Bangkok - Day 3 with Temple Visits and Shopping

For the 3rd and final day in Bangkok, we visited the three major temples - The Grand Palace, Wat Phor and Wat Arun. It was a very hot and very humid day! Both Caleb and I ended up getting burned at the end of it all.

The Grand Palace

We did not have much luck with Uber cars in Bangkok so we took a taxi out to The Grand Palace. While driving up to the palace, there was a huge long line. I thought oh my goodness I hope we don't have to stand in that to get inside. I guess we would see soon enough. Google took us to the main gate of The Grand Palace, but that's no where you enter. There is a security check around the corner and across the street. Once through the security line, we got into the palace grounds pretty quickly.

So what was that line for? The king of Thailand passed away last year on October 13, 2016 and he was very beloved. The country is in a year-long mourning and the line was mourners come to give their respects to the king.


After coming through the gates, we were quickly escorted to a room for Caleb to purchase pants. I had read that when visiting temples women should have covered shoulders and legs. Caleb was in shorts and I couldn't imagine how he felt walking around in both shorts and pants in that heat. But we made it in to see the stunning layers of temples adorned with intricate mosaic work. 

And the temples themselves were stunning adorned in these vibrant colors of tiles, jewels and hand painted tiles. 

We did enter the temple with the emerald Buddha and had to take our shoes off first. This just felt odd but we did it. Pictures were not allowed but the emerald Buddha sat atop of a tower of gold like a throne. The Buddha did not appear large or as impressive as I thought it would be. 

When exiting, we passed a large beautiful and guarded hall called the Chakri Maha Prasat Hall and the king and foreign dignitaries use it. 

Wat Pho

Just next door to the Grand Palace is Wat Pho. It is another beautiful temple and grounds. 

What Wat Pho has that is quite spectacular is the reclining Buddha which is almost 151 feet long and 49 feet high. It's massive and it is hard to take good picture of it. 

Wat Arun

This temple was probably my favorite because of it's lovely entry gardens, white facade and we were able to climb part of it. We had to take a funny little ferry/cargo boat to cross the river. It was only 4 baht to cross once which is basically a penny. 

The Discovery of MBK

Caleb had heard of this place and we finally got to visit. We were hungry and hit the jackpot at MBK with great Thai food and some Korean food as well. Everything had a great price and was yummy.

This place has 8 floors with 2000 stores. There is anywhere from small businesses where you can bargain, department stores, and name brand stores. We will be returning for some souvenir shopping.