Sell's Soliloquy: Wat Arun [Touristy Stuff Pt. 3]

For the second consecutive day, I headed to the Grand Palace. This time, I had my bearings down; I grabbed the trains that took me to the water taxi, and I made it to the Grand Palace around 3pm. Well, of course, it had just closed (what freakin' hours do they keep here??!!). Ugh.

As my taxi was pulling up to the dock where I would exit and head to the Grand Palace, I noticed on the opposite side of the river, a pretty imposing temple cut into the sky. I found a ferry that would cross the river for 3 baht ($0.09).

I wasn't disappointed, Wat Arun, the Temple of the Dawn, was awesome. I had dressed for the Grand Palace (jeans and a long sleeved shirt) which served me well here as there was a dress code. I've also been lucky in that the weather really improved; the heat dissipated, and it was a cool 78 degrees, so I didn't have to worry about wandering around in jeans in the heat.

I liked the entrance sign; I think this means women with legs cannot enter ;p

Again, this place's scale is difficult to understand in the pictures. I climbed up as far as was allowed (had to use some incredibly steep and narrow stairs that were dicey to ascend while wearing boots), but that was really only about halfway up.

As another aside, at this point, I got really annoyed with all of the tourists. There were some monks that were scaling the structure, and I always stepped aside to let them pass. I tried to be as cognizant as possible that I was an interloper on their grounds. The amount of oblivious people was disheartening to me. Several bits of Euro trash would take pictures and laugh and basically hold up the lines while the monks were trying to get through. If this was an isolated event, I wouldn't have minded as much, but the annoying people were everywhere! Ugh!! I really wanted to throw these people off the side of the temple. Unfortunately, my sanity returned, and I didn't do it. Ok; I just had to get that off my chest. I feel better now...Off to the pictures! Enjoy!

[This is the tower that I scaled. It's hard to see, but towards the top, there was a samurai looking warrior standing on top of three elephants (he looks like he's standing in an open window). The elephants were probably 5 feet tall. This structure was huge.]

The next pictures are from the lower to mid-way point up of the structure.

[This was taken from halfway up the structure. Again, the detail is crazy. At every other level, they had carved these "guys" who were holding up the floor.]

I returned back down and snapped these...

Yet another temple beckoned me -- this one contained what I'm calling the "Cowboy Buddha." I was honored to remove my boots before entering this temple.