August 14-17: After 12 hours of uninterrupted sleep, it’s time to explore the capital of Thailand. Our expectations of Bangkok were perhaps too high. We thought of high-rise buildings, parks and well-kept streets. After a 10-minute walk in the city center, we realize that we must have confused Bangkok with Singapore in our Googling 😂 It was loud, dirty and even though there were tall buildings, it was more the tin sheds and food carts that lined the streets that caught our eyes. But that doesn’t matter. The atmosphere, the nice people and the smells of the food took us by storm. We spend the majority of the first and second days just hanging out among the local markets and food stalls.

Day 3 in the city, it’s time to put on the newly purchased tourist clothes: the oversized pants and shirts in thin fabric with elephants on them. Now it’s time to visit temples and sights.

Fact box
To enter most temple areas in Bangkok, you must wear long pants and a shirt that covers your shoulders and stomach. If you want to go into the temple itself, you need to take off your shoes. There are many temples in Bangkok, both small and large. Some charge an entrance fee and some are free to visit. If you want to visit the most famous attractions, there are ready-made “routes” that you can take with a tuk tuk. For our family, the route we chose took about 3 hours and cost 150฿ + entrance.

Our first stop is “The Grand Palace” and “The Temple of the Emerald Buddha” which we walked to from our accommodation. The entrance here is 500฿/person. This place is the king’s haunt and it shows! Wherever you turn, you see gold, glitter and luxury. There are many both beautiful and less beautiful statues in the area and a lot to look at. This is one of the most popular attractions in the city, which brings in lots of tourists. Despite this, it is easy for us to get around and see what we want.

When we are satisfied with the King’s Palace, we go outside the gates and meet a man who works as a tourist host or something similar. He advises us to take a tuk tuk that can take us to the Standing Buddha and the Reclining Buddha and then back. We take the offer and set off. The entrance fee for the Standing Buddha is 40฿/person. The buildings here are also very beautiful. The Buddha itself is huge! We go up to the very top “inside” the Buddha, about 30 meters up and look out over Bangkok.

We continue towards the Reclining Buddha. When we arrive, it is closed for prayers and we have to wait. When it opens again, we are all tired and hot and feel that the entrance fee of 300฿/person is too much and that we would rather spend that money on cold smoothies. Even though the temples, palaces and statues are very beautiful, it gets a bit ”the same” after a few.

We spend our last day in Bangkok again visiting markets and just strolling. This day will be extra stressful for everyone in the heat as we have our backpacks on us. We had to check out already at 10:00 and the bus that will take us to southern Thailand does not leave until 19:00. But we fight on with many breaks and a lot of sweat. The day goes by quickly anyway and it is time to move on to the next destination..

//Sabdreas