Wats, Wats, and more Wats

Lesson for the Day: A Wat is a Buddhist Temple.

Church of Santa Cruz - Catholic Church

Now that we have a better understanding of the public buses we decided to explore some main attractions in Bangkok on Monday. Our first stop was the Santa Cruz Catholic Church, it took some extra wandering but we found it. It was a beautiful church built in the 1900s on land given to the Portuguese community who helped Thailand in a war. Sadly the church was closed so we were unable to go inside; but it was still nice to see a this in the middle of all the Wats.

Sidewalk next to the Chao Phraya River running through Bangkok.

We then continued walking down the sidewalk next to the river where we stumbled upon numerous Wats and a river lock system. Our end point was Wat Arun - The Temple of Dawn. We were able to climb up the series of steep steps of this distinctive Wat and were rewarded with an amazing view of the city!

After much debate we decided not to continue up this ladder.

Wat Arun at night from across the River.

On top (ish) of Wat Arun.

After taking in these views and exploring these Wats we continued on down the river to catch a ferry across the river to Wat Pho. Wat Pho houses the huge reclining Buddha as well as numerous other Buddha statues. The Reclining Buddha was yet another great site to see - it is absolutely huge and all in a beautiful gold! We also wandered around the Wat grounds and found a temple with worshiping monks.
 

Flower Market

All Wat-ed out we decided to take to the streets and walk until we found a place to eat. We stumbled onto a massive flower market! At least 4 blocks of flower shops and all preparing for the celebration of the commemoration of Rama V's death the following day. All the flowers were gorgeous and smelled beautiful! It was in this scene we ran into a Pizza Hut! To feed our craving we had to stop in - and it was delicious!



With our bellies full and the sun gone we decided it was probably time to start finding our way back home. We wanted to take a river ferry all the way home - but we found out they had stopped running for the day. We had a vague idea of where we were and no idea where the nearest bus station was so we climbed in a taxi. The driver was very excited to speak English with us - this made for a very interesting ride home.

It was a great day of exploring! We look forward to many more adventures!

Yummy Yummy Pizza Hut!