Day 46 – Bangkok
Today we walked from 4J Lodge to the Grand Palace. Its something we wanted to do for a while, but due to the early closing time (3:30pm) we had been putting it off until we could dedicate a day to it. While walking there we met another local on the street who asked us where we were going. We were just 100 meters from the Grand Palace at this stage. He told us, it was closed as the staff would have gone for lunch. We thanked him and kept going towards the Palace, having learned to stop trusting the locals.
Once there, we had no issues getting it, as the entrance was wide open. There is a local entrance and then a separate foreigner entrance.
Grand Palace / Temple of the Emerald Buddha
The Grand Palace, is quite grand as the name suggests. Built in 1782, it used to hold the Royal Residence, throne halls, government offices and temples. It covers an area of 218,000 square meters and the outer walls are almost 2km long. The opening hours are from 8.30am – 3.30pm. We decided to get an optional audio guide, which we shared between both of us.
Some of the highlights include a model of Angkor Wat (real temple located in Cambodia), the Golden Stupas and the walls that are painted with a massive saga.
Saga painted onto walls Model of Angkor Wat Western Styled building
One of the biggest draw cards is the Temple of the Emerald Buddha (also known as Wat Phra Sri Rattana Satsadaram or Wat Pra Kaew). The Emerald Buddha Image is carved from a block of Jasper and is 66cm high, believed to be made in the 15th Century. No photography is allowed inside the temple.
In total we spent around 2 hours at the Grand Palace and Temple of Emerald Buddha combined.
Wat Arun
From the Grand Palace, there is a short walked to Wat Arun, which we also had to take a ferry for. There was a large line of people waiting for the ferry so we had to wait around 20 minutes in the line. Once on the ferry we were across the river in less than 5 minutes. The ferry took us directly in front of Wat Arun.
The Temple is a very beautiful and large white building covered in thousands of small tiles. There are a few other temples in the same complex, but Wat Arun is the only one you need to pay to see. You can climb up to around half way, as the steps to the top unfortunately blocked off. We left before sunset, but I can image it would be very cool to see the temple during sunset.
After checking our Wat Arun, we took the ferry across (no line) and walked the 3km back to 4J Lodge.