Last blog from Thailand

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Hi everyone, sorry I couldn't write an entry yesturday as the internet was down - a pain really as we had plenty of time yesturday and today we are off to the airport in a couple of hours.

We got our shopping done at the MBK mall the day before yesturday. Wow what a tiring place. There were 2200 shops. The best advice I could give anyone about this place is to go with a wish list, get a map from an information stand as soon as you get there and shop around for the best price.

All we wanted to get was i-pods, an i-pod speaker and a handbag. The fourth floor was were the electronics were, but it took awhile to find what we were looking for as it is mostly cell phones. We shopped around and in the end got a price that was half of what we first found and instead of 4gig i-pods, we got 8gig ones. The trick we found was to say we had been offered a low price somewhere else and they would match it. My handbag was more tiring to find in that I had seen one at the begining, the first one I saw infact, but I wanted to make sure there wasn't a cheaper one or better design else where. There where soooooooooooooo many shops selling bags ( it did my head in ) but none I liked - I did get prices so I could get the price down though so I was pleased.

Yesturday we went to Wat Pho and the Grand Palace. We arrived at Wat Pho an hour before opening - you couldn't get in to see the Reclining Buddha but we were free to wander around the rest of the complex. We had the place to ourselves and were invited by staff into the inner sanctum which was pretty special. We were taken into a temple with a beautiful gold Buddha and taught how to give an offering which we did.

At 8.30am we went in to see the Reclining Buddha. I was expecting big, but not as big as what we found. It was bigger than huge and really beautiful - I wasn't expecting that. We could hear a lot of noise coming from behind the Buddha and when we got around to that side we found it was people dropping tiny coins into a row of metal pots that ran almost the length of the Buddha. We were told it was for good luck. You can always do with a little more luck, so we joined in.

From here we went across the road the Grand Palace. This place was all gold and excess crammed into every available space. From my artistic background this place was inspirational - design, design, design. I took so many close up pictures of the patterns of the tiles. The hours of work that it would have taken - wow!!!!!. We were here at 9am so there weren't too many people - we beat the bulk of the thousands of tourists that pour in here every day which was great.

We shopped in Sampeng Lane in the afternoon in the middle of a huge thunder storm - quite exciting really. We bought throw away raincoats for 10 baht ( 50c ) which worked really well - so well I bought more to bring home to put in Jack's school bag for emergencies.

We packed last night - can you believe Tracy said "we need to buy more as we still had spare space" - at that moment I wished we were in Chiang Mai at the walking market again.

Well got to go, will be home tomorrow.

Love from Viv, Tracy and Jack XXXXXX

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