Day 2 Travel Digest from Bangkok, Thailand
For my earlier daily travel digests from my south east asia backpacking trip, click here.
The headache of Day 1 had disappeared. Looked like my body was adjusting quickly to the Bangkok humidity and thankfully this helped me in enjoying this vibrant city even more.
The 1st day’s walk to Grand Palace had ensured that we knew your way around Khao San and nearbouts and hence we decided that we would walk all the way to the Chao Phraya river today.
Reached the Chang Pier next to the Grand Palace only to find that boats from here charge 700 baht per person to goto Wat Arun that you could see in the horizon. We smelled a scam as our hostel folks had spoken about a 3 baht ferry ticket. We looked around and figured that may be we should walk to the next pier – Tha Thien.
But, the market around Chang Pier seemed very interested so we slowly walked through each shop in the market before we reached Tha Thien. And as expected, we got a 3 baht ferry ticket from here.
Now, let me explain the Chao Phraya ferry scene. It is a combination of tourists plus school children plus locals plus workers and more. Hence, you can find an interesting ecosystem on the boat. Also offers interesting opportunities for doing street or portraits.
Coming to Wat Arun or the temple of dawn is a temple that towers on the western bank of the river and boy is it big. You get a good idea of its height when you climb the entire flight of steps to its mid way point, from where you get a good view of the Bangkok landscape.
On the way back, we decided to explore the market at depth and even tried out some interesting dishes. I tried the exotic fruits of Thailand while my friend couldn’t keep his mind away from the seafood. The evening was a downpour, which limited us the opportunity to explore much and then we were tired too as we had walked more than 10 kilometers today.
The headache of Day 1 had disappeared. Looked like my body was adjusting quickly to the Bangkok humidity and thankfully this helped me in enjoying this vibrant city even more.
The 1st day’s walk to Grand Palace had ensured that we knew your way around Khao San and nearbouts and hence we decided that we would walk all the way to the Chao Phraya river today.
Reached the Chang Pier next to the Grand Palace only to find that boats from here charge 700 baht per person to goto Wat Arun that you could see in the horizon. We smelled a scam as our hostel folks had spoken about a 3 baht ferry ticket. We looked around and figured that may be we should walk to the next pier – Tha Thien.
But, the market around Chang Pier seemed very interested so we slowly walked through each shop in the market before we reached Tha Thien. And as expected, we got a 3 baht ferry ticket from here.
Now, let me explain the Chao Phraya ferry scene. It is a combination of tourists plus school children plus locals plus workers and more. Hence, you can find an interesting ecosystem on the boat. Also offers interesting opportunities for doing street or portraits.
Coming to Wat Arun or the temple of dawn is a temple that towers on the western bank of the river and boy is it big. You get a good idea of its height when you climb the entire flight of steps to its mid way point, from where you get a good view of the Bangkok landscape.
On the way back, we decided to explore the market at depth and even tried out some interesting dishes. I tried the exotic fruits of Thailand while my friend couldn’t keep his mind away from the seafood. The evening was a downpour, which limited us the opportunity to explore much and then we were tired too as we had walked more than 10 kilometers today.
