Bangkok - Day 3

Our third day in Bangkok was a national holiday, so entrance to the Grand Palace was free! Though we had to let the King go first. Seemed like a fair trade.

The Grand palace complex is home to the Emerald Buddha, which is carved out of Jade, just to confuse you. Anyway, it's carved from a single piece of Jade, and having seen the huge reclining Buddha the day before I was expecting something pretty spectacular from the even more famous Emerald one. It was mildly disappointing, but sadly, because you can't take photos in the room, I do not have much evidence of this with which to convince you. It's about 45cm tall and, though it may well be a beautiful Jade statue, it's covered in different gold outfits most of th year and surrounded by much taller, much gaudier gold Buddhas that really distract from it.

In the afternoon we went to Chatachuk market, which was awesome. Everything you could think of was for sale. The food was great, lots of fresh cooked stuff that took just a couple of minutes to prepare before you were off on your way again. My favourite was the happy buns, which are little dumplings stuffed with meat or seafood that have smiley faces on them.