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Today we have been to the Grand Palaces and Wat Phra Kaew. These building were nothing like I have ever seen before. Wat Phra Kaew is also known as the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. Inside is a small sculpture of Buddha carved from jade, this is a sacred to Buddhists. The temple was very grand and adorned with gold and mosaic of different colours. The whole area had many different royal buildings, and they all looked amazing covered in gold and different types of stone. We will get the pics on the site asap as its hard to describe exactly what they looked like. We also saw The Borom Phiaman Mansion which serves as a residence for Heads of state and guests of the King. We saw lots of huge gold thrones all intricately carved. We then headed over to Silom area which is the financial area and has huge skyscrapers and again lots of shops but also Lumphini park, where we were heading. It was a nice break from the crazy streets. We found some very large and strange lizards roaming around the park and swimming in the lake, not quite sure what they were!! A little bit of advice for anyone travelling here, lots of people always come up to you and ask "where are you going?" and you know they are trying to get you into some shop, or in a Tuk Tuk, but we have found that there are also a lot of well dressed women and men who you might initially trust, come up to you and "try and help" but I have found that they too are just trying to get you into some kind of shop or business so just move on. We have also had people tell us that whole areas are "shut for the afternoon" when we are heading in that direction and tell us "but there are shops this way" again its rubbish so just ignore them. We have been travelling on the Skytrain, we saw a sign on the train that said "please give up this seat to monks"! 95 % of the country are Buddhist and a small percent are Muslim. All Buddhists here are expected to become a monk at some point in their life usually in their twenties and they can be a monk for just a week if they want to. I have also seen some children that were monks. Women can become Buddhist nuns they wear white and have shaved heads.
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