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Today was my 3rd and final day in Bangkok. I had decided to go and see the Wat Phra Kaew and the Grand Palace with 3 girls from my tour the night before so after breakfast we wandered out for a bit of an exploration. We finally arrived there having got told by several touts along the way that it was closed for the day and we should go and visit some of the smaller temples instead. These we ignored as they are just ripping tourists off. Once inside the palace grounds, we managed to haggle for a guide, a very charming Thai guide called Yat. It must have been such an effort for him trying to speak about Thai history in English, poor thing! The Wat Phra Kaew is called the Temple of the Emerald Buddha in English and houses, as the name suggests, the Emerald Buddha, which is clothed in different clothes for each season by the King himself. This diminuitive statue is extremely beautiful and the whole temple is completely adorned in gold and jewellery. The expense of building the whole site must have been massive. Around the palace there are lots of statues of funny looking monkeys, the sign of healing, and the demons as well as the murals of Ramakian, illustrating the Indian epic Ramayana, in which King Rama defeats the Demon with the help of the White Monkey. The palace of the King itself is enormous but is now no longer inhabited, only being used for ceremonies and state visits. While we were there we kept seeing hoards of Thai people dressed in black who had been coming every day for the past 8 months to honour the dead sister of the King, who is due to be cremated on November 5th!!!!! The whole place is guarded by the palace guards, but compared to the English guards, they don't seem to have a lot of discipline. Their changing of the guards seemed very haphazard and one couldnt stop smiling when having his photo taken. Am about to go and catch the train to Khao San National Park, and although I've enjoyed my time in Bangkok, I'm really looking forward to seeing something completely different and trying my hand at elephant riding
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