Bangkok, Thailand

Another great Thailand sunrise

On Monday, we toured the great city of Bangkok, Thailand – on foot in the morning, by boat in the afternoon.

Our tour guide’s name was Sam, which is short for the longer, Thai version of his name. Sam said that Thai names are very long, and when he told us his full first name, it was nine syllables long.

 

Sam

Sam started off by apologizing to us if his English was a bit rusty. He said that during the last three years of the Covid lockdowns, he hadn’t had much chance to use English. This is only his second tour since the country has re-opened to outside visitors. To calm his nerves, he started by singing a song. So we started our tour by being serenaded with Sam’s version of “Beyond the Sea.”

According to Sam, 93.5% of the population of Thailand is Buddhist, 4% is Muslim, and 2% is Christian. The Buddhist influence is everywhere with many temples, including some that Thailand is famous for, such as the Emerald Buddha and the Reclining Buddha. We saw both of these on our tour today.

Thailand is the only country in southeast Asia to have never been colonized. Settlement began with migration of people from China, so there are a lot of people here of Chinese descent, some of Mongolian descent, and there is a heavy Indian influence as well.

Our day started with a visit to the Grand Palace, which is the King’s residence. Like some of the recent countries we visited, Thailand is a constitutional monarchy, with a figurehead King. The Grand Palace is the residence of the King and his family, but within the grounds of the Grand Palace lie the Buddhist Temple that is home to the Emerald Buddha, which is the most sacred Buddha to the Thai people.

On all of our visits in previous locations, we were told that you had to have shoulders and knees covered in order to enter the religious sites such as temples. This had not been a problem, as we were either dressed accordingly or chose to wait outside instead of going inside the temple. However, today we were told that we had to have leg coverings down to the ankles. As I had on capris and Joe had on shorts, we would not be allowed in. Again, no problem. We didn’t mind waiting outside the temple while the group went in. However, in this case, we were not even allowed on the palace grounds unless we were dressed appropriately. The group was going to be spending a few hours on the grounds, so if we wanted to be a part of the group for the morning tour, we would have to rectify the situation.

Fortunately for the tourists, there are shops located just outside the entry to the palace that just happens to sell appropriate clothing. Wow! What a coincidence! Sam, the tour guide, told us that he wanted to purchase the pants for us that we could keep as a souvenir. The shops sold pants that were loose enough to just slip over existing clothing and would meet the dress requirements. We called them pajama pants. The fashion was typical Asian, with the elephant theme, and the pants actually matched Joe’s shirt that he bought with the elephants on it in Koh Samui.

 

Our "pajama pants"

Now that we were properly clothed, we entered the Palace Grounds, where we viewed the various temple buildings – and there were many – and a large government building. 

Finally we came to the temple that housed the famed Emerald Buddha. Now we had seen some big Buddhas on this trip, huge statues. So I expected the Emerald Buddha, the most sacred Buddha in Thailand, to be this really big huge green (emerald) statue. Instead, the Emerald Buddha is relatively small and only the face is green with the rest of the statue being gold plated.

Emerald Buddha

After leaving the Grand Palace grounds, we walked to the pier. By this time, what had been a soft drizzle turned into a downpour. Thank goodness I had pajama pants covering my capris to keep them dry. When we arrived at the pier, we took a boat across the river where we were treated to a nice Thai lunch.

We sat with fellow travelers and got to know some people that we hadn’t met before: Brenda and Doug from Nebraska, and a couple that lived in Montana but the lady grew up in the North Hills of Pittsburgh. We enjoyed great conversation as we were served traditional Thai foods.

 

Thai Restaurant

After lunch, the rain had stopped and we boarded a boat that took us on a tour by way of one of Bangkok’s many famed canals. The canals here are called Khlongs. Seeing Bangkok from the water provided a different perspective, and the boat ride was very relaxing and enjoyable.

 

After the boat ride, we walked to one last temple before heading back. This was the temple of the Reclining Buddha, apparently a very famous one. In this temple, true to its name, there was a statue of Buddha in a reclining position. Here I was expecting something like a life-size figure of the Buddha in a reclining pose. However, this Buddha was 46 meters long; that’s like 138 feet long! Wow, and all of it was gold – as in gold plated, not solid gold.

 

Reclining Buddha

We then headed back to the bus and returned to the ship for our last night of vacation, including one last shot at the gelato – two scoops of chocolate please, with lots of hot chocolate fondue syrup. Yum!!!