Shall We Dance? Dreams of Grandeur: Grand Palace



The Grand Palace et cetera, et cetera, et cetera!

After arriving at the Grand Palace, my Dad and I do something we normally never do: we PAID to have a tour guide. On every family vacation, we would bring along a trusty guide book (Rick Steve’s of course, our favorite!) and do a “Pritchard Self-Guided Tour.” But our friends highly suggested a tour guide and for about $10, you could rent a great English-speaking tour guide, to take you around the temples and palaces for about two hours. So we found Sunny – an 80 year old Thai man who spoke great English, idolized Mick Jagger, and knew enough history about the palace I wondered if he was around at the time it was built (in 1782).

Phra Siratana Chedi

Sunny told us all about the various temples, towers, and history behind this spectacular place. My Dad and I commented to one another that we both have seen some pretty awesome “castles” (The Alhambra in Grenada and Buckingham Palace in London just to name a few) but none could match to the impressive usage of gold and prestige like this one. Most castles tend to over-do themselves to the point where it is dripping in riches, overwhelming and not attractive – however, the way the Thais built these monuments and the Grand Palace is truly impressive. The usage of gold is not overdone, but gorgeous, and the amount of detail is unbelievable.

Not too get all tour-booky on you, but the Grand Palace consists of an area of 218,000 square meters (2,346,532 square feet) and was constructed in 1782 – so this stuff has been around for a while and still manages to sparkle!

My favorite, of course, were the Thai Guardian Demons, which I loved from The King and I, one of my favorite musicals of all time. They were exactly like I pictured them, but ten-times bigger and I just couldn’t help but smile and have my first reality check:

Wow, I’m REALLY here, this is another world.