Bling in Bangkok

Building detail
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I met Rach at Bangkok airport, our flights coinciding almost perfectly, and headed to our guest house - arriving at 1am in the morning.

After a bit of a lie in the next morning it was time for some sight seeing.  We planned an ambitious first day of temple hopping, using the river as our transport for the day.

Pimp my palace

First stop off the tourist boat was the grand palace, built in the mid 1700's and until recently the home of the King.  After the more staid palaces in China this was a revelation of color - gold plated buildings, mosaics of mirrors and tiles, and brightly painted intricate patterns covered all the buildings in the palace.  We wandered around taking many photos, and having plenty of stops in the shade to rest as the heat is unbelievable after China.

Gold building in the palace complex
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After some lunch in a market, cooked in front of us and yummy, we headed to At Ph, the largest temple in Bangkok which houses a huge reclining Buddha.  These buildings were also very colourful, if less so than the palace.  By then we were pretty tired and pleased with ourselves for managing so much on our first day, so headed back to the airconditioned comfort of our hostel.

The last two days in Bangkok have been full of trips to markets and some malls when the heat got too much.  This is out of necessity, as my winter wardrobe was not getting me very far here. Today we went to a huge weekend market which is advertised as having 15000 stalls, our tired feet say that we saw them all.

Rach and reclining buddha
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The highlight of Bangkok, for Rach anyway, was our visit to Muay Thai boxing on Friday night.  We arrived and got cleverly upsold to the deluxe ringside seats, complete with a DVD and photo with the champ, very touristy and for a price that would last us a week here, but worth every cent according to Rach!  We could smell the liniment, see the blood, and hear the chanting of the supporters whenever their guy got a particularly good hit.  A bit disappointing in that most of the competitors seemed to still be of school age, but fun to try to pick the winner in the start and then try to guess who was winning, mostly based on who had the least blood or bruises.

Rach ringside waiting for some action
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Tomorrow we are heading to the beach yay!