Grand Palace + Vimanmek Mansion + Lunch at Supatra River House...
Grand Palace is a must visit place when you come to Bangkok. Otherwise it is like going to Beijing without visiting Forbidden City or London without visiting Buckingham Palace.
The Grand Palace complex was established in 1782 and it houses not only the royal residence and throne halls, but also a number of government offices as well as the renowned Temple of The Emerald Buddha.
Aerial view - Just look at the sheer size of the palace. It covers an area of 218,000 square metres and surrounded by four walls -1900 metres in length.
When our cruise boat docked at Maharaj Pier, we disembarked...
Ana - our guide, waited at the pier to lead us to the van which would bring us to the Grand Palace. There were about 10 other people, all of whom were kwai lou, had also bought the "hop on and hop off" cruise ticket, took turn to board the van. We let them board first... and Ana saw that the van was getting full, she asked both of us to join her to the other van... To our surprise, instead of just a free shuttle service, Ana became our personal guide for the next 4 four hours.
This was the van that shuttled just the 2 of us to Grand Palace and Vimanmek Mansion before returning to Maharaj Pier. The van was quite new and comfortable. We managed to attract some envy eyes of others, as they may think that we were some VIPs who had a personal guide to show us around as well as a nice van with driver that always waited for us after each visit.
Mrs. Chialat preferred to sit in front for the reason she best known to herself.
Less then 5 mins ride from the pier, we reached at the palace's gate and there was a strict dress code for visiting Grand Palace - Men must wear long pants and shirt with sleeve. No tank tops and no bare feet(must have socks). Women must be modestly dressed as well. No bikini, no see-through clothes and no bare breast shoulder. if you show up at the front gate improperly dressed, here is the booth near the entrance that can provide you clothes to cover you up properly. You must leave your passport or credit card as security.
Nice building at the entrance...
After we bought 2 admission tickets for 350TB each that included the admission tickets to Vimanmek mansion which could be used later, we headed straight to the gate...
Phra Siratana Chedi.
When she heard that it was made of real gold, she tried to dig it out...
Phra Mondop.
Giant Yaksa Guardians
The Golden Chedis.
Kinnara, Wat Phra Keo.
Prasat Phra Dhepbidorn, The Royal Pantheon.
The Upper Terrace.
The Roof of The Temple of Emerald Buddha.
The Temple of Emerald Buddha. Camera was prohibited inside the temple... so no photo of the Emerald Buddha.
Beautiful decorated pillar of Temple of Emerald Buddha.
Decorated roof.
The Gallery - The wall of which contains painting depicting the epic of the Ramakien.
The Borom Phiman Mansion.
The Chakri Maha Prasat.
Beautiful garden and landscaping.
Beautiful architectural structure of the Chakri Maha Prasat.
Elephants guarding the Chakri Maha Prasat.
Beautiful structure.
The Dusit Maha Prasat.
Beautiful??
The Goverment Office in The Palace.
Change of guards... some tall, some short, some fast, some slow, some thin, some... well, all of them were thin. They should have been sent to China for training!
The Phimanchaisri Gate - It was the end of our tour of Grand Palace after exiting this gate.
The wall that surrounded the palace and the landscape outside the temple.
The view outside the temple.
Ok, this is not the gate outside the Grand Palace but the gate of our Istana Negara in Kuala Lumpur. After visiting Bangkok's Grand Palace, I feel ashamed of our Istana Negara where it does not have "history" to tell nor it is "grand" enough to brag about. But I'm quite puzzled every time when I see bus load of tourists stop outside the gate to take picture with the 2 horses. Well, after all I'm not suggesting our government to build one "mega and grandest palace" to compete, but our government really needs to put in some efforts to attract tourists. We are loosing out to our neighbour in term of tourism industry!
Amanda Samakhom Throne Hall... Ana said that she could have brought us there after the Grand Palace but unfortunately it was closed on that day.
The Vimanmek Mansion - The World's Largest Golden Teakwood Mansion.
We spent almost 2 and a half hours in Grand Palace before our next destination- Vimanmek. Once we came out from the palace, Ana made a phone call to the driver to come and pick us up. The van could not park near the Palace but we did not have to wait long. The van came in 5 mins.
The ride to Vimanmek took about 20 mins...
The beautiful mansion was built by King Rama V in 1897. The security was tight and camera was not allowed. So, this is the only pic. of Vimanmek. We had to leave our camera, phone and backpack in the locker as well as taking off our shoes before entering the mansion. It took about half an hour "manouvering" inside the mansion and Ana explained every attractions in detail to us. If you don't have a personal guide like ours, don't worry, they are conducting guided tour every half an hour.
After Vimanmek, Ana said as the government sponsored the shuttle van for us during this low season, in return the government hoped that we could support their local industry by visiting one of their factories. So she brought us to visit the 2nd biggest jewelry factory in Bangkok (or in Thailand, I forgot) - Chin Jewelry Co. We were offered welcome drinks on our arrival and I asked for coke. The factory was not that big as claimed nor impressive enough compared to the one in Phuket. So we just spent less than 3 mins inside the factory.
While we came out, the driver was nowhere to be seen and Ana phoned him. He was having lunch! He thought that we could have spent some times inside the factory to choose our jewellery. I felt bad as I guessed he must have washed down his food with water as he came back pretty quick - 5 mins max!
It was already 2:30 p.m and we felt hungry as well... I asked Ana to recommend nice Thai food restaurant and she recommended the one next to the Maharaj Pier. We invited her to join us for lunch but she politely declined. For her professional and impeccable service, I tipped her 200TB when we got back to the pier... and 40TB for the driver (of course he didn't see how much I tipped her). Both of them thanked us profusely.
Supatra River House Restaurant next to Maharaj Pier.
The restaurant is under the group of S&P, which also operates many other chained restaurants in Thailand.
4 books of menu to choose...
And we ordered these...
Ice Black Coffee - 50TB... normal and nothing special.
Ice Milk Tea - 55TB... I still prefer our Teh Tarik.
Seafood Tong Yam Kung - 155TB... It was extremely delicious. Not too sourly and not too spicy hot. Excellent dish!
1 huge prawn sliced into 2 that found in the soup. The prawn was fresh and "firm". The other ingredients were the standard squid, fish, mushroom, tomatoes and etc. But the prawn was still the star of this dish.
Thai Seafood Fried Rice -95TB... The portion was just enough for one person but damn delicious. One huge mussel "hide" underneath the rice!
The special sauce for the fried rice... hot and spicy. The fried rice was already tasted good enough so I didn't need this.
Fried Pork Knuckle - 275TB... It was perfectly fried. The skin was damn crispy whilst the meat inside was still juicy and tender. It was served with mustard but I preferred to go with Thai chili sauce. The portion was huge.
Chicken Green Curry -115TB... The chicken was tender and the taste of the green curry was just right as the spices did not overpower the taste of curry. Somehow I felt it was a tad too salty but when it went with white rice (all the dishes were so appetizing that I actually asked for additional white rice to go with it - 15TB for a small serving), it tasted quite OK.
Eventhough they served quite a variety of cakes but we just didn't have enough "room" for anymore dessert.
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