Bangkok, Thailand, Day 2

Today was the day to see all the sites that Bangkok has to offer. We started early in the morning and straight to the Grand Palace. Next to the palace is a big open field - Sanam Luang. It was completely trashed from the festivities of the previous day. We were very close to this area yesterday, so it was good that we went no further. Next year maybe, if we plan it a bit better and take plastic bags for all our electronics!

The grand palace is a quite impressive spectacle. As soon as we walkrf through the front door, we were a bit dazzled. Everywhere you looked there was glass mosaics, gold leaf, statues, paintings, carving etchings. It was very dense! The place was also densely packed with tourists. As it was new year, there was also an equal number of Thai people, which gave the whole complex a great buzz.

Most of the buildings are closed to the public, but the buildings that were open were decorated in a very opulent, slightly over the top way. Lots of gold, jems and general bling. Very authentically Thai though, which is what keeps pulling the tourists through the door. As a royal palace, it also has a fair amount of royal paraphernalia accreted over the years!


You enter through the main, traditional part of the complex. Right next to it though, and feeling a bit tacked on, is the more modern part. Once building would not have looked out of place in provincial France. King Rama V went on a bit of a jaunt to Europe, came home and decided to build Europe-lite in downtown Bangkok. At the minute, however, we seemed to pull back, so instead of a copper dome, the Chakri Throne hall is topped with traditional Thai pointy bits. Very odd.

Also odd was the changing of the guard ceremony. The guards were all dressed in very spic and span white European looking uniforms. It was a bit hard to maintain their dignity in amongst the tourists. In most palaces, there's regular police to separate the ceremonial guards from the hoi poloi. Not here. The tourists were darting in and out of the parade to get the best photo. Very odd. I was half expecting a guard to do his nana and shoot some of them. After the guard was changed, the guards did the usual stand still and not move routine. Unlike the Lifeguard bear hatters in London though, the tourists were jumping all over the guards. Very tacky.

The palace complex is rather enormous, so after wandering around for a few hours, we were very hot, very sweaty and a bit knackered. Time to press on to the adjacent reclining Buddha at Wat Pho though. Inside, unsurprisingly, is a big reclining Buddha. It looked like it was made of wood, then gilded, or perhaps just painted in gold paint. I can't help but thinking that he invention of gold coloured paint has been a massive boon to the Asian religious industry. They seem to take every opportunity to paint anything and everything gold. Very bling.

The Buddha's feet were inlaid with mother of pearl. Quite pretty carvings, but as they were on the feet, they were all sideways. Go figure. Inside the temple was also one of those coin drop thingamees. Not too sure what the significance is, but basically, you get a bowl of coins, then you walk along a row of jars and put one coin in each jar. We saw it on an episode of "The Amazing Race", but that was at Wat Arun. Same difference. It was actually quite fun, for some odd reason.

Outside the golden reclining Buddha are a whole bunch of other, small buildings and the Bangkok school of massage. We stopped or some lunch and had a nice cold drink poured, naturally enough into a plastic bag full of ice, as you do. Very Asian. The food was pretty poor, but so, so cheap.

That was something I really noticed in Bangkok - the money. The scale of value was just totally out of whack to what we were used t. Things were just insanely cheap. Our tuk-tuk ride, for 3 stops and about 3 hours driving was 60 baht - about 1 pound. That's just crazy. A taxi ride from one side of the city to the other was about 70 baht. Food was stupidly cheap too. At the other end of the scale, there were all the boutique shops in the Siam Paragon centre. They were massive, very posh and very expensive. Without realising the conversion, I managed to a hundred pound t-shirt from the Hugo Boss shop. No wonder the shop assistants were so nice and friendly. That was enough to feed a small village for a year. Maybe not, but it did show the differences between the top and bottom of Thai society.

After existing the temple complex, we then went for a bit of a random wander. We headed down to the river and looked across to Wat Arun, the temple of Dawn. The plan was to cross over the river and have a look, but we were just too hot and too tired. All throughout the day, we kept popping into 7-11 shops for a respite from the heat, a drink and a tasty treat. Again, ridiculously cheap, but also so very, very cool. Lovely.

The rest of the afternoon was spent shopping in the Siam Paragon centre. We then spent a fair amount of time perusing the guides about where the have dinner. We settled on the Spice Market restaurant. Traditional Thai food in a restaurant that was fitted out to resemble a traditional spic market, or so the guide book said. The restaurant was actually in a 5 star hotel and a little bit twee. The theming was not a darkly lit, atmospheric little shop as we'd imagined. Instead, it was a cavernous room with a few pieces of spice retail bric-a-brac nailed to the wall. Oh dear. The food and service was terrific, however, so nothing to complain about. The corn fritters were exceptionally nice.