A Step Off The Beaten Path

Inside the Grand Palace grounds in Bangkok

Back where we started, Bangkok! After almost 3 months in southeast Asia, the big city doesn’t seem nearly so intimidating. It’s still choked with traffic, and the weather has turned brutally hot and sticky, but we now feel better prepared to see some of what Bangkok has to offer.

First stop, Wat Phra Kaew and the Grand Palace. It’s somewhat expensive to enter, but well worth the visit if only to see the colorful and glittering temples inside the massive Grand Palace grounds. The brightly colored mosaic tiles and the beautiful structures and paintings are a feast for the eyes! The famous Wat Phra Kaew temple houses possibly the country’s greatest treasure, the Emerald Buddha. Gage points out that the approx. 2 ft tall statue is actually made of jade. Sounds like his Dad. 🙂

Wat Phra Kaew. It’s a wholly different style of temple.

Don’t know what this is, but we all thought it was neat

The Emerald Buddha! You can barely see it through the open doors. Check out the decorative exit and surrounding walls. They’re unreal!

Leave it to Gage to research and find a store that sells Magic the Gathering cards. Feels like déjà vu from when we stayed in Chiang Mai two months ago. He then planned an outing with Evan and Lori to visit Bob’s Cards, a tiny, closet-like shop hidden away in a little shopping mall. As luck would have it, he discovered that a Magic tournament would commence the following day. So guess where Mommy and Gage went on Friday night?

Gage participates in a Magic the Gathering tournament

On Saturday, we took a taxi about 10 miles west to experience the Khlong Lat Mayom floating market. It’s reputation as a “locals” floating market is well founded as we didn’t see almost any tourists. Loaded with charm and a truly festive atmosphere, loads of fun food choices, and plenty of shade, everyone left the market feeling happy and satisfied. Wish we had time for a return visit!

Evan enjoys a quiet moment beside the canal before the floating market opens

Boats bringing in supplies for the market. I guess that is why they call it “floating” 🙂

Anna’s favorite: grilled bacon-wrapped enokitake mushrooms glazed with a sweet & spicy sauce

Anna bought a shirt and fed a goat. She’s having entirely too much fun!

That’s it, folks. Time to say goodbye to the Land of Smiles. Tomorrow we leave to spend 8 days in Australia before flying on to Quito, Ecuador for the 2nd half of our trip. Some of you may be wondering how Australia fit into our plans. The short answer is: poor planning led to this. About 2 months ago, we tried to use our air miles to book our flights to Ecuador. However, we couldn’t do it online. In fact, the system wouldn’t allow us to book any flights from Asia to the US or to South America!  And a call to the airline representative resulted in an admonishment that we “should have booked these flights 11 months ago”. Ouch!  Facing the prospect of many thousands of dollars in unexpected travel costs, Lori got creative and looked for any places where our air miles could take us, and Sydney, Australia popped up! Even better, we were subsequently able to use air miles to book flights from Sydney to Quito. Problem solved! Best of all, we’ll get to visit old friends in Sydney. Of course, the kids are super excited to eat meat pies and Indian food, and see the sights. So it’s a slight detour, but a most welcome one.

Next stop, the Land of Oz.