The Grand Palace and A Huge Market

Today we got up around 9 and headed out to the Grand Palace. On the way we encountered a man telling us it was shut today as it was a special day. We thanked him for the information and carried on anyway. About 60 seconds later we came across another man who told us the palace opened at 11, which was just over an hour from then, and that instead we could go on a boat tour, which just happened to take an hour. We carried on to the palace anyway, and when we got there discovered it was open and rammed full with tourists. The two men had clearly got the wrong end of the stick...

We got a ticket after wandering around for a while attempting to find the ticket office which it turns out was actually inside the walls. I had to buy a large fabric sheet to go round me as apparently just over knee-length skirts are fine but three-quarter length leggings are not.

The first place we wandered round was the Temple of the Green Buddha. It was very fancy and elaborate abs absolutely heaving. There were people there taking part in some ceremony which looked like it may have been for the late king. It must have been quite off-putting having all the tourists walking past staring at them sitting on the floor behind a piece of rope. We weren't allowed to take any photos inside the actual temple buildng where the emerald Buddha was and the ones of the outside don't really do it justice but it was quite spectacular. It also had the bells I mentioned on my previous post and many different towers and turrets. 

The temple had access directly to the Grand Palace, which was pretty big and grand but we were only able observe it from a distance, presumably as the King lives there. I don't think he would appreciate 1000s of tourists wandering round his living room.

After this we returned to the hostel for about an hour to sit down and to change into different clothes. Then we headed to Chatuchack market by sky train, which is less exciting than the name implies. It's just like the underground but on overpasses and airconditioned. The market was huge and had all manner of products, both edible and not. I don't know if we even managed to go round all the stalls there was so many. But we were wandering around for a long while before getting the sky train back to the city.

Once we arrived back at the centre of the city we got a tuktuk to Chinatown to see what was going on there. The answer was nothing. It was dead. So we got in another tuktuk to Khao San Road which looked remarkably different to the last time we were there. It was lined with market stalls and there were many people just milling about.  There were food stalls, people selling scorpions on sticks and henna artists too. We stopped and had some food at a hostel cafe. I ordered fried rice with pork and peppers and garlic, which was nothing like the picture when it came, and was actually just boiled rice and crispy pork. It was still nice though.

We've learnt two things about tuktuks in Thailand since being in Bangkok. Firstly, they go a lot faster as they are completely different vehicles, and secondly,  the drivers don't actually have a clue what is where in the city. We were trying to get to the memorial bridge, which is a fairly substantial bridge across the river and even after pointing it out on a map the drivers were still unsure where it was. After about a ten minute discussion they worked out where we meant as off we went. We were heading to find a night market that was marked on the map, but when we got there, there was not a stall in sight. Instead we wandered round a little flower marker nearby and down a little arcade alongside the pier, called Yodpiman River Walk. We walked to the end and then along the river in attempt to see Wat Arun all light up, like I've seen in many pictures, however the lights didn't seem to be on tonight so we just walked back to the hostel to collapse on to our beds with aching feet and sore backs.