We played real tourists today and joined the 8 millions of people who visit The Grand Palace per year! The crowds were intense and the sun was hot (as I am writing this, it is almost 10pm and still 32 degrees Celsius) but the sights were amazing! I feel like there was so many things to see and sights to take in, like we should have been able to slow down and capture the spirituality of the place but at the same time it was so crowded that, like Jeremie mentioned, it would seem extremely hard to meditate here...
Yet, a few still do. We had to take our shoes off and not just off but hide them in a bag so we could enter the temple... we went in, holding onto each other’s hands but the crowd was so thick that we could barely see one another at some point! I kept thinking it was a good thing our kid’s grand mothers weren’t with us as they both wanted us to buy leashes to put on the kids while we travelled in busy places! They wouldn’t have approved our choice of outing for today! ;)
The kids did amazingly well yet again but by 1pm we felt like we needed to get them out of the heat, so off we went to find a tuk tuk who would take us back to our hotel!
The kids had a blast laughing at how the wind was playing crazy games with their hair!!!
Something else we’ve learned today is not to put too much trust in what Google maps tells you in regards to navigating within Bangkok! We had looked at the map last night and saw that The Grand Palace was about 20 minutes from our hotel but when we decided to head out this morning no taxi would take us there on account of traffic! We were told it wasn’t possible... too much traffic they kept telling us! Once again we found ourselves extremely grateful to our travel agent who had mapped out a few « to do things » in each location we were gonna be at. With that in mind, we jumped on the occasion when a taxi driver offered to take us to a boat rental place where we could rent a small boat for our family, take a ride on the Chao Phraya River(which was on our « to do list » anyways) and then drop us off at The Grand Palace!!!
Small boats would come to us asking if we wanted to buy anything... we bought a coconut, a beer for our driver (which seemed like the thing to do) and little elephants as souvenirs for the kids.
Proof that often times the best moments in life aren’t the ones we plan!
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