Today was an important buildings day! We woke up and took the sky train and then a taxi to get to the Grand Palace. This was the residence of the King in the past but isn't anymore so it's just used for events. While I knew we were going to temples and such and I brought modest clothing for the temples and for Egypt, I had a complete brain fart this morning when I was getting dressed. I was in shorts and a tank top and when we got to the palace we realized that was a major no no. This is the case for a ton of tourists though since it's super hot so there are a million vendors selling pants and other coverings to make the palace accessible. By the time we found out that we were inappropriately dressed, we were already away from the vendors but luckily (or maybe unluckily) we found out the Palace offers clothes to borrow for free. Now that's nice and all but they don't exactly have a sense of fashion. Will had to borrow some baggy pants which didn't look too bad and I had to wear this wrap skirt that was actually quite pretty. But this shirt!! Oy! I know I'm a pretty sight! There was so much extra fabric that my skirt was wrapped twice and I was sweating pretty bad under the weird school uniform shirt I had on.
It was crowded! Like seriously, so crowded that there was a lot of skin to skin contact. I suppose I was glad I had that extra clothing to absorb other people's sweat. We didn't stay at the Palace too long because it was way too crowded and reminded me a lot of the Forbidden City. Lots of buildings that all start to look the same. Plus the Jade Buddha was closed because they were changing his outfit?!?
Next we explored the little market near the Grand Palace and ate some lunch. All the food is so so cheap and delicious and there's so much fresh fruit and fruit juices. You can easily get a casual (eating outside on a random table and chairs) street food meal and drinks for two for $7. Will also realized he forgot his sunglasses at home so he got some from a random vendor for $1 USD. The low costs of everything is definitely a perk for Thailand.
After a small bite, we walked over to Wat Poh temple which was my personal fave. They were a lot more lax about clothing so I only had to borrow this robe to cover up in the temple with the Reclining Buddha (and take our shoes off, of course) and Will was ok in shorts. The Reclining Buddha was interesting to see as well as all of the homages of Buddha. Both yesterday and today were Buddhist holidays so at all the temples (and all around town really) there were lots of candles and leis of flowers that were for sale for people to give as an offering. In general there are temples in every corner of Bangkok!! Like everywhere!! Big and small. In random alleyways, in the parking lot of hotels, in front of malls, people stop and show respect numerous times throughout their day. However since it was a special holiday we witnessed and were able to participate in some neat practices like pouring wax to create huge community candles and writing blessings on a tree. It was a cool thing to experience. I especially liked all the flowers everywhere and the adding of gold leaf to Buddha statues. Neato-kneato!
After that we made our way to the Chao Phayra River where we took a quick water taxi across to get to the Temple of Dawn. Unfortunately it was under construction so there was a lot of scaffolding around it which didn't make for the best photos. However, it was neat to see and there were some fun celebratory activities around that made it fun. At this point I was already pretty tuckered out of walking around sites so we made our way back across the river.
Afterwards we did a bunch more walking. We walked through Chinatown, passed about 5 million more temples and then eventually made our way back to our hotel.
On the way back to the hotel I contemplated getting another foot massage because my feet were killing me (I hit 20,000 steps on my FitBit by 4:30pm) and it was so cheap but I really just wanted to take a shower and relax. We hung out at the hotel and took a short nap before heading to dinner. While the nap was short, we were both in a deeeeeppp sleep and overslept past our alarm to the point were groggily throw on nicer clothes and jumped into a cab!
For dinner we decided to go Nahm which we read about a couple of months back on the "World's Best 50 Restaurants" list. Nahm was #22. It was beautiful and the food was delicious but I went through quite a number of water bottles since Thai food is spicy and I'm a wimp. Considering we have not really run into any Americans yet, we got excited when we heard two girls at the table next to us talking about the restaurant Rose's Luxury which happens to be one of our fave DC restaurants. We asked them about it and they didn't seem amused at all about the small world connection. East Coast snobs. Figures.
On the way home, we wanted to go by the Soi Cowboy area which are a bunch of bars and stuff but it was totally closed and lights were out. I guess because of the Buddhist holiday and the ban on alcohol sales it wasn't worth opening. That was fine with us because we aren't big drinkers anyways. On the walk back, we walked through a Terminal 21 again to get a treat. There was a Dairy Queen which wasn't exciting but they had blizzards and stuff with Green Tea ice cream. Of course, Will got a cone. Now it's time for bed. I'm exhausted!
*pardon
the weird layouts, fonts, & photo justification that might occur.
This was written from my iPhone and the blogger app stinks!
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