Grand Adventure 2017 Day 22: Grand Highlights
After a great start to Bangkok yesterday, we woke up this morning eager and ready to get back out there and enjoy more of the beautiful city. We woke up a little after 6 AM. I went for a run at the gym and we were down at breakfast at the St. Regis a little before 8 AM. One of the other perks we got when booking the hotel through American Express was free breakfast. And wow was that a perk at this hotel.
The breakfast spread at the St. Regis is far and away the most impressive spread of food I've seen outside a Sunday brunch. They had sushi, two carving stations, made to order menu items, lines of pastries, dim sum, juices, and much more. Basically, anything you could want for breakfast was available. We had a big tour day ahead of us so we had to keep it light. Jenn went with scrambled eggs and pastries. I went with duck and waffles with some sausage, a fried chicken noodle dish, and some chicken skewers. Everything was delicious. I only wish we had more time to enjoy it.
At 8:45 AM we met up with George our tour guide that we booked for the day to take us on some of the highlights of Bangkok. We've been on a lot of tours so far on the trip and George might go down as our favorite guide. He was insanely friendly but also let us have a little more time to explore on our own and enjoy the sights ourselves. Once the introductions were made in the lobby of the St. Regis we got in a beautiful luxury van that whisked us away to our first stop on the tour, the Grand Palace.
I mentioned yesterday that the traffic around Bangkok was bad, sadly today it wasn't much different. The drive in distance wasn't far but the traffic made it almost an hour drive. Luckily it was worth the wait. The palace is absolutely stunning. When we drove up the place was a zoo, thousands of people. But once we were dropped off and entered the palace itself it calmed down quite a bit. Over the next hour or two, we walked around the grounds, appreciated the amazing Thai architecture, and had George give us great insights into the history of Thailand and the palace. The entire experience was surreal. Although it was hot and muggy out we were lucky to have a lot of cloud cover that helped make it more bearable.
I'll be honest I know I'm not doing the Grand Palace justice, nor will the pictures. The entire experience was one beautiful building after the next and it's rare that I say this but I actually think we could have spent more time there. When we did leave the Grand Palace we walked for about ten minutes to go to the main canal in Bangkok. There we boarded a long tail boat to take us on a tour of the main canal and several small canals. The experience, similar to what we did in Hong Kong was no less humbling. Because of a harsh monsoon season, many of the homes along the river were lost to rising water levels and more appeared to be close behind. The entire boat ride was a little under an hour in length but it was captivating from start to finish.
When our boat docked we made another ten-minute walk to a giant indoor marketplace. Had you asked me a couple of years ago I would have said this would be the low part of the tour. This trip has totally changed my mind on that. Whether it was walking through the outdoor market on our food tour in Hong Kong or today, both were really fascinating. It was obvious that George has done the tour through the market before because a bunch of store owners would stop him and offer us free samples of food. We got to try some bananas, coconut milk, and a couple other things while we walked through the beautiful market. The other surprise to me was how many flower stands there were and how inexpensive they sold flowers for.
Once we had walked the entire market our driver picked the three of us up and we were off. Our final stop on the tour was to Wat Pho temple. The temple is a stunning Buddhist temple. Here George walked us through the majority of the temple and taught us a lot about the religion that we just weren't aware of. I feel like after this trip we both have a decent understanding of Buddhism and a little about Hinduism which has been fascinating. The highlight of the temple was the lying Buddha which was a giant Buddha laying down in beautiful gold.
When we finished up at the temple we met back up with our driver who took us back in the direction of our hotel. George asked if we wanted to go to one of the many nearby malls which of course we agreed to. He dropped us off a little after 3 PM at the MBK Mall, showed us how to buy tickets on the Sky train to get us back to our hotel and we parted ways. We walked the mall, went in a ton of stores and realized the prices weren't all that different from home, grabbed a quick bite at KFC, and explored the giant mall.
We just so happen to find an English movie theater on the top floor of the mall and I somehow convinced Jenn to go see Thor: Ragnarok. I'll never know how I got so lucky with her. We got tickets for the 4:20 PM showing, grabbed some popcorn and enjoyed a movie in Bangkok. Or at least I enjoyed a movie in Bangkok and Jenn tolerated it (and may have even enjoyed it). The one interesting tidbit from seeing a movie in Bangkok was that we were asked to stand for the national anthem of Thailand before the movie started playing which was jarring.
We left the mall and theater a little after 7 PM and took the Sky train right back to our hotel. When we arrived back at the St. Regis the Christmas decorations had been completed and there was a small Christmas party happening in the lobby. We went back up to our room, packed what little we had unpacked and called it a night early. Although we're both incredibly excited to go to India tomorrow its bittersweet that our time in Bangkok is coming to a close. We've loved every second of Bangkok and cannot wait to come back someday soon.
