Bangkok, Thailand Christmas 2013

Ok - so I haven't updated in a long while, so I thought I should get on the bandwagon before all got lost! We spent our Christmas vacation in Bangkok, Thailand. On first looks, it reminded me of New York City - old, dirty, street food everywhere, little dumpy restaurants....well that's exactly Bangkok all the way down to their BTS Subway system; yep, just like NYC!

Here are some pictures of the city of Bangkok:

Here are some of the highlights of what we saw while there. There are LOTS of temples to visit:

Bangkok's famous palace complex was built in 1782 and features several magnificent buildings including Wat Phra Kaeo (Temple of the Emerald Buddha), which contains a beautiful Emerald Buddha that dates back to the 14th century.
The outside walls of the palace:

The palace:

Inside the palace walls: Temple of the Emerald Buddha (Wat Phra Kaew)

On our way out of the palace we "passed" this round about with this little monument in the middle and at the end of the road was the Ministry of Defense complete with barbed wire from the protesters:

So the people of Bangkok are protesting over a proposed amnesty bill that would pardon various incidents which include Thai politicians. Needless to say, the people aren't happy! However, Lenny really wanted to see this and we did hear them blowing their whistles in protest so a picture while on the BTS skytrain:

...And we even went BACK to see it first hand from the station:

...And after we got off the skytrain. The girls wanted McDonald's but we got sidelined by the protesting...so room-service it was!

Next stop was the Temple of Dawn (AKA: Wat Arun). This temple is considered to be the most famous and photographed temple in Bangkok, which features a soaring 70-meter-high spire decorated with tiny pieces of colored glass and Chinese porcelain.

We climbed up it - and it was REALLY STEEP!

Once you reached the top, the view was spectacular! Here are some of the views from the top:

Some up close and personal details of the temple - it was really intricate and very pretty:

We went by boat taxi from one temple to the next. At one of the piers you could feed the fish and let me tell you - they KNOW how to eat. They would gight over the food and flop themselves all over the place just to get bits of bread:

We went down this river and over it to get to a market:

Wet market in Thewet - can't say ours in Singapore are like this!

Wat Rakhang Khositaram, formerly known as Wat Bang Wa Yai, is an Ayutthaya period temple.

Temple of the Golden Buddha (Wat Traimit)- This highly revered temple contains the Golden Image Buddha, which is made of solid gold and weighs approximately 5 ½ tons.

Our final stop on the temple train was Temple of the Reclining Buddha (Wat Pho). One of the oldest and largest temples in Bangkok features the famous Reclining Buddha, which is the largest in Thailand measuring more than 150 feet in length. On another note Ansley decided to PUKE inside this one...I tried so hard to get her out before she lost her cookies...and just on the thresh hold she lost it! It wasn't pretty!

This ends our time in Bangkok!! It was FABULOUS place to visit!!