Gone Since November: The King and I (or is it the King and Us??)

Day two in Thailand involved a packed day including a trip to the Royal Palace of the King, Budda visits, tailors, and the best of all--the tuk tuk rides. The tuk tuk’s are essentially three wheelers with a rickshaw to carry passengers around the city.

We started off early in the morning after breakfast at the hotel (amazing and dirt cheap, again). The Thai’s really know how to scramble eggs! We were going to see the giant Bangkok market of Pratanum Mall, visit the Royal Palace, then maybe some Bed Bath and Beyond shopping, if we had time.

We were dropped off in Siam Square, which is in the center of town in the area the city has developed into a major commercial area that people could shop, see a movie or stay at a fancy hotel. Giant malls have been built beside markets that contained hundreds of 6x6 stalls packed together where people were selling their goods, sitting in the middle of their cramped space. Travelers we have met told us people should go to Thailand with an empty suitcase to fill up with clothing and goods because of the high quality and low prices of everything. We could now understand what they were talking about after travelling through the markets of endless t-shirts, underwear, women’s dresses , suits, shirts, ties which could all be measured and made right there for you for 2 or 3 dollars depend on how many items you wanted to buy and the quality.

We walked through for a while, grabbed some more amazing lunch and decided to check out the market another day as we wanted to see the Grand Palace before we were sucked into the shopping too much.

The grand palace was built a few hundred years ago as the palace of the king. The residence of the king has since been moved, but it is still used for his birthday speech and special occasions.

There was a dress code to enter into the palace. People had to cover up their shoulders and knees when on the palace grounds, which meant no shorts, tank tops, singlets or other beach wear. That meant 98 percent of the people showing up had inappropriate clothing since it was 38 degrees and humid every day in the city.

The good news is people could leave a deposit and get a pair of pants or shirts to wear while in the palace and return them at the end of the day to get their deposit back. Steve had to wait in line and got a wonderful pair of grey pants. Most of the pants given out looked like pajama pants which make it looks like all the tourists were over for a giant slumber party at the palace!

We walked around the grounds seeing all of the buildings covered in gold, the murals on the walls from hundreds of years ago depicting battles, and visited the famous emerald Budda.

The emerald Budda was in its own temple and a very holy site for the Thai people. No pictures were allowed, (but we did see one dumb tourists take a picture and security was all over him in a second to make him delete the picture) and we had to take our shoes off to enter the temple. It was a very impressive statue and the walls and ceilings were decorates with gold and murals.

After we left the Grand Palace, we decided we wanted to wander down to the river that was near the palace. This was fun because we were getting out of the main tourists areas and wanted to see what the different streets and neighborhood’s looked like. We ventured for a couple blocks seeing more impressive flower markers, kids leaving school at the end of the day in their bright uniforms and finished at the docks of the main river that runs through Bangkok. We always felt very safe walking through the town and people were gracious to try and help us with questions or point us in the right direction. We enjoyed touring through the tiny part of the city of seven million people, in which there is a lifetime of sites to see and things to do in this massive city.

The tuk tuk ride back to the hotel was a lot of fun. The driver was trying to crack his best English jokes and tell us about what we were seeing as we drove by the different areas. The city is constant traffic jam with cars, bikes, tuk tuks, people walking , rickshaws and carts. The tuk tuks are dodging in and out of the cars and buses with the motorcycles. It’s a chaotic system but it seems to work and no one honks in anger at each other as people seem to realize we are all going to get there just a little bit slower.

The third morning we flew to Phuket, an island located in the southern west coast of Thailand in the famous beach area of the country. Stay tuned for those blogs!!