Bangkok

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We arrived in Bangkok thinking that we would be here for a couple of days whilst we sorted out our Vietnam visa, but we didn't realize that it was New Year, so the Vietnam embassy was shut for 2 days. We did have it confirmed that we could get the visa on the same day that we applied for it.

With a few days on our hands we went shopping for Chris' 11th pair of sunglasses on this trip. The others have either broken or been lost. We managed to get cabs to and from the shopping centre as the custom on New Year is to throw water over people - tourists are no exception, in fact I think there are extra points for getting a tourist soaked.

We found a great food court where you buy tokens, then go to your chosen food provider and hand over your coupons instead of money, and any unsued coupons can be changed back to money when you have finished. The food was so good though that we had to change up more money into coupons.

We spent the following day sightseeing - seeing things that we didn't see when we were here 15 years ago, and because it was New Year some of the temples were free, and the tuk-tuk's were also cheap as they were getting extra fuel vouchers from the government. This did invlove our tuk-tuk driver taking us to 2 shops to get extra coupons. We politely explained to the shop owners that we couldn't afford to pay thousands of pounds on jewels, but did buy some cheap silver jewellery. Our tuk-tuk driver obviously did OK out of the petrol voucher's because when we came out of the last temple he was taking us to he had gone, and we hadn't even paid him! We decided to walk, but as we headed off it started raining so we had to get another tuk-tuk to take us where we wanted to go.

So after days of waiting, the Vietnam embassy opened and we got our visa to Vietnam. We had booked a flight for the following morning so we were all set to continue our trip. We decided to treat ourselves to a visit to the cinema, we saw Vantage Point, which was very good. As foreigners we were in the VIP screen which meant that we got a free drink, had big comfy chairs to sit in and a blanket (which you needed because it was freezing).

So after a brief stay in Bangkok we were off to Vietnam.

Love

Tina

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