Bangkok - Golden Palace, Huge Markets, Airport Entertainment

Our second (and last) full day in Bangkok was incredibly busy. We woke up after our eventful evening all slightly sluggish but ready to tackle the day. We had a plan to hit as many temples and palaces as possible in the morning before going to the weekend market at the north end of the city.

After checking out we headed out to tackle the Golden Palace and the Emerald Buddha. We were given conflicting information about the opening time of both places (this is apparently a tourist scam where cabbies will tell you a place is closed and then take you a million other places first) but decided to take our chances and go anyway. 

The day was incredibly hot and humid but we made it through - we wandered around the Golden Palace and enjoyed some coconut juice right from the coconut. 

After we'd had enough temples for the day we hailed a taxi and had them take us to the huge market at the north of the city. When I say huge, I mean huge. 1000 stalls huge - see above map for an idea. We decided to get food at the market and wander around and see what kind of fun things we could find. It was packed. Herds of people moving slowly, stopping, turning around, etc. I realized too late that I was just not in the mood to deal with huge crowds. We shopped for about 2 hours before calling it quits. Instead of hailing a cab we figured we would take the bus - I saw a bus that said it would go to our area of the city. It was a nice change - and only a few B!! 

Back in the old city we went to the hostel to drop off our stuff and then headed out for dinner. We decided to go to the same place we had gone to the first night. We hung out as long as we could before wandering around doing some last minute shopping before heading back to the hostel to grab our things. Our flight wasn't until early in the morning but we wouldn't be able to take the light rail early enough, so we'd opted to spend the night in the airport (also would make sleeping on the plane that much easier.). 

Back to the aiport we went, waving goodbye to Bangkok and Thailand.