Wat Arun

Walking to the west from Wat Pho down what appears to be a dead-end street lined with hawkers and food stands over a tiny footbridge and through a small open-air market building, one comes to the edge of the Mae Nam Chao Phraya, the big river that runs through Bangkok. Across the river is another small but famous wat, Wat Arun, named after the Indian god of dawn, Aruna. A small rickety ferry will take you across for 3 baht, about a dime.

 
Wat Arun, taken from a ferry like the one in the foreground. From here the structure looks like granite, but when you get close to it you see that it is covered in intricate mosaic tiles.

 
Lonely Planet says "The 82m prang (Khmer-style tower) was constructed during the first half of the 19th century by Rama II and Rama III. The unique design elongates the typical Khmer prang into a distinctly Thai shape. Its brick core has a plaster covering embedded with a mosaic of broken, multihued Chinese porcelain, a common temple ornamentation in the early Ratanokosin period, when Chinese ships calling at Bangkok used tonnes of old porcelain as ballast."

 
The stairs are very steep. The upper parts are closed to the public.

 
Back down on the river, the waters are crowded with small boats, mostly private tourist boats like this one, that are chartered by tourists for more lengthy exploration of Bangkok's extensive river and canal system.

 
As we floated by this one, I notice that it was not a charter boat but rather a floating pub.