Feb. 4th - Grand Palace, Tuk Tuks, & Mall Food

We had a pretty late night last night, so waking up today was a little harder.  However, we were up and moving by 9am.  We actually did room service for breakfast, so I just got fresh fruit & toast, while Tony got the boiled rice with shrimp & said spicy.  We were moving slow, so we finally got out the door by 11am.  

We loved our Tuk Tuk ride last night, that we really wanted to take one again.  So we hop in one right outside our hotel and for 200 baht, drove to the Grand Palace.

View from Tuk Tuk with Motorcycle behind us holding a little kid 

We past a ton of markets, like it looked like they all covered every part of the street.  Nothing really looked great to buy, there were just T-shirts, jeans, bras (yep, you can get a bra for $3 from the markets), shoes, baby clothes, etc. 

All the markets we saw driving to the Grand Palace

When we arrived at the Grand Palace, we were both kind of hungry again for lunch.

View from Tuk Tuk of the Grand Palace

 Right across the street was this tiny little restaurant that had a pretty good list of food.  We went in and got the green curry chicken & the stir-fry chicken with rice to share.  They were both really good, the green curry was definitely spicy, but I did good! 

Green Curry Chicken

We now were ready to go into the Grand Palace.  I made sure to dress in long Capri pants with a shirt that covers my shoulders.  I had read that you need to make sure you are covered.

hahaha we thought this was funny - no See Through shirts at the Grand Palace, so glad we left ours at home

However, what we didn't anticipate was Tony not dressed appropriately.  I guess you can't wear shorts, even guys.  So we stood in this long line for Tony to "borrow" pants so he can go into the Palace.  Oh, and these pants weren't as bad as some of the other people's pants that they had to borrow. 

Tony's rented pants

When entering the Palace, there are 2 lines, 1 for local Thai's (they get in for free) and the other for 'foreigners', meaning Tony & I (we had to pay 400 baht each, in US $12.93).

Yep, that's US!!

When entering the Palace, it just seemed fake, we couldn't believe the detail on everything.

What we saw right when we walked in - unbelievable

Amazing details

Here are more pictures around the Grand Palace:

  

The actual Palace was built in 1782. The main focus of this Palace is the Emerald Buddha, who gets 3 different outfits for the 3 different seasons (summer, rainy, winter).  You have to also make sure to not point your feet to the Buddha.  We were sitting down just embracing the experience, I was sitting cross leg & Tony's feet were out in front of him.  Well the security person came over to a man behind me and told him to not point his feet towards the Buddha.  I immediately told Tony to put his feet behind him or sit on his knees - he looked really uncomfortable, so after a few minutes we got up and left.

Emerald Buddha

Thai People leaving the Emerald Buddha bot and putting water on their heads from a flower

Us standing outside where the Emerald Buddha is placed

The outer wall that surrounds the Wat where the Emerald Buddha is held

The inner walls that surround the Emerald Buddha have pictures that tell the story of Rama I.

It started raining, so we plotted a squat under something and just sat and read a little about the Grand Palace.

Part of the Grand Palace

Then the rain lighten up and we left to head back to the hotel.  We got in another Tuk Tuk, but this time the driver was crazy!!  He was driving on the other side of the street, weaving in & out of traffic, making U-turns, and then it started raining harder and both Tony & I were getting soaked.  But all fun, right!

When we got back to the hotel, we could see that there was a soccer game that was going to be happening soon.  Vender's were selling their food right outside the stadium, people were coming in their home teams jersey, & the streets were getting crowded.  We went up stairs for a little rest & then headed back down to go to a soccer store that was right by our hotel.  It was seriously store after store filled with different soccer jerseys.  Tony said some were super fake, while others looked for real.  Well, he bought himself a Manchester City long sleeve light blue jersey for only 450 baht ($14.54), Tony said it looked good!  We headed into the crowd of soccer fans and food vender's, where we bought ourselves 3 grilled pork sticks. 

Our Street FOOD

When we got up to our room, we were messing with our computer and it wasn't turning on at all, not even plugged in, so we're not sure what the problem is, but hopefully we can fix it.  That's when went to the lobby of the hotel and used their computers (which I'm on now too).  We were getting hungry again for dinner, so we decided to head towards this HUGE mall right around the corner from our hotel.

Statue we saw walking to the mall

We ended up going inside and it was so busy!

View of Mall from the 5th floor escalator

We actually found a food court area that had all international foods, and here we got Indian food, which ended up being really good.  Nothing like getting homemade Indian food, in a Mall, in Thailand.

Our Indian Cuisine 

We didn't do much shopping at all because it was way too big and crazy, so we walked home and Tony's in the room resting & I'm here typing.  We were going to go to a Muay Thai fight tonight, however, we were both exhausted.  I'm not sure if the time difference is catching up with us, or going out last night, or the heat, but we want to get really good sleep tonight because we have to catch a cab by 6am tomorrow morning to the airport.  We will be on our way to Chaing Mai and doing our Trekking tour tomorrow, so we need our energy!!

So I will not be able to blog tomorrow (Sunday) for sure, but I will try when we get back from our tour Monday night or Tuesday morning. 

So, finally, we definitely loved it here and didn't even get to see the half of it! However, to sum up Bangkok, it is a tasteful city, full of life, smiles, and beauty.  What a great place to start and get us excited for Thailand.

Next entry will be in Chaing Mai....