We had a wonderful start to the day again as we enjoyed another breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Today we had made-to-order omelets! After our breakfast, we made the decision to finally go to the Grand Palace. We hadn't been very successful in finding it by foot, so we opted to take a taxi instead of walk. We got caught up in a taxi who wanted to take us to a "shop" along the way, and opted not to. The taxi driver took us to a boat place, where the ride was nearly 2000 Bhat (which was ridiculous). We very happily declined the boat ride and decided to try walking once again to the Grand Palace. At least this time, we knew we were at the water's edge. We thought we could walk along the riverside, but we couldn't seem to get very close to the water. The walk was also really difficult because we had a hard time navigating. James did a great job taking us through China town and eventually getting us to the Grand Palace!
When we arrived, we discovered there was a military "practice" parade for the King's birthday celebration in two days. We didn't expect to see this, and weren't sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing at the time, but we definitely took pictures.
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| Some of the Thai military men getting ready for the parade to honor the King. |
We wandered through the series of temples. We honestly weren't sure if we were in the actual Grand Palace or not because there were so many temples crowded together in one area.
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| James standing in front of one of the very colorful temples. |
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| James and Erin, in what we think, was part of the Grand Palace. |
We finally decided to leave. We knew the walk was way to far, so we stopped to get a taxi. The driver said he could not take us due the military parade practice that had caused many roads to be shut down. We didn't know what to do. We did see a local tourist center, so we stopped in for some advice. The woman in the booth suggested we take the local boat followed by the skytrain. The plan sounded great to us, so we followed her directions.
We took the local boat (which was only 25 Bhat...much lower than the earlier price we would have had to pay for the other boat option!) and saw Wat Pho along the way. Once we got off the boat, we took the sky-train to Siam where we wandered through some malls. We stopped at the Central World Mall, a 60 Bhat store, and some markets before heading back to the hotel where we both swam and then went to our favorite place to eat, the Tops Market (and, of course, James had Pad Thai again). After dinner, we came back to the hotel exhausted, watched another movie, and went to bed.
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| One of the temples in Bangkok, Wat Pho, as seen from our tourist boat. |
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| James posed for a picture while we were on the tourist boat. |
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| Interesting find at the 60 Bhat (or 2-dollar) store in Bangkok. It would be useful if we knew how to read Thai. |
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| Inside the extremely large, Central World Mall in Bangkok. |
