As you’ll have seen by the limited posts since the previous Thailand story, I didn’t do an awful lot of photography related adventures for much of 2017. For the most part I spent the year working hard and saving away so that I could get back to Thailand for a third time and in November, I managed to do that once again.
This story picks up on the Sunday of the weekend I arrived. I’d spent the first day on a shoot with a model called Ploy (that post will come next) and day two I’d planned to see the one final temple on my Bangkok bucket list – Wat Arun (Temple of Dawn).
I’d first seen Wat Arun way back in 2007 on a boat trip we’d done on the Chao Phraya. I couldn’t remember the name of the temple, but I recall being told it was famous and I’d snapped a few shots from the water. We didn’t get to visit it though and those images had stuck with me over the years.
Fast forward to 2017 and I had decided I was finally going to get there. This time, no tour booked. I figured I’d do it myself. Fortunately Bangkok is pretty easy to travel around and as this was my third time there in as many years, I felt a lot more confident navigating the public transport. It felt good to get there on my own steam and the ferry ride to the temple had some great views. For anyone else who is thinking about visiting, I recommend the same thing. Get the BTS to Saphan Taksin and then the ferry to Wat Arun. Super simple, fast and cheap!
Wat Arun was stunnning – even prettier (and far larger) than I imagined and I spent a long time exploring. Again, another bonus of not being on a tour was that I could take as much time as I wanted.
On my way back I stopped off at Patpong as it was a place I’d heard quite a lot about and I was curious to see. It’s one of the world’s most famous red light districts and pretty much where it all started in Bangkok. It was afternoon when I stopped though – not night – I just wanted to check it out and snap a few photos (one of which ended up being featured on a Bangkok Instagram account). I wound up eating a beautiful Pad Thai from a street vendor – I love Thai food so much! I headed back to the hotel shortly after. I’ve been to Thailand 5 times in all now (at the time of writing this) and not once have seen Patpong at night. Perhaps I should put that on the to do list for next time!
