The Grand Palace Visit

On the morning of the start of the tour, I checked out of my hotel as late as possible and then wandered down the road to the hotel that was serving as the meeting point of the tour. I then checked in and met my roommate for the trip. Her name is Georgina and she is from Chicago. She had just flown in that day and so was very tired when I met her but I commend her for still being upbeat and she did very well not to show how tired she was.

We met the rest of the group later in the evening and for a briefing on the tour with our tour guide for the duration – Vera. It turns out that the majority of the group is from the UK. None of us were sure what to expect in terms of where people were from so this was quite interesting. Some people had done tours with GAdventures before and some, like me, were on their first one.

After this, we went out for our first group meal and then some drinks on Khao San Road to start to get to know one another. Where we ended up sitting on Khao San Road was very loud though and it was difficult to talk to each other when we were trying to scream over the music, so most people weren’t out too long before heading back to the hotel rooms and, particularly the people that flew in the same day, wanted to get some sleep.

Day number two on the tour was a day to explore Bangkok as you saw fit. The one thing I wanted to go back to Thailand for was the Grand Palace because I knew it would be just as beautiful the second time around of seeing it, so that’s what we did.

Me and Georgina took a trip on a boat up the river and hopped off at the stop for the reclining Buddha. We also wanted to have a quick look around the flower markets on the way so we stopped off there too. But when we found it, I was admittedly a little bit disappointed. There weren’t thousands of flowers in lots of different colours on display and was more just a sea of metal stalls with some yellow flowers or white flowers on display. It looked like a regular market just with no variety of produce because pretty much all the stalls had the same flowers on display, and there wasn’t as many as I was expecting either. But, we found it and we saw it but then we moved on to the Buddha.

Now, I vividly remember seeing the reclining Buddha the last time I was in Bangkok so I knew it was interesting to see when we were planning on what to do on this day so I discussed this with Georgina and we decided we would do this too, and I’m so glad we did because it was amazing.

Next, on to the Grand Palace. But first we needed to stop for a drink, lunch and to cool down. We weren’t worried about getting an early start to the day so we took our time and headed out relatively late, which also meant it got very hot very quickly. Bangkok was overall a very hot city. So we decided to stop for a while before we braved walking around the complex of the Grand Palace.

The Grand Palace was amazing. I really enjoyed looking around it and I was very glad we got to do it on our free day. It was incredibly ornately decorated everywhere, inside and out. It was covered in mosaic, gold, engraved, tiled, it had all sorts of decorations on it. Inside the buildings that we could enter was just as ornate as outside and they had lots of paintings and engravings depicting icons and figures and stories. There was definitely so much to see and you could walk around a hundred times and still not see it all. We were walking around, while trying to find some shade on the hot day, and it just kept going and going. When we thought we’d reached the end and had walked around the entire complex, we found another sign and another pathway to a new section. It was definitely worth the visit, I just wished it had been a bit cooler because by the end we had had enough of the heat and didn’t really spend as much time looking at everything.

We also stopped in the building holding the Jade Buddha on our explorations. We decided to go in there too. I didn’t remember seeing this the first time until I saw it the second time, but it was definitely something we did the first time. It was actually really nice in the room. We were directed to sit on the floor when we entered and it was “sorry, no photos”, which they were actually very strict about and they had a guard walking around telling people to put their phones away when they tried to snap a pic of the Buddha.

The Buddha itself was elevated quite high and you could see it from the outside so if you had a good enough zoom on your camera you could take a photo from outside if you wanted to, which I’m pretty sure I tried last time and of course I, and many others, also tried again this time.

It was actually quite nice to sit in front of the Buddha with no camera, though. It made you look and appreciate what was in front of you instead of just looking for the best photo angle. It was also a lot cooler inside than out because of the way the building was built, the materials it was made from and the lack of windows to let in the sunlight. The inside of the building was still adorned like all the rest with carvings and paintings and it was almost a shrine to the Jade Buddha at one end of the room, it being elevated and covered with a canopy, and then flanked by two other statues on both sides, one at the front, one at the back, and everything surrounding the Buddha was gold, really making the jade of its skin stand out. I think I could try to explain what I saw at the Grand Palace forever and still not be able to explain how incredible it was to look at, even from a non architectural perspective, but I don’t think I would ever really capture it with words. It’s truly a marvel to see such grandeur and opulence on such a large scale. Architecturally, I appreciated that the plan of the complex was symmetrical. Well, that part of it was. We later followed a sign that said “Exit to the Grand Palace” and were confused whether the English was wrong or whether we hadn’t actually seen the palace yet. It actually turned out to be the latter. The palace itself, I believe, was more a stand alone building but the whole complex was part of the palace grounds.

But we finally managed to get to the end and walked back to the hotel to sit in the air conditioned reception as we waited for the meeting time for us to leave Bangkok for the train station, ready for our overnight train journey.