Day 1:
We arrived at the Don Meuang International airport from our Air Asia flight from Bali around evening time. We took a cab to our hotel Ramada Plaza Menam Riverside. By the time we checked into our hotel and freshened up it was already dark and time for dinner. We took the hotel tuktuk to the neighboring Asiatique Night Market.
The Asiatique night market is located next to the Chao Phraya river (and approximately a 10 minute walk from the hotel). There are a huge number of shopping and dining options here. Even if you are not interested in either, you could still walk along the banks of the river and spend time people watching.
We wanted to try some authentic Thai food and started checking out different restaurants. Some of them were empty and some of them had huge number of locals eating there. We decided on a restaurant that was the latter and settled in.
Karen ordered some prawn curry and I went with chicken coconut curry. Mom and Dad went with fried rice and Thai basil chicken. Unfortunately I didn’t take pictures of the menu , and I don’t recall the exact Thai names of each of these items.
Every single item was delicious and especially my chicken curry had such a multitude of complex flavors. It was definitely very different than the Thai food we have here at even good Thai restaurants in the U.S.
After dinner we spent some time walking along the banks of the river and enjoying the sights and sounds.
Day 2:
After waking up early and grabbing some breakfast from the local 7-Eleven we grabbed a cab to the Grand Palace. One thing to always remember is if the cab does not put on the meter and you are just negotiating rates, you must do some bargaining and not to accept the cabbie’s quoted price at the first go !!
This was my second visit to the Grand Palace but first for the rest of the gang. It was very crowded and after paying the entrance fee we went in. There were a couple of guards checking for “modesty” and women wearing shorts or showing too much arms were directed to wear some coveralls they kept for such tourists.
The Grand Palace complex houses the Wat Phra Kaew or Temple of Emerald Buddha. This is considered to be the holiest Buddhist temple in Thailand. Photography/Videography is prohibited inside this temple.
After spending about 2 hours at the Grand Palace/Wat Phra Krew compound we exited and decided to walk to the Wat Pho (Temple of Reclining Buddha) which was located next block behind the palace (approximately a 15 minute walk). This is another large compound with lots of temples inside.
The reclining Buddha statue is huge and it was hard to get a shot of the entire length of it.
Inside the Wat Pho complex there were several other temples with different Buddha statues. The largest among them was the Phra Buddha Deva Patimakorn.
There was another Buddha statue with 7-headed Naga behind it. Its called Phra Naga Prok
After spending another couple of hours inside the Wat Pho complex it was past 2 PM in the afternoon and we were starving. We hailed a cab from outside Wat Pho to MBK Center, the largest shopping center in Bangkok. I had read great reviews of the food court inside this shopping center. We wandered around and looked at a vast array of dining options from Thai to Indian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Chinese, Western, Seafood. Karen finally settled on some sweet and sour chicken while I went with seafood noodle soup.
After finishing the seafood noodle soup, I went for a round of fishball soup. After the very delicious seafood noodle soup, the fishball soup was a big downer.
After lunch we hailed a cab back to the hotel and decided to take some rest after all the walking we did all day. In early evening we walked back to the Asiatique Market again.
At the end of it, we had only gotten to do 1 full day of sightseeing in Bangkok. But since Bangkok is so close to Kolkata I foresee planning some more stopovers in the future to finish some of the other notable sights we did not get to see this time, most importantly being Wat Arun (Temple of Dawn), Chatuchak weekend market and Wat Traimit (Temple of Golden Buddha).