... Makes the strong man (and woman) crumble, or so they say. Since we were delayed in our arrival, sadly we only had the one day to see all that Bangkok has to offer. When we arrived at Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport at 6:00 AM Monday morning, we had every intention of taking a nap before heading out for an afternoon of sightseeing. However, once we arrived at our hotel we decided to keep the energy rolling. We checked into the Eastin Grand Hotel Sathorn, had some complimentary breakfast in the executive lounge (which included miso soup, sushi, and pad thai with tofu along with your standard breakfast items), showered up and got ready to see some sights. Since we only had the one day in Bangkok, we decided to hit up the major attractions-- the Grand Palace, Wat Pho (the 'h' is silent), and Wat Arun. I'm 90% certain that 'wat' mean 'temple' in Thai, which I gathered from the fact that all the Wats are Buddhist temples. Now unfortunately, and we have since learned from this mistake, the regular SD card in our camera is not compatible with our tablet, rendering us unable to upload any of the pictures of these beautiful temples. So you will just have to wait until the end of our trip to see those pictures.
From our hotel, we took the Skytrain one stop over to the pier, where we caught the boat that would take us down the Chao Phraya river to the main tourist-y area. The boat was also a great picture taking opportunity and the guide explained a lot of the buildings that we could see on either side of the river. Finally we got to pier #8 for Wat Pho and Wat Arun.
Wat Pho was probably my favorite, because all of the buildings were so incredibly ornate-- covered in gold, gems, and enameled ceramic. There is also a building there called Temple of the Reclining Buddha, which is a large building, the only content being an enormous, reclining buddha that is covered in gold leaf. The bottoms of the feet are covered in mother of pearl. These 'feet' were approximately 5x3 ft in surface area. I also took a picture of Buddha's backside, which is something to look forward to.
Wat Arun didn't have much to look at in the interior, but the exterior was really amazing. It is the tallest temple in Bangkok (maybe Thailand? I obviously was too tired to pay attention to this part) and has an insanely steep set of stairs that you climb to the top. The view from the top of Wat Arun was beautiful and we could see over the Chao Phraya river, with Wat Pho and the Grand Palace on the other side.
Finally we decided to walk over to the Grand Palace. We later realized that we could have taken the boat to the next pier, which would have potentially helped alleviate some of the exhaustion, but it was also nice to walk around after sitting on the plane for the last 2 days. However, once we got to the Grand Palace and walked inside, we found out that we hadn't brought enough Baht to enter the main area. It was 500 Baht which equals around $15, and in reality isn't that expensive, but we definitely underestimated how much everything would cost and had only brought 1200 Baht with us for the entire day. For reference, the other temples were 50 Baht, or approximtely $1.50, so we didn't expect to need much cash!
After that we decided to take the boat back and walk around the area near our hotel. We were hoping to get some tasty noodle dishes, but the area seemed to be more businesses and not so many restaurants (except McDonalds and KFC) so we settled for some green tea and blueberry bubble tea and walked back to our hotel. The plan was to get changed, hit up our hotel's free happy hour in the executive lounge, and go to the Blue Elephant restaurant next to our hotel for some tasty Thai food. However, for some reason we decided to take a "20 minute nap" which basically turned into me not being able to get out of bed. I ended up sleeping straight through from 6 PM to 6 AM. Oops. But the upside is that I'm feeling pretty great now and I think we are pretty much adjusted to the 13 hour time difference.
So today (Tuesday in Thailand) we got up for an early breakfast, hung out by the infinity pool for a bit, and packed up to leave for part 2 of our trip-- Chiang Mai! First of all, Thai Airways is simply amazing. They came around with snacks for everyone on the 1 hr flight.... banana bread pudding. I am not even joking, it was probably the best airplane snack I've ever had, let alone one that was free. Second of all, Chiang Mai is beautiful and we love our resort, the Shewe Wana Boutique resort. We've had a few hours to relax and drink some Singha, so its time for us to hit the road and check out the night bazaar!
Later gators,
Jenny
P.S. Here are a few pics from our phones
Chao Phraya was a Thai restaurant in Montreal. Now I know what it means!
ReplyDeleteGlad you've made that13 hr time zone adjustment!