We chose the hottest day of our trip to visit the Grand Palace and the temple of the Emerald Buddha. The palace was built in 1782 for King Rama I who thought the previous palace on the other side of the river was not desirable.
But first, we had an hour-long cab ride. Joy. Ted snapped a picture of a group of scooters. I envied these people the most. They were able to zip through every traffic jam, and Bangkok is all one big traffic jam. No joke.
One of the decorations adorning the streets of the city.
Upon arriving at the palace, we quickly realized it was going to be too much to negotiate on our own. Ted was able to figure out how to hire a tour guide so that's what we did. I had forgotten, but one of the first things our guide told us when he found out we were from Boston was that the King himself was born there. He was very excited to meet us and share this information. He mentioned Mt Auburn Hospital and when I told him that Zoe and Wyatt were also born there, he had to shake their hands. I had forgotten all about the artwork around the hospital that was donated by the King of Thailand and some portraits of their family as well. I remember thinking that that was odd at the time. Now it all makes sense.
These are some soldiers stationed at the palace entrance.
This courtyard leading to the palace, temples, museums, and government buildings is massive and wicked hot. Oh my gosh, it was so hot. And bright. No shade.
Except under the parasol.
I'm not going to go nuts on explaining everything (mostly because I would have to look it up again in our literature) but I'll post the best pictures.
This is one of the famous sites of Bangkok, it's one of the scary guards for the temples.
The girls were a little nervous about standing so close to such a scary dude, but our guide insisted.
That's our wonderful tour guide, Niyom, on the right.
The Thai Buddhists believe that if you kill an animal, you will come back as a mix of human and that animal. That's why you see so many statues here of half-man, half-lion and so on.
A lot of the structures are adorned with porcelain from China.
This is a scale model of the famous Cambodian temple, Angkor Wat.
Can you see how sweaty we are? Ted's shirt is soaked!
Guess he killed a chicken.
Ella fits right in.
Inside, you'll find the Emerald Buddha, but no pictures are allowed. The Emerald Buddha was discovered in 1434 and was covered in plaster so everyone thought he was just a regular Buddha. One day when the abbot was cleaning him, he saw that some of the plaster was coming off the nose and there was a green stone underneath. Believing it was emerald, the rumor spread and that's where the name comes from. The Emerald Buddha is actually made of jade. He wears 3 costumes depending on the season (sunny, rainy, winter) and it's a person's job to climb up to his perch and change him very carefully.
Can you see it? The Buddha is fairly small and green sitting inside the pagoda-like surrounding, on top of several layers of other stuff.
Walking around, we saw the outsides of some of the buildings, yes the outsides, were painted murals. These are some close-ups. Our guide spent some time here telling us some of their stories. And the girls actually enthusiastically interrupted because they knew some of them from books Ted had checked out from the library and read to them before our trip. It's all about Krishna/Vishnu, stuff I know only a little about, much less than my children!
This is where the King used to mount his elephant. Back when kings rode elephants.
Check out the back of Ted's shirt. That's how hot it was. On the other side of this gate, we will finally reach the actual palace.
There it is, the Grand Palace!
We couldn't resist a picture with our wonderful tour guide who had just led us to a secret toilet for Zoe's emergency. Thanks, Niyom!
I was there too.
After we left, I was honestly feeling rather dizzy so we found a market and sat down with cool drinks and lunch for the kids. Ted ran back to the amulet market where he took some quick pictures and then returned to us and ate some shrimp pad thai. Street food is the best.
We hopped back in the cab for the longest ride of our trip. It was only a return to our hotel, but it took forever, an hour and half maybe? That's a long time in the heat with 3 tired and cranky children. But they spent some time enjoying checking out what Daddy found at the market.
We found entertainment where we could, like in being impressed by how many boxes one driver could balance on his scooter.
And checking out the people on the street, relaxing in tuk-tuks, taking car motors apart on the side of the street, selling stuff everywhere. At one point when we were stopped, our taxi drover called to a street vendor to get her attention, said something quickly, and she handed him some meat skewers in exchange for some money, and that was that. Bangkok drive-thru.
The kids improved their imaginations by playing with the camera bag strap. Fascinating.
Our favorite taxi driver.
The driver in front of us hopped out of his cab, ran into a store and came back carrying a broom he just bought. Efficient use of traffic jam time. No, traffic had not moved before he came back.
That's the end of the historical stuff for our trip. I have one more Bangkok blog about our nighttime adventures and then I'll have one for our Phuket adventures. That will be all for Thailand.
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