Bangkok's Royal Palace

After 12 straight hours of sleep I was ready for Bangkok or so I thought.  We did the first thing we could think to do in a third world country, find Starbucks.  Today, we were riding the metro, taking a water taxi, visiting the Royal palace, Wat Pho (largest reclining Buddha) and Chinatown with a little bit of this and that thrown in.

Getting to the royal palace involved a metro and a water taxi.  Navigating the metro was fine, maps seemed to be clear enough that the language barrier wasn't an issue.  The water taxi, we managed to find it and board without a problem.  Although the though of overcrowding boats sinking did cross my mind.

Bangkok Metro

If you note the number of passengers on the water taxi, you'll understand why I had concerns about an overturned boat, my boat was even more crowded.

The Royal palace was swamped with tourists and a dress code was enforced, fortunately we happened upon an english speaking free tour of the grounds which probably was the best "find" otherwise we would have looked at numerous buildings and wouldn't have understood a thing.

This was a clue we were close

Standing guard

This roof is made entirely of tiles

Palace entrance

The wall covering above appeared in one of the interior rooms of the palace.  What fascinated me is that this entire mural, happened to cover a lot of square footage was entirely painted by hand.  All in all it was a rather impressive sight but outside those protective walls was an entirely different city.

 Our next stop was Wat Pho, the largest reclining Buddha.  Just a tip, be sure to wear easy access shoes on a day when your visiting these types of monuments becasue you will be removing your shoes and hats before entry.

                                                    

Below are scenes from  Bangkok's Chinatown...

Getting ready for chicken soup

All over Thailand were shrines to Buddha or the King and Queen or both.  People may have lived in pretty poverty like conditions but they spent their money on beautiful altars of various shapes and sizes. We somehow wondered through an industrial part of town and were able to witness craftsmen working on these alters/shrines and everything was done by hand.  The photo below is a much larger shrine in a much earlier phase of construction.