Bangkok Day 2: Wat Traimit, Wat Arun, Madame Tussauds, and Dinner Cruise Across Chao Phraya

Hello! I'm back here for the next part of my Bangkok trip journal. For this part, I will put LOTS of photos because we visited a lot of places from early in the morning until the evening on our second day in Bangkok. I hope this post won't be too overwhelming because of it, so I guess I would love to say: Enjoy!

After we had an early breakfast on 7 AM, we and our lovely tour guide, Mith, headed to the first temple written in the itinerary: Wat Traimit a.k.a. The Temple of The Golden Buddha. It is named so because, obviously, the temple have a golden Buddha statue in it.

To get to the temple (or they call it Wat), we were passing through such interesting routes including Bangkok's Chinatown (I always love to visit every Chinatown no matter where it is), and the palace. The temple is located between some blocks of building, but I can easily differentiate it, obviously, because of its golden rooftop. Wat's rooftops are probably my obsession while visiting Thailand. I'm planning on making a series of postcards consisting of photos of Wat's rooftops!

Obligatory in front of landmarks photo. Why is that dude on the right smiling at me? :|

In order to enter the temple, we must do several procedures, for the sake of valuing other people's place for worship. First, make sure your trousers or skirts are below your knee. If not, the temple will provide some kind of fabric for us to cover our legs. Then, you may not enter the temple with your shoes, so you should remove your shoes before entering the temple. After that, make sure you remove your hat. 

And one, important thing for me (I should put this on uppercase and bold because I consider this important): MAKE SURE TO READ SOME DOS AND DON'TS WHEN YOU ENTER THE TEMPLE THAT IS LOCATED NEXT TO THE TEMPLE'S ENTRANCE! I don't understand why hordes of people don't take the time to read it and then make some violation afterwards. Faux pas is just embarrassing, just saying. :(

The interior of the temple, plus the golden Buddha. I love on how the temples here are so well-decorated. They often use murals to fill up the spaces in the wall.

You might wonder why there's no motion footage for the temple's interior. The answer is: We're not allowed to record videos in the temple (Again, writing it with bold text). The reason why is still unknown for me, but probably it's for the convenient of people who are doing their rituals so we should really respect them. So, please have some respect for the sake of the temple's main purpose, which is for Buddhists to do their rituals.

The overall view of the temple. Yup, the temple's open from early in the morning (8 AM) to the late afternoon (5 PM). And yup, the golden Buddha is located in the biggest building in the middle, and we must climb in order to get there. Boy, we sure love to move our body!

Time to move to the next place, and the next place is: Wat Arun a.k.a The Temple of the Dawn. We don't get to the temple by car, but in a more interesting way. By a boat; crossing the famous Chao Phraya river. 

Bangkok is such an interesting place and one of many way to travel the city is by a boat. There's a public boat you can ride and it has some routes and stops, just like having a usual bus, or train ride. I think it's a great opportunity to finally feel how it's like to travel (or commute) by boat!

One of the pier, located behind River City, a shopping mall.

Look, mom! I rode a boat!

One of many interesting activities we could do in Chao Phraya river is feeding the fishes with bread. It is known for Thais that feeding fishes in Chao Phraya might brings us good luck and prosperity. So I should really take a try on it (although I'm a bit sceptical with this kind of thing).

Wishes: Magang lancar, TA lancar, lulus kuliah, dapat pacar.

It's amazing to find some interesting buildings from the river.

It doesn't take so long for the boat the get us to the next destination. The boat docked to the pier next to the temple, and that means it's time to explore Wat Arun! By the way, Mith told us that the name Arun was derived from the Hindu God, Aruna. And... I read that Aruna is often personified as the radiations of the rising sun. Well, that explained a lot why it's often called The Temple of the Dawn!

The entrance's view. Too bad the biggest Wat building was under maintenance.

I realised that every temple in Bangkok has some kind of banner that are located in every entrance that told us that the figure of Buddha is considered as sacred and it's totally wrong to use the figure as any form of decorations. I think this is important as many people consider Buddha as "an exotic figure that the Asians have" and they usually use the figure in some incorrect ways. Besides, Buddhist totally want their central figure, their role model, to remain sacred, isn't it?

Maaaajestic!

Hi!

Sorry I keep posing in pictures because I will look extremely fat if I don't pull up my body a bit. Sigh.

Yeah, yeah.

This is my current favourite photo. Yay for new profile picture!

So freakin' tall.

I climbed some quite amount of stairs to get this view.

I just love this wall reliefs, that were made of ceramics and stuffs.

We proceeded to have some lunch at a halal restaurant in a hotel near the temple. Then, it's time to snap LOTS of pictures because it's time for Madame Tussauds Bangkok! Even though they have less wax statues than in Hong Kong or anywhere else, it's still worth to visit because they include some important figures that came from South East Asia, including the first president of Indonesia, Soekarno, and my favourite political leader of Myanmar, Au San Suu Kyi.

No, I don't upload all of my snaps in Madame Tussauds because it will bore you to death. Seriously. Okay. Hehe.

Have I told you I'm the new queen of the England? Ahhh, UK you never cease to amaze me.

This is such a cute photo because I happened to be wearing similar trouser as Picasso's.

Trying to act like a maestro but ended up looking like a magician.

Watch out, directioners! No, I'm not a fan.

Thank you master Bruce Lee for the amazing training days we spent together. Now I'm strong enough to break almost everything (?).

My favourite anime until this very second!

Me in my bath robe. With Jackie Chan. Weird (and slightly wrong) combination.

We booked a dinner cruise across the Chao Phraya river prior leaving to Bangkok, and I guess it was a wonderful thing to experience in Bangkok. We went to the pier that I went to in order to get to Wat Arun, and boarded to the ship 7 PM sharp, previously greeted by some Thai girls wearing the traditional Thai attire. The dinner was buffet-styled, and there were probably hundreds of famished people just like us and you know what happened. Madness.

I waited until most of the people get their foods and then went to the buffet table afterward. I didn't eat much because I can't stand seafood (I just had a lot foods that I don't eat). Overall, there was nothing special about the food served in this dinner cruise. Maybe people keep coming to the dinner cruise because of the experience they want to encounter. 

Indeed, cruising through the Chao Phraya river is an amazing opportunity. You'll see city lights, Wats are super beautiful by the night time, and it'll be SUPER ROMANTIC if you have this dinner with your special ones. Talking about having one, hahaha.

These two were the only photos I took while having the dinner cruise (my camera battery went out, actually). 

The cruise ended on 9.30 PM, and that means time to get back to the hotel. It was an amazing day we had in our second day in Bangkok! We'll be having some authentic Thai souvenirs shopping, and another Wat to visit. Stay tuned! I hope you'll enjoy reading this post as I enjoy writing this! Have a pleasant day.

Bangkok Travel Journal

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3