Day 8: The Grand palace that blew my mind off

Date: 31st Dec 2012

Day: 8

4 more days for my going back to hot and humid Chennai. This was the first thought that came to my mind when I woke up that morning. :'(

I enjoyed every moment in Thailand and truly I didn't want to go back.
The next thought, Shit!?! It's already 9:30 and the hotel will not serve breakfast after 10:00.
I ran downstairs to grab some breakfast and disappointment again. Second consecutive day of toast and jam.
Just because the breakfast was toast and jam again I could not give up my breakfast.

I would write a small review about this hotel Boon Siri place

I stayed 2 nights in this hotel. Not a hotel with taste but definitely good for its location, price and cleanliness. The hotel has some green policies like re-using the towel and setting of the A?C must be done below 24 degrees.
Within a walkable distance to the Grand palace and Khao san road. The hotel gives some recommendation for hotel and has a scam warning put up everywhere around the hotel to make sure its guests aren't duped by con men. They have about 4 computers near the reception desk. Breakfast is good but choice is limited to toast and jam for Vegetarians.

There were minor issues in the hot water and A/C, the reception desk sent the concerned person immediately to check it and have it repaired. 
Would definitely recommend for a short stay

Boonsiri Place, Thanon Bunsiri

Post my breakfast grabbing session, I planned to visit the most important must visit places of Bangkok today.

• The Grand palace
• Wat Phra Kaew
• Wat pho

The Grand palace was majestic I was easily able to locate it within a  10~15 minute walk from my hotel. I could easily figure out the way as heaps of people were walking toward or walking from The grand palace.

The one difficulty I faced was to located the entrance. I joined a queue where a lot of people had queued but the police officials came from nowhere and asked all the foreigners to go to the other entrance and all of a sudden there was a huge commotion around me and I did not know what was happening. A whole crowd started moving toward one direction and I walked with them. The entrance was at the far end at a different corner.

Crowd at the entrance of Grand Palace

I entered the gates and What I saw was glory and grandeur of the Grand Palace. I so want to upload a photo of its grounds here.

Grounds-Grand Palace

And the ticket price and the crow for the entry kind of blew everything away.
The ticket cost was THB 400 and the crowd was like more than 2000 people at a place.
Audio guides were available for hire at a price for THB 200 per 2 hours and extra charges for if  not returned within 2 hours. I did not bother to hire one.

Went in the grand palace queueing along with the maddening crowd. And Inside the palace they do provide free guide service at scheduled times and one service is at 1400 hrs.
I didn't know where to move as it was crowded everywhere  I just walked around the palace with no aim and no understanding and took some random pictures.

Complete pleasure to the watchers eye! Majestic and beautiful.
Half way through the meaningless wandering I heard someone talking Japanese, to be precise describing Grand palace in Japanese.
I was lucky it was a Guide who was talking about the grand palace to a few Japanese tourists. I was now with the group of Japanese tourists hearing what the guide had to say about The Grand Palace everything Free of Charge ;) hehe

Then I went to wat phra kaew or the emerald Buddha. It was sooooooo very crowded. Imagine Ranganathan street[T.Nagar] during the festive season same to same.
The police were there to control the crowd and tourists were requested not to take the pictures of the Buddha. But there were a few insensible tourists who broke the rules and were continuously clicking pictures.
It was actually like doing a Tirupathi darshan in General queue.

Later that I also visited the textile museum and took random pictures here and there.

Entrance to Wat Phra kaew

It was almost 1500 hrs and I was still loitering around in the Grand palace.
Reminder: I have not yet had my lunch yet! :'(

Next spot was Wat pho/ The reclining Buddha.
It was a good 10 minute walk from The Grand Palace to Wat pho.
And the ticket queue was manageable and very less crowded when compared to THB 100.

Wat pho timings

There have always been warning about Con men in this area trying to take you to tailors or gem shops and cheat you to take your money. Luckily did not get conned by touts in my whole trip.

So Lets start touring the insides of Wat Pho.

The reclining Buddha

The Buddha was mighty and again you are checked for your proper attire before you enter.
Lot of people around and there is a particular ritual here.

108 bowls are placed just behind the Buddha and you pay a donation of THB 20 and get coins to deposit in the bowls which is believed to bring good luck.

But as a person I do not believe in luck but I tried this coz it was funnnnn.

Inside Wat Pho

Some random Buddha image inside Wat pho

Walked around completely and aimlessly.
finally I found the famous wat pho school of massage and waited there for a good 1 hour just to experience the divine massage.
The prices are definitely costly I paid THB 270 for a foot massage for half an hour.

But the massage was a bliss after lot of walking for the whole day.

And yes, I have not had my lunch

But Next destination was already there on my mind: Wat Arun.
This building is just across the river you can take a ferry across the river for THB 3 to reach wat arun.

A look into the ferry with me! 

Request you to please notice the small cup in my hand with a red spoon which was my lunch substitute.

anyways moving on to the Wat arun experience.
I basically went there when it was almost closing so got the entry for free :p
Otherwise you are expected to pay a entry charge of THB50

I would say my personal favourite was wat arun I somehow love the architecture, the lighting, the minute designs thhis building has to offer.

Boohoo!!!!
Took pictures walked around and took the ferry back to the other side of the river I could see quite a few dinner cruises in the river on the way back looked flashy

Anyways reached the other side of the shore and walked my way back to the hotel.
But I actually couldn't figure out the way back coz what once was a empty land with a canal passing in between was now full shops .
I think it was some kind of night market I toured the whole stretch quite interesting one you could purchase anything from dildos to I-phone.
Went back to my room to refresh and started back to khao san road for the new year bash.
I would say this was the best new year party of my life. I so wished I had a few friends to be with.

