Bangkok

Wat Arun/Temple of Dawn

Wat Pho/Temple of reclining Buddha

The Grand Palace

Fish spaaaargh

So we get to our place on Kao San Rd, right in the middle of things. After dumping our things, we head out for some food and shopping at the night market that goes on in this street. I get a kebab from some street guy and yuuu-um. We pretty much just wander round looking at everything and buying a few random things, and getting harrassed by guys making the popping sound with their mouth and tryna get us to go to a ping pong show. No thanks, I've only heard crap things from everyone I've talked to about them on this trip. One day. Instead I go get my feet eaten by fish. Yep, these little fish nibble on your dead skin and make it all smooth. I thinnk to haev any really amazing results you'd have to be in the water for 2 hours, and I only had 15 minutes. It was really odd. Kinda ticklish. Really ticklish at times. Very weird.

In the morning we have planned to do the walking tour from the Loneyly Planet, should be easy enough to follow. It. Is. So. Hot. Today. The sun is out in full force and I'd sweating like hell after about 3 minutes. There's these known scams from tuk-tuk drivers who say they'll take you round for 20baht and send you to jewel places, so we hadn't planned on getting one, but after probably no more than 2 kms, we get in one and go to 2 temples. Between the first and second the guys like right we are going to the jewel place yeah yeah and we tell him no no we don't wanna go there lets just go to this statue. We go have a look and when we come back he's gone. Which is funny and good cos we hadn't paid him yet. They obviously expect to get alot out of you at the market if he'll take us 2 places then drive away without being paid. Ah well. We head to Wat Arun, which is the Temple of Dawn. It's incredible. You have to wear long sleeves here and I brung a jersey with me, and maaaan it's horrible to put on. But anyway, We're walking up to it, and I'm thinking holy smokes can you walk up this thing it looks like stairs, and then I notice people up there. You can go up, but the steps are almost vertical. There's a hand rail tho, and enough people milling around, I'm sure if you fell you'd land on a squishy human pillow. It's all so intricate just wow.

 After that we get on the ferry and go across the river to Wat Pho. This is where the temple of the reclining Buddha is. And it is huuuuge. I think I assumed it was going to be long and a bit big, but it's massive. And golden.

Then we went to the Grand Palace. Boy was it GRAND. And sparkley. Temple after temple and so much glittering mosaic/carving/statue/wall/roof/everything. It was kinda annoying it was so hot, cos at the time I was getting too hot and tired and sweatville to be able to stand around going oooh aaah for long, but it really was...just grand as hell. We stopped for some coffee ice blocks (yuuuum and cooling) and then went and spent the rest of the day in MBK. It's quite funny how in Bangkok taxis can decide that nah don't wanna go there and drive off. Or if you ask for the metre to be on, cos you know it shouldn't be more than 100baht but they're trying to charge you 250 (feck all in the short but it adds up...) they just drive off too. Meh. Anyway, we spent forever in this mall, SO BIG, and didn't really buy anything. I could have spend 2 weeks just looking.

Then I met up with Nicholas Cage, we went and got a bite, talked about his awesome movies, he showed me pictures of his cat. No, obviously not really, but how funny it was old NC they had as the wax statue example. It hardly looks like him but hahaha, Nicholas Cage, what next.

We exhaustedly go back to our place, have a swim in the rooftop pool, go get the last (weep weep) Thai green curry I'll have here in the land of it, have a few beers, do last minute-gotta-get-rid-of-this-extra-baht shopping (sweet new t-shirt collection) and then get a last thai massage each.