Actually the title is a little bit overstated, because we haven´t been in the northern part of Thailand yet. I mean the area between Bangkok and the Golden Triangle (the border to Laos and Myanmar -Burma-), with its regional capital Chiang Mai, and with Sukhothai, the cradle of Thailand. And who hasn´t seen that actually hasn´t seen Thailand.
Our tour was starting at Bangkok, the capital and king´s town, to HuaHin, the royal beach at the gulf of Thailand.
But only in Bangkok you are already overwhelmed of the sights: golden palaces and temples, colored roofs and fronts, Buddha statues of massive gold and finest jade.
But besides that Bangkok too is the lively traffic on the river ChaoPraya and in the Klongs, the inhabited channels; and not to forget helpless overloaded streets in the whole town, a permanent concert of horns and the stinking TukTuk´s, the tricycle taxi´s with their two-stroke engines.
Against that HuaHin, a former small fisher´s village wich the royal family had discovered first as a hunting-ground and later as recreational area, nowadays has got a touristic target too, but hasn´t lost its good nature yet.

Der royal palace and the Wat Phro Kaeo- temple, which is located directly besides that, form an enourmous area with the most beautiful buildings and statues. The huge, grim guardian statues are standing left and right of Wat Phra Kaeo´s entrance.

The main building of the royal palace

Guardian statues at Wat Phra Kaeo - temple

The Bot, the main building of Wat Phra Kaeo, which is studded with goldenen ornaments, shelters the emerald Buddha, the national sanctuary. Really it isn´t made of emerald but of jade. Photographing is strictly forbidden in the interior!

The golden Chedi shelters a Buddha relic

Golden temple of the emerald buddha

In Wat Pho, the biggest and oldest temple of Bangkok with its 95 Chedis and nearly 400 Buddha statues, the lying Buddha is seen. This statue has a lenght of 46 m and is gilded over and over.

Huge Chedis at Wat Pho - temple

The lying Buddha at Wat Pho

Wat Traimit - temple sheltered a big Buddha statue out of cement. When it was damaged during restaurations in the fifties, they recognized that there was a massive golden statue with a weight of 5 tons behind the cement. Today it counts to the greatest buddhistic treasures.

The temples of Wat Pho

Massive golden Buddha at Wat Traimit

The Klongs, the inhabited channels of Bangkok, have been a poor-quarter for a long time. Nowadays it´s getting modern again to live there. Most of these houses are reached only by boat. It´s a tradition to erect a small ghost- house on the sunny side of the premises to give a new home to the ghost of this land. It´s very urgent that never a shadow of the

Older houses at the Klongs with ghost-house

A new and richer house at the Klongs

building falls onto the ghost- house or the ghost would get angry. Living here at the Klongs takes place mainly on the water. The wellknown longboats represent the busses here.

Longboat in full speed

A swimming cook-shop on the Klong

Bangkok itself can not quite be called nice. Even the air isn´t the purest one. Due to the heavy traffic a permanent smog remains over the city.

View over the city from the hotel room

Traffic bustle with omnipresent TukTuk´s