Day 2: Bangkok

Exhausted!
Today we walked. From about 10-5 we walked around Bangkok exploring. It was great. We made it to The Grand Palace, down along the Chao Phraya River and all the way to the National Stadium where the Thai Boxing is held.

The Palace was amazing. It was built in 1782 for King Rama I’s because he was unhappy with his current palace. There is gold everywhere. The buildings, the Buddahs, even some of the statues. Most of the buildings were a mosaic of gold with little bits of color throughout. There were walls with huge scenes of the Ramakien (mostly battles and wars lead by the king). We got to see some of the artists working on them today. Such detail, they must have taken years to finish.

Definitely a site to see. Side note… you don’t have to wear long pants or a long sleeve shirt unless you want to sweat to death like we did. Flip flops, tee shirt and a calf length skirt would be a much better idea.

We walked down through China town along the river to catch the Chao Phraya Express. While we obviously stood out, people were very friendly and very helpful with directions. After yesterday we are still a bit skeptical when we get information from people. But we made it to the river and took the express boat down.

After our boat ride we decided we should take advantage of the cheap massages here in town. 1 hour for 10 dollars and that was a more expensive spa. The massage was very interesting. A little more like a trainer stretching you out for a big game. It was great though. Rejuvinated us for the next part of our walk.

We walked through a huge beautiful park. It was a great change of scenery since the majority of our day was spent walking on the crowded streets with all the car fumes blowing in our faces. There was some dancing and some yoga and some synchronized sword fighting going on.
Finally we made our way to the stadium. The cost to get in was a little more pricey than we had decided we would spend and since neither of us are really interested in boxing, we decided seeing the stadium was enough.

YAY for the Gators! Our Buddah bell must have done the trick... or else we are just the best in the nation :) We caught some highlights on the internet midday. Hope all you Gator fans got some good partying in for us!!!