I love that song by Murray Head ‘One night in Bangkok’. Well here we are touring Bangkok! We had the most amazing day today touring around Bangkok with a pre-arranged private tour with Mandy. We had booked this tour based on recommendations from Trip Advisor, and Mandy’s tour was absolutely AMAZING! I’ll give her a shout out if you are looking for a great tour of Bangkok: Mandys Smile Tours – highly recommended by us!
We started our first full day in Bangkok with a nice buffet breakfast in the 29th floor Executive Lounge, right across the hall from our suite. The Executive Lounge at the Conrad Bangkok is huge and well staffed. There were many hot and cold selections to choose from, and like our room, the view of the sprawling city is amazing!
Mandy met us promptly at 9am at our Conrad Hotel Bangkok, and showed us to our private van with personal and professional driver. We were truly treated like VIP’s and family with the warm Thai hospitality that made for such a gracious experience.We then met our tour guide Mandy, and along with a driver we began our full day private tour of Bangkok promptly at 9am.
I’m posting photos below from the day’s trip below. Our full day tour included a fun ‘Venice-style’ boat ride thru a man-made canal connecting to the main river. We even went thru a set of locks.
We later toured the Flower market and were amazed at the hundreds of flower stands with inexpensive flowers. In the Buddhist religion, decorations of flowers are very important, both as displays at homes, on vehicles, boats etc, and left at Temples and Buddha sites. The flower market was a vibrant place filled with floral decorations of all sizes and shapes, and coupled with the Chinese New Year and upcoming Valentines Day, it was such a colorful site to see.
We then stopped for lunch at an authentic Thai restaurant, trying several different dishes ‘family style’; that is sharing each other with the table.
After lunch we toured the busy, busy, busy Grand Palace and grounds. This 60 acre complex is one of the most toured attractions in the world, and we could see why with both its uniqueness as well as the thousands of other tourists visiting as well. The ornate buildings, sculptures, statues of Buddha, etc offered countless opportunities for taking photos, which Mandy readily encouraged as well as assisted us, knowing just where the best views were for each photo.
Next was the reclining Buddha:
We then had a sit down session in a beautiful Temple (remembering to take off our shoes as at the other Temples and not pointing the soles of our feet to Buddha), where Mandy explained the basis for the Buddhist religion consisting of several emotions: Anger, Greed, Hatred, and Fear, Joy and Pride. This perhaps explains why the Thai people are so gentle in nature, as they are slow to anger, and quite respective to others.
We finished up the day with a ‘hike’ up some 300 steps to the scenic GoldenMount.
It was quite a full day when we got back to our hotel around 5pm, and our Fitbit watches confirmed we went well over our 10,000 steps for the day.
We arrived back at the hotel in time for the evening snacks and drinks in the hotel’s Executive Lounge. The lounge was quite busy, but we got a nice table in an alcove towards the back, with window views overlooking the city. Beer, wine, bottled water and sodas are complimentary from 5:30 – 7:30, and we had an enjoyable time chatting with other fellow Americans we met in the lounge.
as we were tired from the busy day of touring, we had dinner in the hotel on the second floor, one of several restaurants at the Conrad. We had a nice buffet dinner, which had a nice selection of local and westernized dishes, i.e. Steak!
And by the time dinner was done, it was time for a nice bath in the oversized tub before heading to bed.
Tomorrow is another day and another tour! Nightie, night!