Bangkok - Wat Rachanaddaram, Wat Pho, Wat Arun and the Bangkok water ways

---

Summary:


• Cannel boat
• Wat Rachanaddarm
• Wat Pho
• Wat Arun
• Bicycle tour of Bangkok
• Maccers




Read more...

The trend of me awaking up much much too early continued, however this time I actually needed to be up early. Today was the day that I set a side to visit the popular and not so popular wat's around Bangkok. The three most popular wats are Wat Arun (A), Wat Pho (P) and the Grand Palace (GP). One other one that i also recommend is Wat Rachanaddaram (R) which not as popular and hence not as touristy as the other three, the perplexing this is that after visiting Wat Pho and Wat Arun, Wat Rachanaddaram is probably the nicest, the best maintained and also the cheapest of the three that I visited today.

As opposed to taking a tour I decided to things the independent way on good old Thai public transport, I plan to visit the three Wats, Rachanaddaram, Pho and Arun in that exact order. In order to get to R I need to first catch the Skytrain from Chong Nomsi to Ratchathewi. Which is very straight forward and comes at the whooping cost of 25Baht (>1AUD). From here it is a short walk from the station to the Sean Saeb canal where I will catch the canal boat at Saphan Hua Chang to Phan Fa Liat. The canal boat is truly authentic Thai public transport, at about 08:15 local time there are boats full of local Thai's going up and down the canal. I have never been on anything like it, it is definitely an embodiment of the Thai lifestyle. The way that this transport works is that you wait at the pier for the boat to arrive the boat arrives and then you just jump on literally. Maybe not as dramatic as an Bruce Willis in Die hard jumping out a window to avoid gun fire or Arnold in "insert action movie" (shout out to Gold's, "get down"). But maybe a close second, so the boat stops (sort of) to let passengers on and off. What they have is a rope that lines the outside of the roof of these boats. So what happens is you kind of hop on grab a hold of the rope and lower yourself in the boat (if that makes any sense - I will try and up load pictures). Once you are on the boat you pay (what I would call the conductor who is literally ridding on the outside edge of the boat, to secure themselves on hand holds the rope (same one you use to get on) and the other is taking payment and handing out you a ticket, it is a little surreal but I can assure you that they do wear helmets so its completely safe. I just hope if that they can swim, not that you would want to, the water is polluted to say the least. And just to emphasis how bad it is there are guards up along side the boat so that you don't get dirty water in your face. I actually end up going up and down the river twice, wondering what happened to my stop but it turned out that I had reach my stop but the map was wrong instead of 4 stops from Saphan Hua Chang it was 3. Anyway no big deal, it was definitely an authentic Thai experience to say the least.

From Phan Fa Liat, it is a short walk to R. I arrive at R and it is surprisingly modern, most of the more popular wats charge for you to enter. However R is free they do however have a donation box asking for 20baht. Which I actually end up giving them, I was impressed with it and at no cost it was probably as good if not better than the other two. I love that there is hardly anyone in the place, there are no tourist bus outside or anything like that, I am pleasantly surprised to find a couple of Thai natives that are there as tourists/to pray. The main attraction of coming to R is to go right to the top of the main tower and enjoy the 360 degree views of Rattanakosin. It is definitely worth a visit to be honest I am not sure why this wat doesn't get more air play, the view, in terms of elevation is comparable to Wat Arun. It doesn't have the wow factor that A has because it is by the Choa Phraya but it a close second in my opinion. I should also add that there are a lot of stairs, some thing to keep in mind, maybe 4-5 flights.

A short cab ride over to Wat Pho, P (about 45Baht), is the next stop. It costs 100baht to enter the wat, the main attraction here is the giant reclining budda. I mean massive, things has got to be, I don't know long. According to Wikipedia is 43m's long, which sounds about right. Its nice to see just how big it is in person, the photos that you see don't really do it justice. When you are standing in the same room as it you realise how big it is. Another interesting observation about P is the number of tourist bus or couches that line the surroundings of P. I mean surround the premises and the adjacent streets as well, I would have at least counted 30 of them on my way in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wat_Pho

Not far from P is A, in order to get to A you head out through the main exit at P head down the road towards the little dried goods market, you walk through the market and through the market on the other side there sure enough there is a pier where people catch the boat across to the other side of Choa Phraya. No dramas here and no where near as dramatic a journey as the canal ride. A lot of tourists on the boat the complete opposite to the canal boat. The ride is short about 2-3mins and fairly pleasant I arrive just as my camera runs out of battery, thank god for my phone. At A it is 50baht to get in, the main attraction of A is its main tower you climb to the top and you are treated to 360 degree views overlooking the Chao Praya, I must say that this is up there in terms of scenic views that I have experienced in my life time. Definitely worth the visit it is a steep climb to the top but worth it.

From here I catch the tourist boat down the Chao Praya to Oriental Pier N1, it costs 40baht to do this. I would say that it is something that is nice to do, it is a little bit touristy but just something to tick off the list. From here I stop by at a street side vendor for lunch, fried banana's and noodles, not bad for 50baht.

Grasshopper Adventures offer a wide variety of bicycle tours around the South-east Asia region (Thailand, Cambodia and Burma to but name a few). This evening I went on their one of their tours run out of Bangkok, "Bangkok Night Ride". The tour is basically a ride around Bangkok through the back streets of Bangkok to visit the flower markets and in particular the Wat Arun (A) and Wat Pho (P) at night. It is a really different perspective on life in Bangkok and the temples. The temples in the day are bustling with hundreds of people (as mentioned above) in the evening there is absolutely no one, their is us a group of 7, the security guards, a couple of random monks and I think maybe 2-3 other visitors. You can't some of the things that I mentioned above, like climb the towers or seeing the reclining budda but you do get to see the towers lit up which is actually quite nice. The reason why the tour was a winner for me is that on a bicycle you really get to see Bangkok from a completely different perspective one that you would never have imagined. Riding through narrow ally ways, bustling markets, across rivers via boat and bridges. It was a really great experience that I recommend to anyone. I am not sure if its a good option for someone that doesn't know how to ride a bicycle (I don't really think I need to explain that, if you have been to Bangkok you would know why) more because pf the tight spaces that we go through however definitely worth the 35AUD.

http://grasshopperadventures.com/

This evening I ordered Maccers over the phone in Thailand, that has to be on someone's bucket list. Maccers in Thailand opens and delivers 24 hours a day (shout out to golds), so the thought crossed my mind why are Thai people so skinny. Could you imagine if delivery 24/7 was available in Australia, it would be absolute may hem that would rein over our great country. I mean I for one have used the service twice in the last 3 days, I know a worrying trend indeed.

---