The Grand Palace

My first weekend in Bangkok I went to see the Grand Palace where the kings of Thailand have lived (it's kind of like Buckingham Palace).

 

Here's the current King:

There's pictures of him all over Thialand.

There been lots of kings living in the Grand Palace over the years and each of them has added a different structure to the development, so there's lots of weird and wonderful buildings and statues in the grounds:

Here's the biggest Bonsia I've ever seen! Carl if you get yours to grow this tall I'll be impressed!

Religion is a big part of Thai lifestyle, and there are loads of temples around the city that people just stop and pray at. This one in the palace has a statue of Budda that they stick little bits of gold paper to (I think it brings good luck of something!):

The main temple where the king has special masses:

Only the king and queen are allowed to enter through the middle door of the main temple.

You have to take your shoes off to go inside the temple, and you're not allowed to take pictures, or point your feet at Budda when you site down!

These are the guest quarters, and Queen Elizabeth the second stayed in these when she visited Thailand.

Then just outside the main gates right opposite the palace there's a park (like St James Park for Buckingham Palace) and it looked like Market stalls, so I wondered over to have a look and it's actually people living there!!!!!!

They have put up shelters and like winder breakers and are actually living in the park opposite the palace! It's one extreme to the other!

Thailand!

So I've left OZ for a bit and now I'm in Thailand for a little while.

Totally different culture from Australia!

I'm currently based in Bangkok and it's one extreme to another here, you see so much poverty on the street, but then just round the corner there's a massive shopping centre that's really luxurious with huge designer names!

There's LOTS of shops here, so if you like shopping Bangkok will be right up your street. There's also lots of markets, all over the place (and I mean all over, every inch of pavement is covered with market stalls!)

The hotels are really luxurious, the people are nice and polite and everything is really cheap.

Here's my hotel I'm staying in:

And here's a view of the street outside:

As you can see the traffic is pretty mental, it's like this most of the time, day and night!

Not a bad view from my hotel room:

And here here's my room:

 

And here's some pictures of my room mate :)

 

 

 

 

 

The local transport is either a taxi, bus, motorbike, tuck tuck or sky train! in this picture you can pretty much see all those forms of transport in one image!

here's what Tuck Tuck looks like:

There are lots of vendors on the street or even street restaurants that you can eat at, the nicest Pad Thai I've had so far has been from a street restaurant!

 

This is a street restaurant across the road from my hotel.

My favourite place in Bangkok is the Siam Paragon. It's a huge shopping centre (kind of like a Trafford Centre, but doesn't spread out as far, it tends to go up instead of out!). It has lots of shops, restaurant a supermarket, and a massive cinema complex.

Last Weekend In Sydney :(

My colleague/friend Jon Evans has come out to Sydney to take over from me for a few months while I sort out another visa.

It was his first weekend in Sydney this weekend (and my last!) so on Saturday we went to Darling Harbour to watch the fireworks (which are always amazing!) and on Sunday to introduce Jon to Sydney we went a walk around some of the tourist attractions.


We went to see the Opera House:

 

The Sydney Harbour Bridge

 

 

 

We had a nice lunch down by Circular Quay, with a good view of the bridge:

We walked around the Botanical Gardens

And just generally took lots of touristy type pictures!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even though the weather wasn't particularly brilliant, all in all my last weekend in Sydney was a good one!!