Changing of the Guards

"This place doesn't welcome the person who invole with drugs."

Not far from my hotel is The Grand Palace, the official residence of the Kings of Siam (Thailand) from 1782 until 1925. I headed that way wandering the streets and came across lots of little markets.

This one where Thai people were buying Buddha amulets

and food ones like this

and this, I think these are grilled bananas

The Grand Palace was really impressive(check out my pictures at the bottom of this post). To get inside we had to borrow clothes. Janelle needed to wear a mens shirt:

I needed to wear these pants:

The weather in Bangkok is around 37C (98F), not the best weather to be wearing sweat pants in. I was sweating so much my shoes started to slosh when I walked from all of the moisture.

We saw a very interesting changing of the guards ceremony, which you can watch here: (I highly recommend watching this)

After that we went to Wat Pho temple which has the worlds largest reclining Buddha.

I kept hearing this sound that I thought was wind chimes while I was looking at the front side of the Buddha. When I got around to the back side I could see that there weren't any wind chimes at all. Instead I found 108 bronze bowls indicating the 108 auspicious characters of Buddha. People were dropping coins in these bowls as it is believed to bring good fortune, and to help the monks maintain the wat(temple). I made a short video so you can see and hear what I'm talking about:

Check out the rest of the pictures from today by clicking on the link below:

2012-06-21 Bangkok