*Tuk Tuk, Temples and Thai Food*

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Wednesday 10th February 2010

Yesterday we booked everything that we wanted to do for the rest of the time in Thailand, it took a while, but we got a really good price on everything that we booked. So this is the itinerary for the next few weeks:

11th Feb - Take night train to Chiang Mai (stay there until 22nd Feb)
14th Feb - start our hilltribe trek (2 nights, 3 days) where we trek, ride elephants, bamboo raft and white water raft
23rd Feb - Come back to Bangkok for the day to get a tour the next day to Kanchanaburi
24th Feb - Spend 2 nights 3 days doing the sights of Kanchanaburi including Erawan Park - look it up, it's beautiful, or just wait for our photos!
26th Feb - Leave Kanchanaburi for Koh Pha Ngan for the full moon party on 1st March
2nd March - Go to Koh Tao for diving.

Sounds good??? Yes!!!

So after booking all of that, we wanted to see some temples - particularly the Grand Palace - we were told that it was too late to go there by that point ( it was 1pm) - in hindsight it was not too late, but yesterday was an experience and a half! We were persuaded into taking a tuk tuk to some other temples instead. The trip started off well, Mr B our tuk tuk driver was a crazy driver, weaving in and out of cars, buses, people...but he took us to the temples. We saw a gold standing buddha and a small-ish temple, then.....he said that he needed to take us to a tailor place so that he got get his fuel coupon...ok fair enough, we agreed reluctantly. Whilst there we saw 2 of the same groups of people we had seen at the previous two temples....how odd....or not! We humoured the people in the tailors for probably longer than we should have and then hopped back in the tuk tuk to be taken to the TAT - Tourism Authority of Thailand. There again we saw the same people we had seen before. We did actually book our hilltribe trek and our accommodation in Chiang Mai here. When we left we were asked where we would like to go next...odd we hadn't been asked where we wanted to go previously! We said that we wanted to go to the Golden Mount temple. Mr B took us there and there we wandered for a while, when we had finished we looked for Mr B, but he was no where to be seen! Ditched! We waited around half an hour for him, but no. He'd probably got some kind of cut from our purchase at the TAT and no longer needed to 20B that we were going to pay him for the tuk tuk ride. The other tuk tuk drivers outside were trying to rip us off with a journey back to Kho San Road unless we detoured to all the fabric, jewellery etc shops so we walked! With the help of the Lonely Guide Planet we didn't get lost!

We wandered Kho San Road in the evening, stopping at a loud, typical place for cheap food and drink, then we met up with Haizea to exchange stories about our day!

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