Today was our first normal day in Thailand, and I had initially planned on taking a bus to visit Erawan Falls, a 7-tier waterfall located in a national park several hours outside of Bangkok. After we arrived and I looked into the bus schedule in a bit more detail I discovered that I had underestimated the length of the journey. I initially thought that it was going to be a 2 hour bus ride to the falls, and another 2 hour trip to return; however the way the schedule was laid out it would have actually taken closer to 3.5 hours in either direction. As we had just days earlier spent about 30 hours flying here, we decided that another 7 hours of sitting wasn’t something we were excited to try. We decided instead to tour the city of Bangkok and visit the royal Grand Palace.
We ended up sleeping in, as we were still adjusting to the time change, so we didn’t leave the hotel until about 10:30 in the morning. We were initially planning on getting some food for breakfast before we left the Bang Rak area, but we were unable to find any open restaurants or places which would serve breakfast foods. Frustrated at this, we hopped on the BTS Skytrain towards the river, because I’d read there was a pretty efficient boat taxi service running up and down the river, and it seemed reasonable to assume there would be food at such a busy transit point. We disembarked the train at the Saphan Taksin station and resumed our hunt for breakfast.
We wandered around a bit more unsuccessfully, and while waiting to cross the road a friendly gentleman walked up to us and told us how to find a cheaper boat launch. He got us a tuk tuk to take us there, however, when we arrived we realized we had been tricked and had been sent to a long-tail boat launch, which was going to be quite expensive (~2000 THB). Instead of taking one of these, we asked the tuk tuk driver to take us back to the BTS station, and after a brief ride in a tuk tuk we were back to where we started. We found the ferry launch a bit farther back and underneath the train tracks at just before noon, and after a quick wait we were on the 12:00 ferry up the river.
We got off the ferry at the Tha Chang station, and luckily there was an open restaurant serving food just off the dock, so we stopped there and ate. We both had curry for our brief lunch, after which we took the quick walk over to the Grand Palace.
The Grand Palace took several hours to tour through; it is a very impressive complex with many buildings to see. We joined up with an English-speaking tour group, provided by the palace, and listened as the guide explained the historic significance of each of the buildings.
One of the highlights of the palace is a Buddha statue carved from jade or jasper (not emerald as the name may suggest). The Emerald Buddha was impressive to see, however its small size and the long distance from the entrance to its elevated position made it difficult to see in much detail. Overall though the palace was very enjoyable to visit. One neat part was the model of the Angkor Wat complex which a long-dead Thai king had commissioned when the Thai kingdom controlled the Angkor Wat area; intending to let his subjects glimpse the glory of the Angkor Wat temple.
While the palace was a joy to experience, the heat definitely had a bit of a dampening effect on our enjoyment. It is custom to dress respectfully when entering Thai temples, of which one element is the covering of the knees and shoulders. We both wore pants and short sleeve shirts, which made the 30+ degree Celsius day that much hotter.
After completing our tour through the Grand Palace we walked back to the boat ferry dock, where we caught a boat back to the BTS station, and then took the train back to the hotel, where we took a swim in the hotel pool to cool off before a relaxing Thai dinner near the hotel.