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Published: September 25th 2007
Day 163
With not a bad night's sleep on the train we were handed some breakfast and a coffee to start the day and pulled in to Bangkok station just after 9am. A tuktuk took us to My House guest house that Paul (whom we'd met in China) had recommended. We've been following the tips that he noted in our Lonely Planet since we left him and they've been invaluable - cheers Paul!
After settling in we unloaded our packs to dig out all of the souvenirs/gifts etc. that we'd bought since the last time we'd sent a box home. It was a lot! Picking up our packs next time we move on will be so much easier! A short (and pricey) trip to the post office later an 11kg parcel was making its way back home via the longest route possible.
We picked up some street food for lunch and then caught the bus over to a massive shopping centre called MBK which we'd been told was a good place to shop. All the way back when we were in the Cat Tien Jungle in Vietnam our camera had got pretty wet. For a while the screen
flickered on and off - thankfully more on than off until several weeks later in Savannahket, Laos when it finally gave up the ghost. The camera still works and takes pics but we have no screen. This has caused a few problems, firstly we have no viewfinder so have not been able to frame pictures - we just aim and guess, secondly we cannot see the pictures once we have taken them so have been unable to edit our pics (therefore filling up memory cards quickly), third we can't see any menu options on the screen so knowing when a card is full or the battery is running low or being able to wipe a card to use it again has been pretty difficult. We took the camera into a store in MBK who said they'd have a look and let us know the next day.
We had also decided that we wanted to treat oursleves to a grown-up (SLR) camera. Both of us really enjoy taking pictures and want to learn to take better pictures. We're never going to have so much subject matter to learn with as we will on this trip so we had done some
research and thought we'd buy in Thailand where the prices are really good. We searched the centre and bargained for what we wanted eventually coming away with a spangly new Canon 400D camera (swanky). Now all we have to do is learn how to use it!
The other thing that we'd been told was great about the MBK centre was the VIP cinema on the top floor. We love going to the cinema at home so we decided to treat oursleves to a movie, the Bourne Ultimatum. We bought some sweets (those who have been to the cinema with Chrissie know she can't go without sweets!) and then headed to the top floor. On arrival you have a free welcome drink and then the real treat starts. The cinema seats are full reclining arm chairs, the cinema is air-conditioned and you have a blanket to wrap yourself up in. The cinema probably holds 50 prople at the most but there were only about 8 there when we went. The screen is huge and the sound fantastic - well worth a visit!
Day 164
This year saw a milestone birthday for Mark's sister Cath and her husband Pete
so we'd e-mailed them with a few suggestions to see what they wanted for their birthdays. They decided that they'd like us to buy a heap of toys and take them to a local orphanage so today we set about trying to make their brithday wishes come true. We managed to find an orphanage but after many attempts at calling we weren't able to get in touch with them to see what they needed and whether it would be ok for us to go and visit. We decided to try and call later in the day and put our visit off until the next day.
To fill the rest of the day we headed out to see the major sights that Bangkok city has to offer. Batting off the many offers for a tuktuk ride we set out on foot and first visited the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew. We wandered around on our own and played like excited children with our new camera - a great place to try it out as there are so many beautiful and ornate buildings and statues to choose from as subject matter. As we sat down for a water break we
noticed that a free tour would be starting soon so we singed up and were soon following an excellent and hilarious guide around the site and learning a little more about what we had already seen.
Our tour over we left the Grand Palace and walked the short distance to another temple Wat Po, famous for its giant reclining Buddha. The Buddha is absolutely huge, completely covered in gold leaf (anyone seen Goldfinger about?) and very impressive.
Feet feeling a little weary we made our way back to our hostel via the superb boat bus service up the river and we had some great padthai noodles from a street seller for tea. Mark then went back to MBK to see what they had made of our camera, sadly they didn't have the parts they'd need and we didn't have long enough in Bangkok to wait so we'll just make do with it as it is. Despite its problems it will be handy to have for nights out or occasions where we don't want to take the new camera and also for taking videos.
In the evening we met up with Danny (Kate's fella) who is living in
Bangkok for the next few weeks. We had a few beers, a couple of cocktail buckets from a pink VW camper van that's been turned into a bar and caught up on the last few weeks since we'd seen them in Luang Prabang. Kate you were missed babes!
