Bangkok

We had about 6 hours to explore the city of Bangkok, our family decided to hire a private tour guide instead of going on a ship excursion, this was the cheaper and in our opinion the better of the two options.

We were picked up at the ship by our guide Tim Tim and taken into the city, it was about a two hour car ride into Bangkok and yes, we had to make the two hour trip back to the ship later that day but we think the 4 hours of driving for the 6 hours of experience was worth it. 

Upon meeting our guide we were given a traditional Thai welcome which included a welcome flower wreath for each of us and a "lucky elephant".

The flowers smelled amazing as there was fresh Jasmine flowers.

This blog is going to be full of pictures to help us remember our trip.  We hope to give you a little flavor of this bustling Asian city.

As in any city there are signs everywhere, some where in English but most were in the traditional Thai writting.

Currently there is campaigning for the up coming election so these signs are through out the city, the party is voted for by the number so if you want this guy to be your leader you would have to x box 2 on your ballot.

Traffic is dense and interesting

"Tuk Tuk" vehicles are very common they are a three wheeled car that is open and they are used like a taxi in the city.  This one says Thailand on the back, some did some did not.

Taxi cabs were seen but you must be careful in Bangkok to negotiate your price up front with your driver or you will for sure be "taken for a ride" and broke when you are done!  To help with this problem there are taxi cabs that have a running meter so that the driver does not just make up the price, it is best to take one of these cabs if you can find one.

We started our tour of the city with The Grand Palace.

 This is where the King stays and it is possible to tour the palace grounds.

As with Singapore it is very hot in Bangkok, in fact I would say it felt even hotter than Singapore does, umbrellas are your friend to provide some shade as are large brimmed hats.

The Grand Palace is indeed grand, it is huge, beautiful and peaceful all at the same time.  There are statue "guards" all over the place along with idols that are worshiped.

  Along with tourists there are worshipers walking the palace grounds.

We took a lot of pictures due to the vastness of the grounds it is hard to capture it all but we did try to get a taste of the grounds in photos.

This is our tour guide Tim Tim, she smiled like that all day long and was very good about giving us the history behind what we were seeing.

There was renovations going on at the palace while we were there, these men are making a new design on the roof, notice there are no ropes on them or anything to keep them from falling the three stories to the ground in spite of that they looked comfortable with standing up on the roof and were happy to return our wave to them.

We spent about an hour touring the palace and seeing the "Emerald Buddha" temple, with only having six hours in Bangkok we did not want to spend the whole day touring Buddhist temples so we asked our tour guide to take the other three temples off of our schedule, this left more time for our canal boat tour.  As you can see under this boat the water was very choppy.

The  Chao Phraya River runs through Bangkok and is used  by many boats and cargo ships, the canal was long and breeze off the boat refreshing.

 We did get to experience some of the floating market, these sellers wait in their boats usually in the shade and are happy to meet your boat to sell you their items.

This lady had fresh coconuts which we love and after being out in the hot sun for the palace tour we were thirsty.

It was surprisingly cold and so refreshing.

Our tour guide also brought some fresh mangosteen for us to try, it was our fist time having it and we all loved it so we will be looking for it in the wet markets in Singapore.

One other market boat pulled up along side our boat, she wanted her picture taken with Caleb and she was trying to sell us some way over priced tourist souvenirs.

Along the canal there is a place to feed the cat fish some bread, the Thai people believe that if you feed the fish you will have a long and healthy life, we chose to feed the fish because it was fun to do , we will let God determine the number of our days.

As you sit back and enjoy the ride on the canal there are many sites to take in from rich to poor there are all kinds of people living along the river

and of course there is a Buddha along the river too.

In Singapore the common way for people to eat is to go to Hawker Centers and have some food, in Bangkok there are street food vendors all over the place, in alleys and on main roads, sometimes right in the middle of the sidewalks.

This lady was frying up something that smelled great, we asked her what it was and she said it was a rice and pandan leaf patty so we did decide to try it since it was fried it is considered safe for us to eat we really enjoyed it, kind of a sweet earthy flavor to it.

Speaking of food, it seems the U.S. junk food can be found in all corners of the world

We have really enjoyed just observing people, I think you can get a feel for the culture when you observe so we will leave you with some street scenes from our day in Bangkok.