Confessions of a Castleholic

Whenever I am on holiday, I usually try to avoid tour group tours as much as possible. I'm just not a fan of the "Get out of the bus and hurry, we only have 15 minutes at this place!" kind of travel. One of the tours during my recent travels in Thailand though did lead me to a royal palace I had never heard about and I can thus share with you today. North of Bangkok and close to the old capital of Ayutthaya lies Bang Pa-In Palace. Nestled away in a traditional Thai small town, the palace complex and former summer residence of the royal family of Siam and later Thailand boasts a surprising number of European-style looking buildings and some of the statues could have been taken straight from Versailles.  Bang Pa-In Palace owes is existence to King Prasat Thong, who ruled Siam between 1629 and 1656. Legend has it that he was an illegitimate son of King Ekathotsarot, who was shipwrecked on the island in the Chao Praya River and had a child by a local woman. Other sour...

If there is one must-see sight that no visit to Bangkok would be complete without, it's the dazzling and spectacular Grand Palace. Usually considered the city's most famous sight, it is one of those places where you do not know where to look first because there is so much to discover. With my known penchant for castles and palaces, it thus won't come as a surprise to you that I did make sure to visit the official residence of the King of Thailand when I travelled to Bangkok recently. Instead of one big single structure, the Grand Palace, or  Phra Borom Maha Ratcha Wang , actually is a building complex situated around open lawns, gardens and courtyards. It also includes the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, regarded as the most sacred Buddhist temple in all of Thailand. The history of the Grand Palace starts in 1782 when construction began on May 6 on the order of King Phutthayotfa Chulalok, also known as Rama I, the founder of the Chakri Dynasty that rules Thaila...