1 Day Sight Seeing in Bangkok

So its my first full day in Bankok having recovered from the flights. The first thing to note is that Bangkok is a truely vast city, and the volume of traffic is equally vast.

If you choose to stay in Silom the main shopping district or Sukhamvit or indeed Chinatown then you will have access to "Skytrain". Not some super computer hell bent on human destruction but a modern air conditoined elevated mass transit system covering two thirds of the city.

This costs 100 Baht a day for unlimited travel and spares you the humourless task of dealing with taxi touts, tuk tuk drivers who pester constantly and bent taxi drivers who refuse to use the meter and try to charge you 4 times the fare! Just to give you an idea Kho San to Silom should be 80 Baht on the meter, many taxi drivers will quote you 250!

Sadly though Skytrain doesn't cover the West of the city where some of the best attractions are, and this was the main reason I chose to stay near the Kho San Road. From here all the major attractions are within 30 mins walk.

Lower Kho San Road at Night

Talking of the Kho San Road, I really wish that I had brought nothing with me but the camera - you really can buy everything here, and it's very very cheap. There's even a branch of Boots on the Kho San Road:

Anyway all of that not witstanding the weather is hot and sunny 31 degrees which is brilliant and just right for tromping around the citys' major sites. In this case Wat Po, The Royal Palace & Wat Phra Kaew and the Great Swing are all within about 30 mins stroll of each other ;

Wat Po is the temple site of the recling Buddah (left) dating back to the 16th centurythis giant golden Buddah is 46 metres long and 15 metres high at its tallest point. This picture simply cannot do it justice. The fine toe-prints you can see on the Buddahs feet are made from hundreds of individually shaped pieces of mother of pearl.

This very Chinese looking structure (right) is the "Giant Swing". Historically young men would rock themselves backwards and forwards on a giant beam suspended beneath the swing and attempt to retrieve a bag of gold coins suspended on a nearby pole.

The day I visited the Grand Palace it was closed for an official function so all i saw was the exterior of the buildings however the adjacent and linked Wat Phra Kaew Temple is sufficiently impressive to warrant its own entry in this blog and that is what will follow next.

Bye for now.

Mr C