Day 4, Tour 4. My last organized day tour in Bangkok and it’s “Experience Bangkok’s Temples & River of Kings”. I’ve patted myself on the back again for choosing my hotel as the ferry pier is adjacent to my hotel so it’s another quick trip upriver to join my tour.

A city of 12 million residents and a zillion tourists and the only other single lady on yesterday’s tour happened to be on this one too! Only 5 of us today so a nice small group. We started with another longboat tour of a canal on the left bank, not terribly interesting scenery but it’s a fun way to sightsee.

Next up was a visit to the Royal Palace. Originally built by King Rama the 1st in 1742 it was obviously added to over the decades and now consists of a multitude of temples, shrines, museums and other buildings (but the royals now live in the Summer Palace down the road).

Everything was so ornate, so close together, and so crowded that I stopped paying close attention to our guide and just took photos and tried not to get detached from the group.

Our guide treated us all to a refreshment in a beautifully air-conditioned cafe then we piled into a Tuk Tuk for literally 750 meters to our final stop: Wat Pho, Temple of the Reclining Buddha. Unbelievably crowded but the barking guards kept the line moving as we shuffled through the building to have a look.

The tour ended here so I hopped on another ferry downriver to IconSiam for another Pad Thai lunch from one of the 150 food stalls in the “sook” and had a gander at the 100’s of shops. Every luxury brand you can think of and then some and almost none had any shoppers in them! But, as you ascend up the 7 shopping levels the shops become more mainstream, ie affordable, and ergo much busier. I found some irresistibles at Uniglo, then hitched a ride back over to my hotel and called it a day.