From the Wat Pho we headed over to catch a ferry ride to take us across the river over to the Wat Arun which is the Temple of Dawn. This was tripadvisors #1 rated temple and #2 rated activity for Bangkok we were excited to see it!
We found some fun fruits on our way over. Mangosteens, dragon fruit and Durian which look like Jack fruit, but taste nothing like it.
.05 cent rides on the ferry across the river! Sweet!
And here she is. The temple of Dawn. The famous Wat Arun.
Now at first glance this temple may not look like much compared to the other beautiful temples you’ve seen (and we felt the same way at first), but this temple does have a few pretty impressive qualities about it. 1) You can climb it – which with 3 crazy boys was for sure a bonus! 2) If you look closely in the following pictures you will see that this temple is decorated almost completely in China plates! CHINA PLATES people. That alone makes this temple pretty special seeing as it is a ginormous temple with 4 sides, and probably took all the plates of China to make it! Just check out the detailed work with the plates too. Wow!
And it did have some very pretty views of the city.
To get to the top though you have to go up some of the steepest stairs imaginable. I have pretty long legs, but it still felt like 3 normal stairs combined into one big giant step on this temple. Even my spidery legs struggled getting up them, and Adalynn – well the steps were as tall as she was, so she got to be carried! 🙂 Lucky girl! You can tell from the below picture that it was a tough climb for everyone! Definitely not for the faint of heart.
Can you tell just how steep they were from this picture? The kids actually struggled more going down than up because they were so worried they’d fall.
On our way into the temple we noticed a little shop that had Thai dress up clothes that you could “rent” and take pictures with for around $3 a person. Adam wasn’t really interested in putting more hot clothes on in already dreadfully hot temperatures, but I just couldn’t pass it up! The dresses just looked so fun!
And check out those fingernails!
I’m kind of wishing now that we’d forked out $20 bucks and all got dressed up!
Then after Wat Arun and Ice cream cones all around, we decided to head back to our apartment for some much needed naps and R&R. Adam was genius and figured out a way for us to take a ferry all the way back to our apartment instead of a tuk tuk. We had had some issues just GETTING to the temples in the first place in the morning on tuk tuks when we got kicked out TWICE because we didn’t want to go via water tour (apparently the drivers get a kick back). But we finally found a driver to take us when we agreed to go see his sponsors tourist shop so that he could earn a gas certificate. So we stopped by a diamond, and precious gems store to look at all their bling for 10 minutes before heading to the temples. A family has to do what a family has to do to save a few bucks! ha ha.
Home at last! We were all very excited to see the State Tower and know that beds and A/C were awaiting us! We sure had a fun day in Bangkok though and felt good knowing we’d gotten to see most of the top rated attractions! Whew! What a day!
