Today we did some daytime exploring. First up was The Grand Palace and the home of The Emerald Buddha. The Emerald Buddha is the most sacred religious object in Thailand. It’s in the Wat Phra Kaew Temple inside of the Grand Palace complex, and it’s regarded as the protector of Thailand.

The level of ornateness is very hard to convey with photos - but it feels kinda like Shanghai meets Versailles..

A few interesting things about The Emerald Buddha…. He’s actually made out of Jade (not emeralds), and is only about 24 inches tall. You are not allowed to take photos inside of the temple, but that’s him lit in the photo above Tom and I…

He has 3 “outfits” that he wears, and they are changed seasonally - not a very extensive wardrobe I guess, but the outfits can only be changed by the King in a royal ceremony. Note to self: Make better sock choices when you know you have to take your shoes off! 🤣

The palace grounds were very overwhelming (and hot!), so we headed out to see the famous “reclining buddha”. This thing is massive - over 150 feet long and 50 feet tall! The building was constructed around it, after the statue was completed.

Once again, it’s impossible to convey the size of it and catch it in a single photo…

The feet are very interesting also - the bottoms of the feet are inlayed with 108 buddhist symbols done in mother of pearl.

… I can’t resist the chance for a good toe sock reference.🤣

… and Tom couldn’t resist the chance to bang the gong for a small donation to the monk retirement fund 😂

Our last temple stop was Wat Arun. If you look closely, you can see the lovely Asian girl to the right of Tom trying having her IG moment - waiting for him to get out of her picture!

This was a very popular place for the IG queens, and it was almost impossible to walk around without photo bombing someone. It was beautiful during the day, but I think I liked this temple better at night … from a distance … without the IG queens. 🙄

(the way we saw it the first night from the boat)

It was a full day of exploring - Bangkok is a very interesting city!