Day 165
Today we were on an orphanage mission. After trying unsuccessfully again to call the orphanage we checked on an internet forum and decided that it should be fine for us to buy things and just turn up. A lady at the tourist information had told us about a good place to go and buy toys so we walked over to Chinatown and set about shopping for the Phyathai babies home which apparently homes children from newborns to around 8 years old. We had great fun buying the most brightly coloured toys we could find, ending up with: Two large toy trucks, a football, 3 dolls, 5 baby rattles, 4 rattly balls, a large elephant shape fit toy, a toy cooking set, 6 jungle animals, a bag of building bricks, 10 bibs and 2 large boxes of powdered baby formula. This was an amazing thing for Cat and Pete
to ask for for their birthdays and we added some money in from ourselves too to top up the stash.
Pleased with what we had got for our money our next step was to find a tuktuk driver who could take us to the orphanage. This proved to be a little more tricky than we had thought. Our eventual driver stopped several times to ask for help finding it and finally dropped us off at what he was convinced was the right place. We went inside, explained across the language barrier that we had toys for the babies home and were directed to another building, and another buidling, and another building... We then arrived at a desk where they recognise what we were there for and nodded enthusiastically when we said we had toys for the babies. We signed some forms and they gave us a receipt for our donations. We asked if we could possibly visit the babies and were told that the children were in school. This didn't sound right to us so we asked again whether this was the babies home. It turned out that it was linked to the babies home but was a actually
a childrens hostpital. We explained that we'd bought the toys etc for the babies home and that they wouldn't be suitable for the children at this site and asked what we should do. They ensured us that they'd make sure the gifts reached the correct destination. We were a little disappointed that we hadn't got to the right place and been able to hand the gifts to where they would be used where we'd hoped to be able to volunteer a little of our time to look after the children but a young volunteer was very excited about receiving the donations and reassured us that he would personally take the donations to the babies home so we left knowing that Cat and Pete's birthday presents and our donation would really make a difference.
We had planned to meet Danny again in the evening so we got ready, grabbed some street food and caught the bus into central town where we picked up the skytrain to Sukhamvit. We met Danny and had some beers in a rooftop bar. From there we saw an elephant being taken down the street to entertain people and felt very sad for it following our visit to the Elephant Nature Park - we wanted to rescue it! We next went to the Nana Plaza to experience a little of the seedier aspects of Bangkok life. We saw some excellent ladyboys and visited a gogo bar but left quickly after Danny was shortchanged. Rubbish! We finished the night outside an eccentric, funky bar called Cheap Charlies - worth a visit if you're in Bangkok. We said goodbye to Danny and then made our way back home to bed.
Day 166
After struggling to keep up with the blog in Cambodia and Laos as internet connections were too slow to get pictures on and of course having to rewrite most of our Cambodia entries following the site crash we have been very behind for a long time now - sorry for those of you that use the blog to escape from work for a while! We had managed to write a lot of the entries and decided to use a chunk of time today to put a load of pictures on and publish a load of entries. Hope you are able to catch up, we were relieved to get up to date. PS We promise to put some more Angkor pics up soon - keep checking back if you want to see more.
Our next step was to get over to the Southern bus station where we'd catch a bus to Damnoen Saduak to visit the floating markets the following morning. We'd read that its best to get there really early to avoid the crowds so decided to go down the night before to get a head start on the day trips from Bangkok. However, getting anyone to take us to the station proved a little harder than we'd thought. The lady in our hostel said it should cost around 80baht to get there in a tuktuk or metered taxi but no tuks would take us for even twice that price as it was nearly rush hour. We next tried to get a taxi but none would put the meter on for us and quoted us some high prices again. Eventaully we found a taxi who'd take us for 100 baht and we made our way across town through the traffic.
We arrived in Damnoen Saduak and quickly found what is probably the only hotel in town, the Little Bird. We went out for some dinner and Mark managed to find somewhere still open to get a haircut before we tunred in for the night to be ready for our early start the next day.
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Kate
non-member comment
Hey guys, it was a very strange feeling knowing you two were meeting up with danny and i wasn't there! Glad you did though. Did you make it to the spa danny recommended? Miss you both! Work stinks.