Trip Day 5--The Grand Palace

We had breakfast at about 7-7:30.  After that, we took walk less than 5 minutes to the MRT and rode less than 15 minutes to the Central Pier.  Every 1/2 hour you can board to ride a "water taxi" to the other piers.  We needed Pier 9 for Wat Phookeow which took maybe 45 minutes.  Total cost of Jeremy, Sarah, Allison and Madison (Parker and McKenna were free) was 60 baht (or 8 USD).  One of the great reasons to do this, is that you pass Wat Arun, on the other side of the river from the Grand Palace and Central Pier, on the way.  I took a picture of the popular/famous Blue Elephant Cooking School to learn local cooking.  Upon exiting the water taxi, it is a straight shot walk through the shops in the pier and down the street to the main entrance of the Grand Palace.  The kids and I rented sarongs from the official entrance counter (before the ticketing office) while Jeremy (because he is a larger build than most typical Malaysians, Chinese, Indonesians...etc.) rented his pants from one of the street vendors.  I believe he paid to purchase it and then when he was done he returned it and received everything but the rental price back.  On another note, before we'd left on the trip, I'd heard a few comments from friends about how at the entrances, locals would try to tell you that the hours to the Palace were opening later that day and that they'd charge you a fee to take you other places until that time.  This is generally a hoax in which to make money.  So, when we had some locals telling us that the Palace was completely closed (due to a special holiday) that day, I had some red flags going off in my head.  We had no way to verify this, nor come back another time, so we decided to proceed through the gate/entrance anyways.  At the main gate, none of the guards ended up stopping us.

 On our way back to the hotel, we exited the Grand Palace entrance.  There were men "selling" private rides on their longtail boats back to anywhere you wanted to go.  We talked one man down from 1200 baht to 800 baht for the six of us.  It was a fun ride for the kids, but a little choppy on the waves.  We got a few little sprays.  While it was much more expensive than the public water taxi earlier, we did make better time back for our flight out that afternoon.

 If we'd planned to stay in Bangkok longer, we probably would have gone to the famous floating market (though it's a good 2 hours away), climbed Wat Arun, shopped Asiatique, maybe checked out Bangkok Doll factory, and visited __________ Mall.