Day 2: Visiting Bangkok Temples!

We had a great night in our hostel. It was fully air conditioned and the place was really clean including the comfort room. :)

We woke up early as expected since we wanted to stay away from traffic as much as possible. The weather was a bit gloomy but we just crossed our fingers that it won't rain that hard. Anyhow, we did not eat our breakfast because all of us were not hungry. At around 7 AM, we rode a taxi going to Saphan Taksin so we could ride a boat from Chao Phraya River. There was another route we are supposed to try like riding a BTS near Silom Rd connecting to N Sathorn Rd but it was kind of far if we walk from our hostel. By the way, I noticed that some of their taxi drivers were not familiar with the locations or maybe they just wanted us to pay a fixed rate instead of using the meter which we experienced once. It was annoying because when I told him about our place, he said he did not know the place but instead offered 150 THB for the fare. hmmm. Anyhow, we did not get the bait because I was looking at the google map which showed that the place was near. Going back, we paid 61 THB to the taxi driver from Sap Road to Saphan Taksin. We had a hard time talking to him because he did not know how to speak english, anyway, what he was trying to say was pointing us to the pier entrance. Thanks!

Upon arrival at the area, we had to walk a bit going to Sathorn Pier where we could ride the Chao Phraya Boat. We had to pay 15 THB each going to Wat Arun (our first temple to visit) I would suggest that you wear the right clothes so you can enter any temples immediately. No short skirts, sleeveless or shorts. Slippers are fine because there are times that you have to remove them when you enter a temple. Maybe 15-20 minutes, we arrived at Wat Arun. Please bring a Thailand map with you so you can check the locations.

So here are the temples we visited including their entrance fees.

1. Wat Arun - entrance fee is 50 THB.

2. Wat Pho - entrance is 100 THB with free mineral water. From Wat Arun, you had to ride a small boat to cross the river for 4 THB.

3. Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew - entrance is 500 THB. This is so far the biggest temple.Well, the entrance fee speaks for itself. :) It is just a walking distance from Wat Pho.

When we asked a person where's the gate for Grand palace, he said that it would open at 1 PM, it was 10 AM at the time when we asked him. If I am not mistaken, it was a scam. We did not heed his information, instead we went to the nearest food stall where we had our brunch. After that, we went straight to Grand Palace and luckily, it was open. :)

4. Wat Suthat - entrance is 100 THB. We had a hard time locating this place. We thought it was just near from Grand palace but it was far. I would suggest that you ride a taxi/Tuktuk or skip this temple instead. When we went here, we were not amazed at all. The entrance fee was not even worth it because the temple itself was close for renovation for the same price. We were only able to see the small buddhas around the temple, nothing else.

5. Wat Saket - entrance fee is 50 THB. This is the temple where you can go up the stairs and see the view of Bangkok. We would suggest that you come here during late afternoon or the evening to see the city lights.

6. Wat Benchamabophit (Marble Temple) - entrance fee is 50 THB.

We visited two small temples but just skip those two because it's just a typical temple. Nothing extraordinary. Since there was no taxi in the area, we had to walk going to the crossing where most of the vehicles are going to and fro. From there, we hailed taxis but all of them did not know Chinatown or maybe it was really far from our location. So what I did was to use the river boat again because on the map, there is a boat stop where you just have to walk going to Chinatown. We rode a taxi going to Rama 8 pier but to our dismay, the taxi driver did not know as well so what he did was sent us across the bridge where it was way too far from the pier. We paid 80 THB and got off from that unknown place and walked as much as we could going to where the river was located. Most of the peopled we talked to did not know how to speak English so it was really hard. I was already anxious because it's getting late. Good thing a lady really tried her best to point us to a small unknown pier so we can ride a small boat going to the Thewit pier where we can ride the Chao Phraya Boat instead. We just paid 5 THB. When we arrived at the Thewit pier, the person helped us to buy a ticket going to Ratchawang Pier where we can walk to Chinatown. We only paid 15 THB. When we passed by at Rama 8 pier, it was closed or maybe it was not functional anymore but yeah, it was on the map. Anyhow, since it was probably 5 PM, there were a lot of people riding the boat. Rush hour I guess. :( So we went down in Ratchawang pier where we had to walk around the street. It was a busy street. There were a lot of food stalls and people walking. What worried us though was we ran out of thai baht money. Oh no!! My friend told me that there was a lot of money changer in Chinatown. However, most of those are already closed so even if we were sooo hungry, we had to bear it. Luckily, we found one money changer that's opened and had a good exchange rate. So to make the long story short, we finally able to eat. haha! We paid 127 THB for 3 persons. Not bad right? After we murdered our food, we decided to enjoy the beauty of Chinatown. Even if our feet were already tired, we opted to just walk going to the nearest MRT station which is the Hua Lamphong. The fare was 16 THB only since our hostel was located to the next MRT stop.