Following are a few pictures of my time in Bangkok.
Wat Arun (วัดอรุณ)
Wat Kanlayanamit (วัดกัลยาณมิตร)
Santa Cruz Church (วัดซางตาครู้ส)
1,000 Drones Show
Following is the short that I uploaded to YouTube that is just a slide show of pictures I took during the show.
On Friday I rode to Bangkok and found a hotel for 2 nights. I made it down to an area in front of the Phra Phutthayotfa Bridge (สะพานพระพุทธยอดฟ้า) or what I know as Memorial Bridge. The drone shows would take place at the bridge with a 500 drone show on Friday and an 1,000 drone show on Saturday. I understood the light show would start at 7PM and the Drone shows was at 8:45.
Before going on my opinion of the light show and drone shows was disappointment and I would not recommend traveling to see this. If you happen to be in Bangkok when this is happening maybe check it out but a trip to Bangkok to see this was a bit silly of me.
I arrived a bit before 7 on Friday and was luck to find a place to sit with an OK view of the bridge. The light show on the bridge repeated every 30 minutes so I saw it 4 times before the drone show started. They had 2 screens at each end of the bridge that showed some pictures and the lights on the bridge flashed and changed colors. I think they usually also have fireworks but the Queen Mother recently past away so the fireworks were canceled this year.
I think I have been more impressed with some homes with Christmas lights that I have seen in the past.
The Friday 500 drone show was better than the light show but lasted less that 15 minutes and not what I expected. I know drone shows are supposed to be a replacement of firework shows but I think the fireworks are much better.
I had read that the light shows were about 5 different places in Bangkok so spent some of Saturday looking into the other places. I found one video of the light show at ICONSIAM (ไอคอนสยาม) and think it may be better than the one at Memorial Bridge light show but decided I saw enough of it on the video so didn't go there. I could not find videos on any of the others places so decied to check out the show at the Royal Thai Naval Institute (อาคารสำนักงานราชนาวิกสภา).
I watched the Royal Thai Naval Institute from the Tha Tian Pier (ท่าเรือท่าเตียน) and it was less impressive than the lights at Memorial Bridge. I did enjoy being at the Tha Tian Pier. It is the pier to catch the cross river ferry to go to Wat Arun and is where I took the picture at the top of this post.
I had moved to the end of the pier closest to the Royal Thai Naval Institute to try and see the show and had sat there and took some pictures of Wat Arun. I didn't know that the last ferry ran while I was sitting on the pier and they they had closed the enterance/exit. It was only closed by a twisted wire so once I found the exit didn't have a problem getting out but scared me for a minute.
I walked down towards the The Grand Palace (พระบรมมหาราชวัง) to see if I could get a picture of it lit up at night but never found a place with a good view. I walked back to the area called Yodpiman (ยอดพิมาน) where I had planned to watch the Saturday drone show but it was crowded and I could not find a spot with a view I liked. I decided to walk to the other side of the Memorial Bridge to try and get to the same places I had watched the Friday show. It was a bit of a fight to get through the crowd with all the people cramed on the bridge even thought the announcement said that being on the bridge was a bad place to see the show.
I made it to the place I wanted to be with about 5 minutes before the start of the show. It was more crowded than the Friday show but I was happy with my view of the drones. Even though the number of drones was doubled I did not find the show any more impressive.
This was a really long post to say sometimes playing tourist is great but sometime it is a bit disappoiting. At least I am not burning vacation time and it didn't cost that much so I still am lucky and just will not attend this festival next year.
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