Wat, again?

Friday 27th

We decided to revisit the Temple of the Emerald Buddha and Royal Palace today. We left the hotel about 10-30 and stopped at Robinson's where I bought a belt. I must have lost weight since I bought the new pants as they were a bit loose. I found one with pictures of golfers on it and decided to get it even though it was a bit pricier than the plain ones.

We took the underground to the end of the line. We then walked to the palace through Chinatown. The first area seemed to have a lot of hard ware shops but as we walked further the goods in the shops changed. At one stage we must have passed 20 or 30 shoe shops one after the other.

We walked tough a park just before getting there and had trouble finding an exit. When we did we were 90 degrees off where we thought we were. We eventually arrived at the palace wall via the Ministry of Defence. A number of people informed us it wasn't open but we continued anyway and surprise it was open. Makes us think it probably was on Wednesday as well.

The temple and palace are very impressive and there are some photos in my 2006 blog as well.

It was about 1-30 by the time we finished and after a drink in the shop, we headed towards the ferry terminal, where we had lunch. While we were eating, we saw some barges heading down river. These sit much lower in the water than the ones heading up river the other day. From there we took a ferry further up river and then walked back towards Dusit Park, to see the Teak Palace. It was by this time after 3 and we went straight to the palace skipping the other exhibits closer to the entrance. We were in one of the last tour groups and again the building is impressive - 3 stories, 76 rooms, build entirely of wood and held together with wooden pegs and completed in only 19 months. There is a model of the building on display there and that took 18 months to build!

We headed over to look at some of the throne rooms, but they had already closed so we couldn't go inside but could at least photograph the outside. The second of these was the same building we'd seen from the other side the other day, near the statue of the king on the horse, we we passed on our way back to the street out of the area.

We walked to the marble temple which was a little way down that street and then went to catch a bus. We were walking passed the actual Royal residence area and walked most of the way before we even saw a bus stop. By then the traffic was so bad we decided just to keep walking and eventually walked all the way to the Skytrain station.

By the time we got back to the hotel station, we'd been away 7 hours, most of the time spent walking. WE probably did more than 10 km exclusing walking around the various places we visited. TVL needed a coffee and then we went to the hotel taking this shot of the setting sun reflected from a sky scraper.

We were soon out again for dinner. This we had at a restaurant only a 100m or so up the road. After that we walked through Soi Cowboy - a bar area - and then back to the hotel.

It wasn't much after 8pm at that time but we'd had enough and headed back to our rooms.