Hi guys, today I'll be sharing all about Wat Phra Kaew, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha in Bangkok, Thailand!
If you guys remember, last year I went on a trip to Bangkok, and the Grand Palace was one of the places I visited. (Click here to read my previous blog post).
I mentioned that because of time constraints, we couldn't really enter the palace interior. This time around, my friends and I actually put the Grand Palace on the top of our itinerary so that we could fully explore it + take lots of pictures.
Although I'll be sharing more about the trip on this post, you can click on the video below to watch our experience as well!
*Remember to like the video and to subscribe to my channel!*
We took a Grab from our Airbnb to the Grand Palace, and our driver dropped us at the Thawornwatthu Building.
From the Thawornwatthu Building, we made our way to the Viseschaisri Gate, the main gate into the palace grounds.
Just a quick note, The Grand Palace and the temples inside are considered the holiest grounds in Thailands, therefore a strict dress code is in place:
If the officers at the entrance do not allow you to go in, you can cross the road and look for the "Scarves/clothes for rent" sign. There you can rent pants, jackets, skirt, etc. According to Bo, the price should be less than THB200. The rental shops will also ask to hold on to your passport and return it to you once you return the rented clothes.
From the entrance we walked straight and took some pics at the courtyard:
Like I mentioned in my previous post, at this point you are still not required to pay anything. You can easily take pictures with the temples/spires in the background too!
Oh, I almost forgot to mention! For this trip, I brought along the Olympus OM-D EM-1 Mark II with an M.Zuiko 7-14mm wide lens, courtesy of Olympus Malaysia. If you guys want to take nice shots here, I recommend bringing a wide lens so that you can capture the sceneries & details on the palace well!
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| Look at that wide lens in action! |
Anyhoo, from the courtyard, we made our way to the ticketing counter:
Entrance for locals is free, while tourists need to pay THB500 each.
When you first enter, you'll be greeted by this amazing fresco on the wall of the palace:
And a few steps from that, you'll have a view of the entire Emerald Buddha Temple & the surrounding buildings:
The palace is open every day from 8.30am to 3.30am. We got there at around 11am, and as you can see the place was already teeming with people.
That doesn't mean that you can't get stunning pictures though! All it takes is patience and a good eye for composition. We managed to chance upon this corner where there weren't a lot of people, and the shot looks pretty good!
Further from that were these tiled structures leading into an inner chamber:
From there we proceeded to the Phra Siratana Chedi, the golden, bell-shaped structure which can be seen even from outside of the palace grounds. It is said to contain a relic, perhaps a bone or hair, from Gautama Buddha.
Beside the Phra Siratana Chedi was the Phra Wiharn Yod, a stunning structure with lots of multicolour detailing:
Here, the M.Zuiko wide lens came thru for us again as we managed to get this stunning shot!
If you're here to take shots for the gram (like us), we recommend colour blocking and wearing clothes with no or little patterns. this way, you don't get lost among the design of the structures inside the palace grounds.
After that was the main attraction: the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. Unfortunately, you're not allowed to take pictures inside, so here's us right outside it:
The detailing was crazy, I felt like I was in a fantasy world come to life. If you watched The Last Airbender, it reminded me of a more golden Fire Nation haha.
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| Shot by Anis |
After walking around some more, we proceeded to walk further and ended up near the Chakri Maha Prasat Hall, a hall built by King Rama V.
After we left The Grand Palace/Wat Phra Keaw, we walked about 10 mins and had our lunch at Tha Tian Market. There are several local food options there but we decided on Gloria Jean's Coffee because we needed a bathroom to change outfits in haha. I don't recommend their food, you can get better and cheaper stuff outside!
Aaaaand that's it for this post! After visiting Wat Phra Kaew we visited Wat Arun, and you can read more about that by clicking here.
Thank you guys so much for dropping by, see you in the next post!
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