Thailand 2012 - Day 13

Day 13 Bangkok

2012/04/11

We did a half day Tour East tour of the City and Grand Palace. There was another couple from Sydney we picked up on the way that were staying at the Siam Saim Hotel. We were taken to a wharf in front of the River City Shopping Center on the Chao Phraya River where we had to wait. It was interesting because just down river was this passenger ferry that just went from one side of the river to the other and it was packed every time. And ther were these little fish that kept jumping out of the water, In about 10 minutes our rather large long boat turned up and there was only the 5 of us on this long boat that could take 50 people easy. We headed up the river to a Buddhist temple called Wat Arun Rajwararam (Temple of the Dawn) it is considered one of the most well known of Thailand's many landmarks. Judy climed the first set of steps which were steep, the second set were even steeper and taller. The long boat pulled into the wharf nose first making getting on and off a bit of a balancing act, GrandMa did very well negotiating this.
Back on the long boat we went further up river and then down a canal to the left and past the Royal Barge National Museum. Our guide pointed out the water mark left on many of the building from last years flood and it was a good 2 to 2.5 metres above the current water level. It would have wiped out all the houses we were looking at. The long boat driver stoped outside another temple, he had some loaves of bread on board and threw huge chunks into the water which instantly turned into a thrashing white wash as all the cat fish came up for a feed and they were big, about 1.5 metres long. After a couple of k's further up the canal he turned around and headed back to the Chao Phraya River and turned right.
We pulled into the Chang Cross River Ferry warf and this is where we left the long boat. Once on land we walked through this amazing food market to the Grand Palace. GrandMa saw this huge pot and wondered how she was going to get it through customs. It was incredibly hot by this time and to gain entry to the temple the girls had to have their shoulders covered and I had to wear long pants.
Inside the entrance to the Grand Palace it was feral, there was people every where mostly in tour groups and they were running everywhere, usually in front of us to stay with their group. The palace and the temple were amazing but it was too hot and we were sick of the crowds and couldn't get out of there quck enough. When we crossed the road to leave there was every type of peddler know to man trying to sell you something. Finally we got to our mini bus and some momentary refuge, our last stop was to be a jewellery factory and it just happened to be the same company that we toured in Phuket, even looked exactly the same. From there it was back to the Pathumwan Princess. We got stuck in a real honest to goodness traffic jam on our way back to the hotel.
In the afternoon Judy went shopping in MBK and GrandMa and I hung out at the pool. We even sat out a passing storm on our pool lounges. Everyone else left when it started bucketing down, but we had experienced much worse conditions at many of the surf carnivals we had endured over the years and were determined a few drops were not going to stop us from enjoying the last day of our holiday.

City and Grand Palace Tour

Waiting for our Long Boat

On the River

Wat Arun Rajwararam Temple (Temple of the Dawn)

Up the canal

Market

Golden Palace and the Emerald Budda Temple

Transfer back to the Hotel