Anna, the rest of us, and the King

The action packed Bangkok week for Grandparents Tossell continues today with a trip to two of Bangkoks' most famous attractions.  No tour bus today as were going public.  First up the sky train to Saphin Taksin pier and then onto a water taxi.  The ride up the Chao Phraya river was short and very cheap - 14bht each!.

Our first stop was the Grand Palace.  This is a complex of many buildings that was built in the late 1700's during the reign of King Rama 1.  The third capital of Thailand was a place called Thonburi and was on the west bank of the river.  This king decided to create the fourth and final capital city on the other side of the river, now of course known as Bangkok.  This ancient and very beautiful place is still used on occasion by the current royal family - last year it was used for the funeral of the current King's sister.

This is one of the hardest places Ive had to blog about.  There are so many beautiful areas with in these grounds so l will try to only include 5 photos showcasing the place.  There are 4 palace buildings, a number of ceremonial buildings, many many statues and of course a temple.  The temple here is called Wat Phra Kaew and it is home to the Emerald Buddha.

 

This was not our first visit here, in fact it may well be the third or fourth trip for some of us.  The last time that Tony and I came here was after picking Nate up in 2006.  We had only had him with us for 4 days when we ventured out here with him.  Being that he was only 17 months old he slept his way around the place, and I remember it vividly - both because we carried him around the whole time we were here, and the palace is always really hot.   Anyways, on going back through my laptop photos I found pictures of our last visit to compare with the current visit..

After the palace it was a quick tuk tuk ride over to Wat Pho.  This is another very famous landmark as it is a temple housing the largest reclining Buddha in Thailand.  The construction of this temple started in 1788, about the same time they made the first settlement at Botany Bay.  The temple is also known as the birthplace of Thai massage and throughout the complex there are a lot of images related to massage, yoga and medicine - there is a school for massage on the grounds also.

The main star of the temple is definitely the huge gold Buddha.  He is 46 metres long, 15 metres tall at the face end, and each foot is 3 metres high and 5 metres long and inlaid with mother of pearl.