Just Around Spooky Alley: The Grand Palace, The Emerald Buddha and The Reclining Buddha (our second visit)

Like I said, I have a lot to catch up on and lots of stories to shares about our goings and comings. I even have one or two from when my mom was here.

While Stephanie was here, we went for a second visit to the Grand Palace, The Emerald Buddha and The Reclining Buddha. Our driver this time was Mr. Kitty (picture below). Mr. Kitty is the driver the Embassy uses. He is the one that employs Nouil (you may remember him as tante Nouil), the driver that took us on our first visit to the above places.

We soon found out the following about Mr. Kitty: he loves loves loves Celine Dion (Michael had to endure 2 hours of her on his way to pick up Stephanie from the airport with Mr. Kitty when she arrived), he sings, he plays the harmonica, and he does magic. Basically, Mr. Kitty loves life it seems. We got stuck in 1.5 hours traffic on our way to the Grand Palace and on our way back and we were so lucky to be stuck in a cab with Mr. Kitty because we, and Cristiano, were well entertained. At first he had a DVD of children music playing for Cristiano, then he did some magic for us, and then he played a DVD of a Celine Dion concert. The harmonica came out when the kids would cry. As you can probably tell, Mr. Kitty is a talented person and it is even more impressive that he does all this while swerving through traffic and cutting people off! A very entertaining ride indeed. I couldn't help but sing along with Celine that he gave me my own DVD to take home. LOL...

A view from our cab of the traffic we were stuck in

The boys slept for part of the ride, Thank God

Back to our visit. The Grand Palace is one of my favourite places in town so I was happy to be back. We were happy to get a closer look at the Emerald Buddha because last time as I said in my previous post, there was an event and we couldn't go in the temple. We took turns going in to see the Emerald Buddha so that someone could stay with the stroller. Stephanie and I stayed with Adriano while Michael and Cristiano went in. Adriano was noticed as usual. Not sure if I did tell you, but the boys are super stars in Bangkok. Adriano because he is blond and cute and Cristiano because he has cute curly hair and is usually very entertaining when we are out and about. Apparently Thai people like boys and they love curly hair. So anyway, we are standing outside the temple and all of a sudden two ladies start talking to Adriano. I of course had no idea what they were saying and neither did he, poor guy, but they were in his face. Up close and personal for sure. The funny thing is that they seriously stayed around talking among themselves and with him for at least five minutes. Then they called over some of their friends and now he had a bigger crowd. Stephanie commented that I should start charging people for starring and touching my children. Lol. When Cristiano joined us the attention was turned to him and then they began what seemed to be a discussion on who the kids resembled and I think they concluded that Cristiano looks like me and Adriano looks like Michael. We walked away, and they followed us for a bit still talking about the kids. On our way out of the temple, the boys had another crowd of people follow them. This time they absolutely wanted to take pictures of them so one lady followed Michael, who was carrying Adriano, trying to take a picture with him. Her friend was taking the shot! This is only one example of what we go through almost daily. I'm starting to worry that all the attention will get to the kids head and they will expect it when we return to Canada.

The boots of soldiers visiting the temple. I wish I was able to catch a picture of them.

We then visited the Reclining Buddha. For this part of the visit, Mr. Kitty joined us and him and Cristiano became best friends. Cristiano loved walking around the grounds with him while Mr. Kitty shared a few details about the grounds. For example, apparently, this was where the traditional Thai massage was taught. Then Mr. Kitty told us about the different Buddhas around the temple grounds. There is a Buddha for every day of the week. Cristiano is born on a Saturday, so he took us to the Saturday Buddha. Here is the cutest part. When we arrived to that temple, Cristiano, without us saying anything to us, sits outside of the temple, takes his shoes off and then goes in. We were all shocked. We couldn`t believe that he remembered it was important to take your shoes off before going in the temples. We had only been a couple of times and no one had done it at that particular one in front of him. Mr. Kitty was so impressed and so were we.