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Published: July 13th 2018
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On our first full day in Bangkok, we woke at the crack of dawn. We grabbed a quick breakfast at the café associated with our hotel. The breakfast was pretty standard western style eggs and toast with “sausage” that turned out to be more hot dog than anything else.
Tara Place offers free scheduled tuk-tuk service to a few locations. We took the 8:00 am to the
Grand Palace . The Palace does not open until 8:30, but we waited in line. Getting there early was definitely the right call. We enjoyed a relatively peaceful and serene tour of the grounds. The temples and structures of the Grand Palace are exquisite. The amount of detailed craftsmanship that went into constructing and maintaining these buildings over the centuries is awe-inspiring. There are millions of tiny tiles that adorn the exterior, many of which are mirrored giving a shimmering sparkle even on overcast days. We departed after more than an hour of touring and taking pictures and the crowd was already building up in the late morning hours.
Next, we walked over to see the
Reclining Buddha. The sheer scale of this icon was impressive. Further, the detail was remarkable. The fine artwork
on the Buddha’s feet was very interesting which made me wish I knew more about the history behind it. Unfortunately, the pillars inside the structure housing the Reclining Buddha prevented us from viewing the full scale of the figure.
While walking around some of the touristy parts of town we had many options for lunch. We chose an indoor restaurant which had inexpensive Thai food and a strong AC system. Kristy had a good pad thai and Brad had a delicious pork red curry.
We had not satisfied our tourist drive but did not quite know what to see next. We pulled off the street to grab a beer and set plans for the remainder of the day. We bought two Singha beers at Vivi, a quaint café on the river. From our perch at ViVi, we could see the
Wat Arun ("Temple of Dawn") across the river. We made plans to get on a ferry (4 Bhat each) which terminated at the Temple. The Wat Arun is another intricately decorated temple primarily in white with tiles and hand-painted detail. We toured the temple and snapped a few photos before heading back to the hotel.
That night we
had dinner reservations for a welcome dinner at Thara Thong inside the Grand Sheraton. We traveled to dinner via the
Orange Flag boat which seemed to be a public transit system of large canoe style boats. The ride was scenic and enjoyable as we passed by the Wat Arun at dusk. We each got a prix fixe meal that included many traditional Thai dishes. The ambiance was great and performers put on a demonstration of traditional Thai dancing in the dining room. The food was good, but perhaps not as tasty as some of the smaller restaurants on the street. After a long day and a lovely meal, us newlyweds retired for the evening.
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