One night in Bangkok...

11/15/2014

15 November 2014

I don't know if there were mice running around our hotel room last night, but I didn't really care. We awoke at 10:30 AM after 9 hours of sleep and still felt a bit groggy. After a shower, which was surprisingly great, we felt a lot better and was ready to hit the streets of Bangkok for our first day of exploring.

First, here are a couple of pictures of our hotel. Tomorrow i will show pictures of the inside of our room.

The entrance to our hotel.

Pretty nice outdoor hallway to our room which is the last on on the right.

I had printed out a walking tour of the old city of Bangkok that I wanted to do, so we left trying to find the starting point. But first, we need something to eat. We passed a few street vender that are known in Bangkok to be inexpensive, but delicious...however, we felt we needed something a bit safer, so we continued walking.

We finally came across a restaurant playing the BBC radio over the speakers that had english menus (with pictures) so we settled on it. Here is a picture of our breakfast...try to guess (shouldn't be too hard) who ordered what:

First morning breakfast.

OK...that is probably too easy since I was taking the picture and Tim is in from of the traditional "Big Breakfast", but I had a traditional Thai breakfast of rice soup with shrimp....yummy.

Onward we went on our walking tour...or will be the walking tour as soon as we find the starting point. Finally, we made it to a park that is pretty easy to find on the map since it is a giant oval. It is the Senam Luang Park (Royal Field). A bit further...past the elephants in the middle of the traffic circle, and finally...the starting point...the City Pillar Shrine:

Senam Luang Park with the Grand Palace in the distance.

Elephants in the middle of a traffic circle.

City Pillar Shrine.

Although the biggest tourist attraction of Bangkok if right around the street, the walking tour takes us off the beaten path to a few block to the east, so we look over the wall to the Grand Palace and walk east where we saw some cool sites..and we were the only tourists around! Here are some of the highlights:

Cannons on the side of the Ministry of Defense with Grand Temple in the background.

Interesting transformers.

Pig shrine.

Wat (Temple) Ratchabophit.

Here is a gallery of pictures showing the detail of Wat Ratchabophit. What great tile work!

A canal we were walking along for much of the walking tour.

After much more walking, we finally came to one of the better known temple complexes in Bangkok, Wat Pho, home to the giant reclining Buddha. Yes...it is as big as it looks!

These temple grounds were awesome. Beside the reclining Buddha there was so many other cool shrines and granite statues all over:

Obviously a tourist area with english words.

After What Pho it was too late to go to the Grand Temple. After What Pho it was too late to go to the Grand Temple. I am still trying to decide if we can say we "did" Bangkok without actually visiting the number one tourist attraction in the city, We decided to continue walking along the canal, go back to the hotel to rest for a couple of minutes and then head out to the infamous Khao San Road for dinner and some beer.

But first...some BBQ squid on a stick: