Three nights in bangkok

Temple from river Taxi - Bangkok
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Sydney was great and we didn't really leave it much, just wandered around the markets and had picnics in the park overlooking the opera house and the habour bridge. Wandered round the Botanic Gardens which are home to HUNDREDS of fruit bats that all fly over the city at dusk - quite spooky!

Anyways, rested from probably one of our longest stays in any one place we decided we were ready to hit the road again on Sunday 20th and flew to  Bangkok. It was lucky we'd decided to change our flight or we'd have had no idea that Qantas don't actually do the flight we were booked on  anymore (cains-singapore -bangkok) so we would have arrived at Cairns to find out that we'd been re-routed to fly out of sydney direct to Bangkok!!!!!

Statues in the Grand Palace
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Arrived In Bangkok at around midnight and got taxi to hostel in Sukhumvit (eventually - seemed none of the taxi drivers wanted to go to our neck of the woods). The poor guy that did take us broke down about quarter of a ,ile from where we were staying and had to hand the fare over to another taxi driver to take us the rest of the way.

It's just ridiculously hot in Bamgkok - even at that time on the morning so we cchecked in and went to the 7 eleven to get pop. Wondered for a second why all the locals were shouting at us at the top of our road - til we realised that we'd just walked out into a freshly laid concrete pavement!!!!! Oooops! great way of settling in! apologised to everybody we saw for the next five minutes and then legged it sharpish.

Grand Palace
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As well as being ridiculously hot it's ridiculously cheap. Cans of pop are about 15p amd cigarettes are about 80p a packet!! And don't even get Dunc started on how good AND how cheap the food is. We bought 4 main courses and a drink each yesterday for 1 pound 60!!!!!

On monday we went to the Grand Palace - which was the palace built for King Rama 1 (i think). It's amazingly ornate and the home of the emerald buddha. You go into one of the temples to see it (take shoes off first). Even though we sat in there for about 15 mins Dunc didn't see the emerald buddha and I had to point it out through a window after we'd left!!!!!!

Grand palace
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Then we headed for Khoa San Road in Banglamphu. Got there by tuk-tuk - a sort of 3 wheeled motor bike contraption with a double seat on the back. The Tuk-tuk drivers are crazy and it's quite a scary ride, but good fun and about 30p whereever you go to. Khoa San Road is the main area where backpackers stay so lots of market stalls and bars etc (although the markets are nowhere near as good as the ones we went to the next day!) Still managed to buy some DVD's (LOTS of DVD's) couple of CD's and the obligatory Chang T-Shirt for Dunc. Particulalry proud of myself for managing to barter the price down instead of up like I did last time I was here - and managed to pay much less than the 10 poounds we bartered to for a T-shirt in Mexico........

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then headed towards home for more ridiculously cheap food. We stopped outside an expensive looking restaurant to check out a benchmark bolognaise price and there were 3 turtle's swimming in a little pool at the entrance. Dunc thought it was the best thing ever until a bit further up the road we "live" on (the busiest road EVER there are about 5 lanes of traffic and it NEVER stops) there was an elephant walking up the road with a shopping bag hung round it's neck - like it was the most natural thing in the world. VERY bizarre.

Us in the Garden @ Jim Thompson's House
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Tuesday we sorted out travel to Chiang Mai (northern Province) and somewhere to stay, AND a jungle trek which includes an elephant ride. and thenwent to Lumphini Park. Where there were alot of very crazy Thai people running round - don't know how they do itm it's too hot to walk far never mind run round a park for a couple of hours! In the Park we trook a Duck Pedlo out on the lake and saw lots of Turtles and about 5 Kimodo Dragons, Dunc was WELL excited.

Went to Jim Thompsons House. Jim Thompson was an American architect who settled in Thailand after he served here as a military officer. He had 6 Thai houses from Ayatthua (the old capital) dismantled and brought to Bangkok and re-assembled them as one house in the 1950's. The house is amazing and worth a visit. Jim Thompson mysteriously disappeared while on holiday with friends and no-one knows what happened - no blood or body was ever found.

Duck Pedalo
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then we hit the markets AGAIN. there are two fairly close to the park. The first one was Suan-Lum  night bazaar and the second in Patpong. Suan Lum was quite cool with loads of "designer" stalls and some quite different stuff. By this point I think Dunc has actually atarted to outshop me. We could be in real trouble in Thailand!!!! Patpong market is probably the best one we've been to so far, and if you do need a break from all that shopping there are plenty of people eager to get you into a ping-pong show!

Kimodo Dragon - Lumphini Park
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So now we've checked out of our hostel in Bangkok and are headed for Chang Mai on the overnight sleeper (about 14 hours on the train - cost about 800 baht \ 12 pounds each). And then we're off to the jungle for a few days where hopefully there won't be too many markets!!!!