Sunday, Nov 6 - Krabi - Bangkok

Early start to the Krabi Airport for our flight to Bangkok.  After our pickup at Bangkok airport we headed out to do some sightseeing.  There were some beautiful buildings...

interesting street vendors...

and we saw many tributes to the recently deceased king.

Our first stop was the Grand Palace (started in 1782 and added onto by successive kings over the years).  The Palace is actually a complex of many buildings, temples, pavilions and gardens.  The surrounding streets gave us some great sights to see plus views of the complex.

Oh how to describe the Grand Palace!!!  Beautiful! Beautiful! Beautiful!

One very large temple was covered with gold leaf.

There were many other temples and pavilions...

Some of the buildings had many towers in the distinctive Thai architectural style...

The amount of detail on the surfaces of the buildings was incredible.

Many buildings were covered with small glass tiles, making them sparkle and shimmer...

and colorful ceramic tiles laid out in intricate designs.

There were statues everywhere.  Some were covered in gold leaf...

while others were covered in the small colorful ceramic pieces.

Even when the surfaces were "unadorned" they still had interesting details.

We visited the Emerald Buddha Temple (it is actually made of green jade). 

Among the large and opulent temples there were occasionally smaller ones with just as much gold and details and some really lovely Buddhas.

The reclining Buddha in the Wat Pho Temple was huuuuuugh!  It is 151 feet (46 meters) long and 49 feet (15 meters) high and is gold plated.  That's  LOT of gold.
 

The soles of the feet are decorated with Mother of Pearl.  It was amazing.

The guards posted around the facility added an interesting touch.  Sort of London's Buckingham Palace guards but in white with a more tropical helmet.

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More photos of the Grand Palace
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The country is still in mourning for their recently deceased king and almost everyone was in black and they were out in force paying their respects to the king. 

The entire complex was breathtaking and in Mary’s opinion is second only to the Taj Mahal in India as the most beautiful place she has visited (maybe because there was so much gold and it sparkled so much).

We eventually headed to our hotel to settle in and then went across the street to a massive fashion mall for dinner at the food court.  The mall is different from our malls where there are many large and medium size stores.  This mall was packed with narrow walkways lined with mini-stores, similar in size to the stores we often saw at the various markets.  It was Sunday so the place was packed with shoppers.

In the evening we headed across town to the Asiatique night market on the Chao Phraya River.  Again, more shops with lots of tourist souvenirs but the river front was sort of pretty.

We then attended the Calypso Cabaret Show.  Not sure what either of us we were expecting but the show was unlike any shows we have seen in Asia.  There were several tributes to stars (Beyoncé, Elvis, etc), including some Asian stars we did not know.  There was great dancing, choreography, and costuming, but all of the music was prerecorded with the performers lip syncing (often poorly) to the lyrics.  

A note on the air conditioning in some of the hotel rooms.  Many seem to be off by several degrees to the high side, so if the thermostat says 24 C (75 F) the room is actually about 19 C (66 F).  But in the middle of the night, the temperature goes up to what is on the thermostat.