We arrived in Bangkok, after ~20 hours of flight time, exhausted! Luckily it was really easy to get to our hostel and it was nighttime when we arrived so we went right to bed and woke up eager to explore the city! We spent 3 ½ days in Bangkok walking around a lot, getting our bearings and seeing some of the main sights, although we saved some sights for our upcoming return trips to Bangkok.
We spent one morning at the Grand Royal Palace and Wat Phra Kaew (Temple of the Emerald Buddha) – with about 7 thousand of our closest friends 😉 The Temple complex was amazingly intricate and beautiful. So many colors, designs and history!! We got an audio tour which helped give us context for all of the buildings, status and images we saw.
As we were still adjusting to the heat, recovering from jet lag and walking a lot, we took a good amount of rests throughout the day. And ate a lot of delicious food 🙂 
One of our favorite meals was right along the Khlong Samsen canal north of Victory Monument where boats selling noodle dishes used to congregate along the canal. Now there are a whole cluster of noodle restaurants along the canal serving these same noodle dishes. So good!
There were many Wats in the neighborhood we were staying that were mostly empty and really peaceful to walk around:
We explored a lot of back streets, an early morning market and the canals on our daily walkabouts.
We spent another morning at the Jim Thompson House, an American who moved to Thailand and brought the Thai silk industry into the global market. His house – made of 6 traditional Thai houses put together – is decorated with historic Thai artifacts. The demonstration of how silk is made was especially interesting. And the art museum, now housed in one of the buildings, featured some beautiful batiks:
Highlights of Bangkok
- Thailand is amazing! The people are so nice, infrastructure is great. What a great place to start!
- So much to do and see everywhere you look
- Random Wats
- Foooooood
Great photos! The architecture and colors are awesome, and I like the whole idea of random wats.
Have to admit – I looked up the term “Wat”. Learned something new today while I enjoyed your beautiful pictures! Have Fun!