It was an early start today! We had an alarm set for 5:30 am because we needed to meet for our excursion at 6:40 am in the Stardust Theatre. The only option for breakfast was the buffet on deck 11 and it was hopping busy!
We had a hearty breakfast and then met with our group 28 which had all signed up to see Bangkok Canals & the Royal Barges. At least we didn’t have the 6:10 am meeting time like our friends!
Laem Chabang is the port where the ship docked – but that is 125 km away from Bangkok. Our early meeting time today is because we expected to have a two hour drive into the city. In fact, we hit rush hour and the drive was 2 hours and 50 minutes.
We arrived to our destination and loaded into our wooden boat situated on the Chao Praya River (Canal). Our tour along the canal went first to the beautiful Temple of Dawn, or Wat Arun. It is one of Bangkok’s most famous Buddhist temples in Bangkok. Our guide, Sam, told us 94.5% of the 66 million people in Thailand are Buddhist. Visitors journey here as it is one of the few temples you are permitted to climb its main staircase.
The Golden Buddha in the main chapel is revered.
We were asked to remove our shoes outside to enter here. And of course knees and shoulders needed to be covered while visiting this religious site. We knew that dress code when we planned our clothes for the day. We met a woman from Australia who was on a ski trip. She had on leggings, but those were not acceptable so she had to put on a long skirt over top of the leggings – and she said she was incredibly hot because of it! You could borrow long red wraps that could be worn as a skirt or a wrap on your shoulders if necessary.
When I first saw women dressed in fine clothing I thought - oh they must be here to celebrate a wedding. As I saw lots of people wearing fine clothes, we then were told that you can rent these fine costumes for 200 bhat (about $10 CAD) and have photographers all over the site take your photo.
Our guide also told us that people were invited to share broken dishes etc that would be incorporated into the décor of the pagoda.
Insert broken dish up close (Try later)
After 45 minutes at this site we then loaded back into our boat and went down the canal to the Royal Barges National Museum. The current King is King Rama X and his coronation was on December 12, 2019. These barges were used at that event – and for years before then too.
Insert Royal barge photo (I'll try later, wifi is very slow tonight).
They reminded me of the dragon boats we saw being carved in Haida Gwaii, BC just last summer.
After this visit we took one last boat ride on the canal, then transferred to our bus to get to the Royal Princess Hotel where we had a really good buffet lunch. We crossed paths with our friends at lunch who had begun their touring day at 6:10 AM so clearly Norwegian sends all of their tours here for lunch!
After lunch we loaded back onto the bus and only took 2 hours and 10 minutes to return to the port.
We had a delightful opportunity to shop at the port – this is really the first opportunity to spend an hour looking at souvenirs to take home! Supper and writing my blog and my day is done. It is 8:30 pm and that is a fun filled day of travel in the books. All is well.
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