Wat's up?

Today we left Chiang Mai and flew to Bangkok, arriving just after lunch at the Millenium Hilton Hotel right along the Chao Phraya river, meaning our 18^th floor room had a gorgeous view.  After settling in, we hopped on their free shuttle ferry to the main ferry terminal to catch an express ferry to Ko Ratanakosin to see the main tourist sites of Bangkok.  We started at Wat Phra Kaew, home of the Emerald Buddha.  I had to wait in line there to rent a shirt and skirt – my usual cover up of two scarves (one to cover knees and one to cover shoulders) didn’t cut it here, for some reason.  Wearing two sets of clothing in the hot Bangkok weather was definitely not comfortable; I sweat all the way through my sundress that I had under the borrowed clothing.  And the place was completely overrun with crowds of tourists.  But the temple was beautiful, and MUCH bigger and more elaborate than anything we had seen in Chiang Mai.

On the hotel shuttle, on our way to Ko Ratanakosin.

Ko Ratanakosin

Wat Phra Kaew.

Wat Phra Kaew.

Wat Phra Kaew.

Wat Phra Kaew.

Wat Phra Kaew.

Monks taking cell phone pics in Wat Phra Kaew. :)

Wat Phra Kaew.

Wat Phra Kaew. Inside this building is the Emerald Buddha, but you can't
take photos inside.

Wat Phra Kaew.

Wat Phra Kaew.  In case you're wondering why there's not more detail of
i.e. what you're looking at, it is because I couldn't figure it out. Turns out the
whole time we were inside Wat Phra Kaew I was looking at a map of Wat Pho!
Because I'm brilliant like that...  :D

After Wat Phra Kaew, we headed south to Wat Pho, which has a HUGE reclining Buddha; I think it was 2-3 stories high and about the length of a basketball court!

Big Buddha. Pics really don't do him justice.

He's really big.  :)

Wat Pho.

Wat Pho.

Monk chat at Wat Pho. Some temples have
"monk chat" so monks can practice their English
with the tourists.  This tourist was taking forever,
so I didn't get to do monk chat myself. Boo.

Sweating my way through Wat Pho...  :)

Wat Pho.

Stone Giants at Wat Pho.

After sweating through the two temples, we took the ferry back to the main terminal, then caught the sky train to Siam Square to check out the Siam Paragon shopping mall, said by Lonely Planet to be the “biggest and glitziest” of all Bangkok’s shopping malls. I was expecting to check out different stores with Thai brands, etc, but it just had stores you can find in the US, like the Gap, etc and also really expensive stores like Chanel and Armani, so we just enjoyed being in the air conditioning for a bit without really shopping.  Since we hadn’t had lunch, we stopped in the enormous basement food court for an early dinner.  We got a little lost in the giant mall trying to find our way back to the sky train!

The huge and fancy Siam Paragon mall.

After Siam Square, we went to Asiatique, an upscale Night Market along the Chao Phraya river.  This seemed a lot less like a night market and more like another shopping mall, but with tiny boutique shops.  There was also a giant ferris wheel with enclosed cars, and lots of restaurants and bars.  After wandering through the maze of shops for a while, we had some tasty gelato for dessert.  Then we caught the free Hilton ferry back to our hotel to gladly shower and turn in.  While we were getting ready for bed we suddenly heard explosions coming from outside the hotel; there were fireworks being set of from a boat on the river right in front of our hotel!  (next day we found out they were for somebody’s wedding) We enjoyed the short fireworks display, then went to bed.  Tomorrow is our last day in Thailand!

Asiatique.

The ferris wheel at Asiatique.