald Buddha is impressive as expected, and we admired the hand painted murals. There are statues of mythical creatures like the garuda: half man, half bird. 

Outside there are incredible hand painted tiles everywhere. 

As we traversed through the site, we then saw the palace itself with its European features. 

Next to it was the royal crematorium. Inside the roof are the king’s ashes. Our visit concluded with a stop in the Queen’s Textile Museum, which had outstanding air conditioning! (It is a hot day, by the way.) There were also two exhibits, including one with the queen’s dresses (mother of current king).

After this amazing tour, we separated from the group. They were returning to the river to ride the boat back to the hotel. We walked a short distance south to Wat Pho, home of the reclining Buddha, forty-six meters long and fifteen meters tall! The figure takes up the entire space of the temple and is nearly impossible to photograph properly. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that the site is much more than just the temple with the reclining Buddha. There are also many architectural elements to admire – very impressive.

From here we found, or rather stumbled upon, the ferry to take us across the river to Wat Arun. The fare equated to about ten cents each.  Wat Arun is even more impressive! We visited a side temple first and walked around a “gallery of Buddhas.” We later learned that galleries of this type are actually repositories for people’s ashes, either under the Buddha figure or in the wall adjacent. In some instances, plaques are placed to name the person whose ashes are there. This temple is also surrounded by stone or concrete figures riding horse, dogs, etc. Are these mythical figures? 

We then proceeded to the central prang with four shorter towers, like Mount Meru. They are all white with inlaid ceramic decoration. So many decorative ceramics, you can’t imagine how long it took to create such detailed work. The decoration features three different levels of protectors: the lowest are the demons, then up higher are monkeys, and then above are angels. This is truly beautiful, and we spent quite a bit of time walking around and looking.

At this point (after shopping a little at the nearby tourist market), we returned to the riverbank to try to find the water bus to take us back to our hotel with no success. We had been told to look for one with a yellow or orange flag, but could not find one. Giving up, we walked away from the river to try and find a main road, where we could hail a tuk-tuk back to the hotel. Success – and our ride only cost 200 baht, about seven dollars. The name tuk-tuk comes from two sources: first it resembles the sound that the engine makes, and second, the word “tuk” means cheap, thus “cheap cheap.” We had been told their usage is declining as taxis become more common – and they are surely a safer choice. We had also been told that tuk-tuks “turn left, turn right, turn over.”

As we were touring Wat Arun, the weather seemed to threaten rain, and as we were safely in the hotel, the rain began to fall steadily. We ate lunch in the hotel and each had pad thai; Rob with shrimp, Roy with chicken. It came wrapped in an egg “net.” It was tasty and not too spicy.

We then had a few hours to rest before our A&K “goodbye dinner.” It was also in the hotel lobby restaurant, where we had eaten lunch. We had thought, or assumed, that the dinner would be elsewhere. This was just as well, since who really wanted to get into the bus to ride somewhere? We started with wine and snacks at 6:30 PM. For dinner we had a sort of tasting menu with deep fried pork with noodles and stir-fried noodles with prawn, then either soup with prawns or chicken to start. Our mains were green curry with chicken and eggplant, deep fried prawns, and stir-fried vegetables with rice. Dessert was sticky rice with mango and coconut milk. We then said goodbye to everyone but were spared the task of exchanging email addresses as Tho had done that for us.