Today was temple day. I started off at the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew. They are extremely strict on dress code here. Despite wearing a long dress and a shawl to cover my shoulders, I was instructed I had to buy a tshirt before I could go in. Annoying. Anyway, it was manic. Absolutely hoaching with rude and pushy Chinese tourists, quelle surprise, so you don't really get much of an opportunity to stop and appreciate the buildings as you're hit in the face with selfie sticks from every direction. I think I lasted about 30 mins before I had to get out.
Next temple on the list was Wat Pho where the huge reclining Buddha is. That was quite impressive, but at this point I'm getting temple fatigue. Finally it was a quick boat across the river to the last one my list, Wat Arun. After some lovely pad Thai I walked through Chinatown and onto Jim Thompson museum, which is basically a really Thai house some American dude built back in the 1950s.
Tonight was brilliant. I went on a midnight tuk tuk street food tour! There were 9 of us in the group, a family of 4 from Sydney, two women from Brisbane and a couple from Italy. We had a procession of tuk tuks that took us to the different places. That in itself was a lot of fun weaving in and out of each other. We had 4 different food stops, and everything I tried was amazing, apart from the deep fried grasshopper. Can't say I'll be having one of those again. Our guide was fab and we even stopped at one of the temples for a guided walk (kinda cool since the public aren't allowed to enter at night). The temple is home to a million little cats, so it was nice to feed them the leftover grasshoppers for some much needed protein. We also stopped for a drink at a riverside bar which had stunning views of two of the main temples. Bangkok is a really beautiful city at night.
The two girls from Brisbane are actually living in Hong Kong so we've swapped details so I might meet up with them when I'm there.
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