Well, what a weekend!
We arrived safely and without hitch on Sunday afternoon. The hotel is exactly like it was shown on the website, in fact the girls are rather pleased with my choice! Our room is fab, we have a balcony overlooking the Chao Phraya river, and the water taxi stops right behind the hotel restaurant!
Yesterday, we had a wander around the Khao San Road area, which is a mere 5 minute walk away. I had stir-fried vegetables and rice, and it was absolutely delicious - that and a bottle of Coke for only GBP 1.28! (I must re-learn how to write the pound sign again, without a pound sign key!!)
Unfortunately, I didn't get a lot of sleep last night due to my ever-active brain whizzing over the ridiculous size and weight of my backpack!!! I am so going to jettison most of it back home as soon as I locate a post office!!! I got up at 6am today (not good for the jetlag, but what the hell) and went off to find my first international geocache!
Five Metre Smile
We took a dip in the rooftop pool before breakfast, then headed over to Wat Pho, the temple that houses the huge, golden, reclining Buddha and it was stunning! So far, there has been glorious sunshine and no rain!!. Then we fell into the textbook trap of getting taken on a tuk-tuk tour of the city...
I know this one like the back of my hand and I was very adamant to ignore the first guy to assure us that "today is Buddhist holiday, temple closed, you no go, you take tuk-tuk to free Buddha, tallest in Bangkok!" - I've read all about this, telling you that things are closed so they can drive you to gem shops/clothes shops/tourist info centres.
But around lunchtime when an official at the Grand Palace told us it was closed until 2pm as the locals were praying, we were quickly and inexplicably loaded into 2 tuk-tuks and set off for "5 different other Buddhas" - here's the summary in short:
1 Buddha
1 T.I. shop
1 jewellery store ("you help me, you help me get gasoline coupon!!")
1 T.I. shop
1 tailors
We finally reached the Grand Palace at 3pm. Good job really as it shut at half past, and what do you know, it is open every day from 9am!!! They saw us coming at 100 paces I think! When we re-read the Rough Guide later on, it said "beware of people posing as officials outside palaces" - well, we won't fall for that old chestnut a second time!
Anyway, the Grand Palace was fantastic, it was a perfect photo op, with a glorious blue sky with billowing white clouds behind the golden spires - I'll get some photos on here as soon as I work out how to do it! We saw the revered Emerald Buddha, very small in reality, but absolutely beautiful and so awe-inspiring.
It was then time for a water taxi back to the hotel, a quick bite to eat of Thai noodles, which are like nothing I've ever seen before, I thought it was squid at first, but they were very tasty.
I was so excited about my photos, that I tried to back them up onto my iPod. It didn't work and now I can't even get it to play music... I haven't cried yet (which is a miracle in itself) but I just hope I can find an Apple dealer tomorrow with magic powers. Otherwise I am going to be carrying an expensive brick around for the next 12 months!
Anyway, moving on... tomorrow, we are going to book a train ticket to Ayutthaya, where you can hire bikes and cycle around Thailand's original 600 year old capital. From there it wil be an overnight train journey (with AC and beds) up to Chiang Mai for elephant rides, trekking, Thai cookery classes and to apply for yet more visas, this time for Vietnam!
Yes, the plan is to add Laos and Vietnam to our itinerary before heading into Cambodia from Phnom Penh, then back to Bangkok! From there we will head to the Thai islands, hopefully Ko Tao, to learn how to scuba dive. The onto Malaysia and Indonesia to hit Bali by 13th December!
Phew! Watch this space...
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