A party scene

And my dinner was at Burger king that night. Would say the worst food I ever had after arriving in Bangkok.
I spent some more time in the Khao san after the countdown and I walked back to my room by 1.
 AM.

There was a family that was enjoying the new year on the road with Thai songs and dance they happily took me in for a drink and I was glad not to be roaming alone. after a brief conversation of trying to make a conversation with them session I walked my way to the hotel. Slept the rest of the day in 2013.

And that is me which you all

Happy New Year 2013 guys

And I am late by 76 days

Will talk talk about tomorrow by next weekend.

~Kei

Day 6: shift back to Bangkok

Date: 29th Dec 2012.

Day: 6

I have already started realising that my trip is coming to an end. I had only 6 more days to go.

I had to leave ao nang today, Coz I thought 2 nights was just enough to spend @ ao nang. But I was wrong.

I completely miscalculated, the place was so laid back and soothing that I did not want to leave.
What do you think I did?


No, I did not drop the plan of going back to Bangkok.... Coz I had a booked a whopping THB 3500 one way ticket to Bangkok on TG :(

I regretted that, and the ticket was non-refundable so no other go, I had to go back to Bangkok!

From Ao Nang to get to the Krabi airport is not hectic. There are quite a few ways, I am mentioning them below

1) Take a taxi to airport( Costliest Option)
2) I have heard that a shared mini van can take you as well ( Cheaper option compared to 1)
3) Taking the airport bus

I took the third option and it was quite good. There are fixed timings where the airport bus is scheduled and It can take you just for a small fee of THB 150. Not crowded. Keeps time and frequency is good.

As I had mentioned in my earlier post Hotel owner Charlie from ao nang dropped me at the bus stop.
The airport bus stops just in front of the Mc. Donalds

And One more information of course about food, Mc. Donalds does not sell any vegetarian stuff. And krabi airport does not have a proper restaurant set up. It has only a very few snack counters available and that too on the pricey side

This monster took me back to Bangkok!

during the flight they served us some tea and cake. Not tasty~!!! :D

And as you might know we landed at Suvanaphoom ( Suvarnabhoomi). Don't even ask the airport was toooooooooooooo crowded..
I felt too irritated to look around as it was too crowded and walked straight to the baggage point.

To add insult to the injury mine was the last bag to to come on the belt. I waited almost 45 minutes for my bag. I was literally fuming smoke!

Now it was a Saturday and I wanted to go to the Chatuchak Market tomorrow. So I booked a hotel near Mo-chit and that is  Mystic Place rooms.
While I plan to write a review of the hotel in my next post. I just want to share how I commuted from Suvarnabhoomi to my hotel in Mo-chit.

The Airport Link is a boon to the travellers.
The route I took:

ARL from Airport ==> Phaya thai => Change to BTS Phaya Thai
BTS Phaya Thai ==> Mo-chit

No Hassles no difficulties.

About  How to purchase a ticket to ARL, that quite easy same as how you purchase a ticket in MRT.

Here is a snap of the ARL

ARL City Line

It seems that there are two Lines one notably the City Line & the other is Express Line.
I will not talk about the Express line, Coz I do not know anything about it. Hehe! ;)

And yes City Line, It stops in almost all the stops. between the airport and suvarnabhoomi. That's it~!

Got down at BTS Mochit. You know what I realised then?
I forgot to take the address of the hotel. Bum Bum BUM. With my poor Thai skills I asked people the directions to my hotel.
And it so happened nobody knew the name of the hotel or at least did not understand the way I pronounced. I am sure it was either of them.

A foreigner crossed by and I stopped her and asked if she knew my hotel, Unfortunately she didn't know too. But she gave me a tip to check out Soi Pradhiapat as there might be so many hotels.

I walked, walked and walked and yet not over kept walking each person I enquired asked me to walk further.
Sun was going down and my panic level increased.
Alas.... I found Soi Pradhiaphat it was a main road and very busy adding to which side walks were small with small shop filled with fish/ chicken stink.

It was 30 minutes since I started walking I still could not figure out where I was. And the further I walked the number of people who understood English decreased.
I saw a big hotel and walked in thinking just that the receptionists in such a big hotel would be able to talk English.
Smarty me, Idea worked out and the lady in the reception was able to help me out to figure where my hotel was.

Then to my relief after a few meter of further walk I spotted this board

The hotel's name board

And I was checked-in duly and the people at the reception were too helpful and the courtesy extended to the level where they themselves understood I was damn tired and thirsty and gave me some water to drink.

It was almost 1 hours before I could find the hotel now and it was dark by then. I went to my room, washed myself and went out for a stroll.
I would say there was nothing much around that area expect for a lot of street food stalls which I thought was especially stinky in this area and few stores here and there.
And forgot to mention the purpose of the stroll, without doubts it was Dinner Hunting trip.
I discovered 3 Indian restaurants near my hotel but I definitely didn't want to eat Indian and mind it Indian food is costly.

Headed back to hotel and my hotel had a cozy cafe called as Mystic cafe where I decided to finish my dinner.
I chose to do so coz there were a lot of people walking in and out. And I did not regret the decision.
They cooked me superbo vegetarian food. I am sorry but I was so hungry I did not take a pic of the food.
But I could definitely give a thumbs up. The portion was very less though.
Anyways I hit the bed for that as I had a long day tomorrow or at least I had thought so.
The day at the Chatuchak Market.

Rest in the next

~Kei