Canal tour in Bangkok

On the second day of our trip in Bangkok, E and I took a canal tour in Bangkok.  It was through Pandan Tour Co. It was amazing.  It was a full day tour, but definitely not too long or too short.  We had, essentially, a private tour.  E and I had a guide, and the other woman who joined our tour had her own guide.  The guides spoke excellent English, so we actually were laughing/joking around with them, which made the experience even more fun.

So, this was the first real "bathroom" experience for me.  The temples we had visited the day prior had beautiful bathrooms.  Unfortunately, as the trip went on, this bathroom actually started to look "nice". :)  This was in a school that was near our loading station for the boat.  

The first part of our tour was visiting more temples.  This particular temple was filled with teak wood.  It was beautiful.  

This is our guide, Marissa, explaining the murals on the wall.

I wish I could remember the names of these temples.  But, this was another temple we visited, very near the teak temple.  It took 11 years to build.  Each of the doors leading into the building cost over $16,000,000.  Yes.  Million.

Crazy expensive door.

This temple was amazing in a completely different way than the teak temple.  The floors are made from marble, each of the pillars was hand carved wood and were all different.  

 The stairs were marble, too.  Four flights of them. 

 You have to take your shoes off everywhere.  It took some getting used to.

 This Buddha was life size and solid gold.

 E and I with our fellow tourist, Lynette.  She was fun to get to know.  She definitely added to our trip experience.

Marissa, our guide, and our boat driver.

It was heart breaking to see how some of the people were living.  Their houses literally collapsing into the river.  But, at the same time, they were so happy and content.  It made me reevaluate what's important.

 The colors were so vibrant everywhere.  

 We got off the boat again and walked to a temple in the forest, aptly named, "the forest temple."  On our way there, we saw this house boat.

 Walking along the canal to the forest temple. 

 This is part of the forest temple.  I think this was my favorite temple we visited, simply because of its innate beauty from nature, versus the man made beauty. 

The canals were so dirty.  Its hard to really describe how dirty they were.  Our driver had to stop several times to pull trash off the propeller.  

One of our favorite parts of the tour was the floating market.  We were the only tourists in the entire market (which was massive!)  It was neat to see how locals shop/eat/sell on the canal. 

 Our guides helped us order several things and we all shared.  Everything we had was delicious!

This was at the orchid farm.  Marissa was teasing me after I told her I struggle with keeping my one orchid alive, much less thousands. 

The last stop was at a place called the "artist house".  It featured different artists, plays, puppet shows, etc.  Likely my least favorite part of our tour, simply because we couldn't understand the puppet show enough to get the "jokes". :)  But, the snacks we had were tasty (I had my first Thai iced coffee here and fell in love.)