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Published: February 24th 2008
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We have made it to Bangkok. The journey was very long. I think it took just over 20 hours between us leaving our house to us arriving at our hotel in Bangkok. This was not helped by the fact that the plane was delayed for over an hour. We had already been at Heathrow for hours when we found this out. The flight wasn't too bad though and they let us sleep all the way without keep pestering us with food and drink. Managed to fit in one film in during the 11 hour flight as the rest of the time was spent trying but failing to sleep!
By the time we arrived last night there was pretty much time to get some food before falling asleep. Today we decided to do some sightseeing and try and visit a few things that we missed last time. We started by visiting Wat Arun (Temple of the Dawn). It is a large temple on the river. You would proabbly recognise it as it is used on a lot of posters for Thailand and is often in films. All the prang (tall spires) are covered with small pieces of porcelain. You can climb
up the centre one which we did although it was very steep! The photos (which will be added when we get home) indicate just how steep. Despite this there are still people climbing up it in the most impracticle shows you can imagine!
After Wat Arun we got the boat across the river to Wat Po. The boat was a bargain 3.5 baht (5p). It was the kind of boat where they load on rather a lot of people before they set off and they don't block off the gaps where everyone embarks and disembarks. Luckily we did not end up in the river.
After Wat Po (home of the reclining buddha) we went to Wat Saket which is high up and involved going up hundreds of steps. This is bad enough but in the 35 degree heat it was a little on the warm side! The views from the top were good though. The fact it is so hot here means that we our now on our 3rd if not 4th outfit of the day. Maybe it is just as well I bought all those tops with me!
This afternoon we decided to shop. We went
to Khoa San Road which is a few street from where we are staying and it the undisputed backpacking ghetto of Thailand if not the world. Every second person was getting their hairbraided or tatooed or the like! Needless to say we passed on those two options.
Tim managed to but 2 t shirts including an
element one and a pair of
molecule shorts. I had never heard of these brands but i think that they are surfy brands. Being that they were so cheap I can only assume that they were fakes! They have all the tags and everything so they are top quality fakes! we even managed to barter the shorts down to a reasonable price. This is impressive for us as we keep forgetting that people expect you to negotiate a bit. I am sure we are paying way too much for the taxis as every so often we get one which seems so ridiculously cheap by comparison to all the others. It usually occurs when we are slightly more out of the way places and the drivers can't speak English and just seem to put the meter on and charge us the correct fare. As
everything is so cheap it doesn't really matter.
On the cheap front food is ridiculously cheap. Last night we had a main dish each and 2 sprites each and the whole thing came to less than a fiver. It would have been even cheaper if we had got it off a food stall in the street but we are not quite that brave yet. Our fear of
Bangkok Belly is enough to put us off!
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Rachel
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What - no photos? : ) Have fun!