Bangkok

The Krabi travel agent that was so helpful - worth her weight in gold!
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Krabi to Phuket to Bangkok

Krabi to Phuket - a sequence of river/ocean craft with fun (precarious) transfers on the water got us to Phuket - with plenty of evidence of the tsunami damage even after two years.  Pretty sobering when we realisek the density of population so close to the coastline in these parts.

Our accomm'n worked out fine with a local hotel and friendly tourist agent willing to assist tired travellers.  Resorted to mainstream pizza that night - safe and familiar after a big day of travel.

Mark enjoying "chinese donuts" with gaudy green and chocolate icing!
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The taxi connection the next morning actually arrived spot on time and we made the airport to check in with loads of other people on our first Air Asia run.  We travelled the leg to BKK successfully, no frills and no problems.

Massive shiny new airport in BKK which they are learning well how to operate - there is obviously plenty of scope for expansion and it's interesting to observe the forward-looking projection in the volume capacity of the airport.  We had an excellent air-cond coach transfer A$5 each, 45 minutes, to our hotel district (Kao San Road) and an easy walk (thank goodness a little cooler here in BKK) to New World Lodge Hotel, popular with the "Intrepid" travel company.  So plenty of other Aussies around to chat with at breakfast, this morning's couple from Brunswick.

This is the notorious haircut!
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Out on the street for lunch and early exploring Tue 23/1, and Jan scored the mother of all haircuts for 100BT ($3.60) - my regular hairdresser will be disgusted with me!! J - the good thing about a haircut is you know it's going to grow back = redeemable!  Explored historic fort and observed heaps of art students at work near the river, quite good skills on display.

Next day, Wed 24/1, we again loaded up with our "free/included" American breakfast - in these situations we don't bother with lunch, just keep the fluids up and look forward to a nice dinner.  2 kilos of laundry at $2 seems good value!! (on the street rather than through the hotel which wanted to charge $2 for 2 shirts).  We ventured out for our first tuk-tuk ride and did a series of amazing local temples.  Mark ordered a suit (trousers which he hope he'll still fit into by the end of the trip!) and a visit to the Grand Palace - absolutely stunning architecture and very moving for us to observe the great devotion of so many Buddhist people sincerely engaging their god in prayer - often with an agenda of connecting with ancestors.  Maybe this is not surprising given that the larger temples incorporate their own crematorium.  We were able to see significant preparations for funerals coming up, flowers, vast arrangements, etc.

Floral tributes at the crematorium section of the temple
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Late day and we walked a distance and then took a river ferry to the "west" side station to find out about train bookings to Kanchanaburi (River Kwai) and Chiang Mai (north Thailand).  Lonely Planet is correct in stating there are 120,000+ stray dogs in BKK - we saw most of them!!  And the cats... plenty of those too.

Home to collect laundry and at last we know how they manage to keep everyone's clothes TOGETHER and not get lost - someone sits and sews them altogether by hand - a little knot here and there through the label or facing!!  Amazing.  Maybe there's a solution for those lost socks??!

Alex the tuk-tuk driver was great
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Home for reprieve before we got adventurous enough to try local hawker food just a block from the hotel.  We paid total $6.12 for more food than we could manage and drinks.  Chicken/cashews and green Thai curry veggies...yumm.

Tomorrow on early morning train to Kanchanaburi for two nights - then train back to BKK and overnight train then onto Chiang Mai - 2nd class "upper berth" sleepers, could be interesting... oh yes, forgot to mention "with fan" provided!

At this point Jan more convinced than ever that big cities are not for her - 1M Melbourne okay, 6M Bangkok a bit hard to handle... bring on the fresher air/countryside!

Grand Palace - impressive architecture and crowds galore
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Delighted to hear about some good local rainfall Melbourne/Faraday and with the Aussie Open coming to a climax we've enjoyed plenty of TV updates of Aussie Kim and Federer etc.