Day 4

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It was another early start, this time to go and visit Parliament house. We enjoyed breakfast on the go again... pineapple and freshly squeezed orange juice, so cheap yet very tasty! We managed to navigate our way successfully and found Dusit zoo next door - according to my guide book "the best place to see the locals having fun" so we decided to go in! As it turns out it was only the locals having fun and not the animals since they were all in tiny enclosures.

We went into the grounds of Vimanmek, a large teak mansion, and somehow managed to avoid paying! We decided not to stay too long because we weren't entirely sure whether we were meant to be there! Rather than walking back we decided to get a boat. On the way to the jetty there were people selling bread crusts and when we reached the jetty itself we realised why - there were hundreds of huge fish and people were emptying the crusts into the water for them to gobble up!

Later that afternoon we met up with the group that we were going to spend the next 2weeks with. There was an interesting mix of people, not all gap year students like we had thought! There were 3 'lads' from london (Charlie, Chris and Terry - builders + plumbers), George from Shefield (on a gap year), Lisa from Cambridge (a physio), Steve and Jen (a couple of nutters from Manchester), Claudia and Stefan from Germany, and 2Irish couples (Mark and Liz, and Mark and Jackie). Our leader was called Sharn and she was from Australia. We all went out for dinner together at a traditional Thai restaurant recommended by Sharn. The food was really good!

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