Thailand!!!

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We flew into Bangkok from Cambodia, this meant that we would get a 30 day visa lasting us until we fly to Australia. (If you cross the border overland you only get a 15 day visa)

Who should be waiting for us in Bangkok but those 3 Northern girls we had met in Hanoi all those weeks ago!!!
We had 5 days to spend getting to know the city together before they were Australia bound and we set off to explore the rest of Thailand.

Bangkok is hot!!! Unfortunately for me it was too hot and i spent the whole of the first day in bed suffering from heatstroke - not very pleasant at all 😞 I still wasn't feeling back to 100% for a few days but not wanting to waste time tried my best to carry on!!

The next morning we visited the National Museum and were truly disappointed, we have been to quite a few museums on our travels and this was by far the least impressive!! So that afternoon to make up for it we did the one and only thing Sadie had been looking forward to in Bangkok - Harry Potter of course!!!

We visited the Grand Palace and the temple Wat Phrae Kaew. It is a huge royal complex, lots of temples intricately decorated with flowers, dragons, guards and so much more all covered in gold leaf!! The main temple houses the Emerald Buddha which is actually made of jade!! There is also of course the Kings Palace. The whole complex was huge and took more than a couple of hours to walk around.

We didn't do much else in Bangkok, shopping, eating and a few farewell drinks made up the rest of time. To be honest it isn't the nicest city we've visited and we were looking forward to getting out and seeing the rest of the country.

We booked ourselves an overnight bus to Chiang Mai in the North and left the city behind. Chiang Mai is much smaller and the city itself is still surrounded by a moat! Everynight there is a night bazaar where the streets are filled with stalls selling all sorts. We spent 4 days here relaxing and enjoying the atmoshere of the smaller city. There are just as many temples to visit here, the most well know and impressive is Doi Suthep. The Temple was built on top of a mountain and overlooks the city. Its quite a drive up the steep hillside and then hike up a set of steps to reach the temple, but its definately worth the effort!!
What else did we do in Chiang Mai? Ate street food, saw an elephant in the street, relaxed in the local park saw the streets from a tuk-tuk and went to the local market shopping for cheap clothes!!!

The islands in the South of Thailand are next on our agenda and we're looking forward to beach life after nearly 3 months solid traveling!!!

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