24th – Training to sleep

We left the hotel at 0830 after a breakfast that was mostly Thai food which gave us a selection of several dishes involving rice combined with a few western dishes. We had a local guide who led us through Chinatown and a morning market before reaching the river where we boarded a longboat and had a 1-hour tour on the river before reaching our destination, Wat Pho. 

Wat Arun Ratchawaram Ratchaworamawihan (or just Wat Arun).

Here our guide took us around for a few hours, and among some beautifully painted buildings we saw the Reclining Buddha; 15 meters tall and 46 meters long. Too bad the building, while intricately painted, was narrow with multiple columns making it impossible to get a good view of the entire statue. We had a walk around on the temple grounds where there were multiple Buddha statues and stupas.

When leaving some of us were referred to another guide who then spent a few hours taking us through the Royal Temple grounds. Some absolutely astonishing buildings with walls and statues covered in sparkling stone and gold (or probably “gold” in most cases). It was quite a sight. There is a quite strict dress code here; covered shoulders and ankles. We had been warned beforehand and were therefore prepared, but many tourists coming alone seemed to not be aware of this so as soon as they came inside the ground walls a guard had them go to a small clothing shop that had the required outfits.

The Royal Temple itself.

From there we looked for a place to have lunch. We ended up deciding going back to the hotel and the place we had dinner at yesterday (deemed safe by our guide) and while talking and looking at a map deciding on taxis a local guy said we would be idiots taking taxis there; instead he brought our attention to a bus coming around the corner at that very moment. There were no problem using that and it stopped close to the hotel – and instead of paying 100 baht for a taxi we each ended up paying 9 baht.

We had (late) lunch and returned to the hotel to relax and shower at the spa. At around 1830 we were all present and were quickly briefed before gathering our luggage and walking 5 minutes to the railway station where we located our train and sleeper car and boarded. On schedule, at 1935, the train departed northbound.

While it does look a bit narrow the seats/beds were wide enough to not be completely uncomfortable.

Soon after a staff member passed through and converted our seats to beds which sent some of us down to the cafeteria until we got kicked out around 2200 when they closed. Back in our bunks we did what the rest had already done – went to rest as much as possible, trying to ignore the very short beds.