This was our first vacation planning everything ourselves. I booked the flights, the hotels, the excursions, everything. It was overwhelming but it turned out pretty perfect. I researched for hours the best things to do in Bangkok and in the black hole of Pinterest found a blog that posted about booking with Tour with Tong and the different activities they got to do with them. It sounded perfect and easy to do everything there was to do in Bangkok with them so I booked it and I’m so glad I did!

Our first day in Bangkok we did a Temple Tour. They came and picked us up at the hotel and we met our tour guide Tui! She was absolutely the best. We got in a really nice big van and made our first stop: Wat Pho!

It was nice since we left so early that it wasn’t busy at all and we could walk around as we pleased. We saw a music class going on and another group of girls learning a dance. Lots of taking off shoes and Buddha statues in different positions. We were here for a good chunk of time and once we got back to the van they had cold water and wet towels for us. Which was SO nice to have, Tour with Tong definitely kept us hydrated.

After Wat Pho, we went to the Grand Palace and Emerald Buddha. This was way different than the first because it was packed! So many tourists, which makes sense since it’s the biggest and most famous Temple area of Thailand. The huge gold building was stunning!

Tui told us a lot of cool stuff about it all and we saw the laying Buddha. In there you could donate a few cents to get a bowl of coins to put in 118 bowls to have 118 good luck come to you. Sure we’ll take as much good luck as we can!

After leaving the Grand Palace we bought some mini pineapples on the street and drove to the river. We hopped on this small wobbly wooden boat and had a canal tour of Bangkok. It was amazing! The boat has a big motor on the back with a long pole to maneuver the propellor and even though the water was super choppy we barely felt it. We rode through the small canals and saw different areas of Bangkok for about an hour until we came back.

We asked Tui to take us to a good place on the street to eat and we had crispy pork, rice, and duck. I thought the duck was actually better than the pork! I told Ryan I was going to try my hardest to be more adventurous with the food since I’m a little picky when it comes to meat and seafood.

We drove by the Flower Market, since recently they changed it to where the shop owners have to keep their flowers inside the store instead of facing out front so it isn’t as cool to walk past. Our next stop was Wat Trimitr, or Golden Buddha. We climbed a couple tall steps to the top and saw a HUGE golden Buddha. Bruce and Ryan figured out that it was around $110 million of gold we saw. Woah. They were able to move it around by separating it into 9 pieces.

$110 Million worth of gold you see there. I’d like to see Ocean’s Eleven figure out a way to steal that!

Our last stop was the Marble Temple, the one I was most excited about from researching and seeing pictures. It is just stunning. And there were barely any people which was nice. It vaguely reminded me of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul for some reason. I think because of this photo I took and the layout of the surrounding area.

By the time we got back to the hotel it was 4:00, so we had an 8 hour day full of temple and Wat seeing! We were all exhausted but pretty amazed at all the beautiful structures we got to see. If you ever go to Bangkok, Tour with Tong is the way to go to have a nice and comfortable experience.

Tips for this tour:

• Book it on Sunday while everyone is home. We learned weekdays are horrible traffic and it would have been impossible to see all the temples we did in one day if we booked on a weekday.
• Wear flip-flops because you take your shoes off a LOT.
• Men and women have to have their knees and shoulders covered do dress accordingly. I had on a dress I thought worked but Tui told me it was still a bit too short. If you don’t wear modest clothing, they will give you a piece of cloth or pants to put on over your clothes so at least they don’t refuse you from entering.

Next trip with Tour with Tong: Elephants!