In truth, The Grand Palace is a bit overwhelming.
It’s just so vast, and so intricate, and so much. One staggering building has another nestling right next to it, and behind them, well, there’s a couple more. Your reel, and reel, and reel again. You get a bit lost. And you get hot and bothered. And everywhere, there are just so many people. “Think what it would have been like if we’d actually managed to get in yesterday,” I said to Virle. “Don’t even go there,” she replied.
One blog we consulted said you could ‘do it’ in an hour, though you should really allow two. We lasted almost three before succumbing to sheer stupefied overload and the heat, the heat, the heat. And the bleedin’ tourists, but mostly the heat. Without the heat, and the gaggles of Thais, Koreans, Japanese and Chinese all taking photos of each other, you could easily spend a day there and you’d barely have scratched the surface. Even when we left, I’m pretty sure there were whole significant buildings we hadn’t got to. And as for the extensive and reportedly beautiful gardens, we never got so much as a sniff.
Everywhere you look is gold. And dazzling colour, in staggering profusion. And truly exquisite craftsmanship. And there’s just so much of it. “Putting the artistry to one side,” I said to V, the sheer man hours involved must have been mind-boggling.”
When we eventually stumbled out into the stupefying noontime sun, we briefly considered heading for the reclining Buddha, which was not that far away, but I pleaded cultural and general overload, so instead we caught the river bus back, had a lovely green curry in the market (80 baht all in) and headed back here for a bit of chilltime during the afternoon heat (34 degrees; ‘feels like’ 41) before heading out to Chinatown this evening.