Grand Palace; or, I'm too sexy for my ticket

The Grand Palace is impressive. That's certainly true. The one mark against it for us as visitors is that it's so difficult to get in - we saw tens of tourists being turned away for unsuitable dress; this is totally understandable when there's a temple involved and people are wearing hot pants, but people wearing white were being refused on the grounds that it could be see-through, even when it clearly wasn't, and anyone with the tiniest bit of ankle peeking through was refused entry. Despite having visited temples in considerately conservative dress all day, Tallulah was turned away due to her loose morals and three-quarter-length trousers and instead of enduring multiple trips to the sarong rental place she decided to donate her ticket to a delighted passing Mexican.

What it is, of course, is a measure of how much the Thais revere their monarchy, and their current king especially, who after 66 years on the throne is the longest-reigning monarch in the world. We went to the mind-blowingly elaborate show Siam Niramit, which was great fun (and where we met our first elephant) and before the performance we were asked to stand for the national anthem. We went to the cinema in the ultra-modern Siam Paragon shopping centre and we stood for the national anthem before the film. In both At 6pm in many public places the national anthem is played and people stand respectfully. However, there is also a great mutual affection between people and king, with pictures lovingly displayed all over Thailand in beautiful frames with flowers and shiny things. We saw these as we took the train down through a number of towns and, without fail, at some point we would pass at least one huge portrait of the king with "LONG LIVE THE KING" written below in Thai and, often, in English. In our tour minibus, above the driver's head where we have often seen Buddha images displayed, our driver had a faded and well-worn portrait of the king.

The most impressive part of the complex, in my opinion, is the area around the Temple of the Emerald Buddha (actually jade - it was thought to be emerald when its longstanding stucco coating chipped away and in a fit of excitement someone mistook the green stuff for the luxury option), and thankfully Tallulah got a decent view of these bits from the grand entrance where she sat writing postcards while Trixie did a swift tour of the interior.

The downside of being suitably dressed is that one is inclined to swelter in the July heat of Bangkok, so the tour also involved the consumption of an entire litre of water purchased just outside.

Gorgeous!