Bangkok !!!!

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We left Koh Tao In the morning by ferry we landed in the port where we then got on to buses to the town of champion, now the buses where all very full and we hadn't booked a train ticket in advance so we where starting to get a bit worried , but after five months of traveling we have this down, as soon as we stop I jump off duck,dive and elbow my way around confused,tired looking people heading straight for the ticket desk (or best coach seat depending of the situation) while grant deals with the huge pile of backpacks and the 30 people trying to find there one. So I've managed to get to the front of the line only to be told that their are no 2nd class train tickets the only tickets left are 3rd class now it's a 10 hour train ride through the night and 3rd class are hard wooden seats with nowhere for your baggage, not what I wanted to hear so I asked him again five times in five different ways for a 2nd class train ticket, now the line behind me was getting quite big but I'm not one to give up so as I started on round six of please can I get .. He stopped me looked at his computer and said "I have only have two first class tickets left you want " ... Um hell yeah. After grabbing some food we headed to the platform to wait for our train the tickets cost us under £20 for the both of us so we wasn't holding high expectations for 1st class but oh we where wrong you get your own little compartment with lock,two beds, sink, mirror and air con, you even have a man come around with fresh sheets to make the beds up and gives you a wake up call in the morning.

We arrived at Bangkok station at 6am in the morning jumped in tut tut and got dropped off at the end of the road our hotel was on, as we walked down the road there where still people looking worse for ware still drinking in the bars from the night before so that gives you some idea of where we're staying. We are staying on khosan road which is a pretty famous backpacker area in Bangkok (backpacker ghetto), it's busy and hectic and full of shops, stalls and everything you could imagine its so much fun. We are staying in a hotel called the dang derm and it's amazing it's a little more expensive then other places we have stayed in in Asia £11 each a night but it has a roof top pool a shower to die for,TV ,fridge and lovely comfy bed we feel like we're living the life of luxury hehehe. As the hotel already had our room free they where nice enough to let us check In straight way so after checking out the room and chilling for a bit we had a whole day ahead of us so we explored some of the kohsan area and grabbed some food it was a bit overcast in the afternoon so we jumped in a tut tut and headed to the Siam Museum which I'd heard about on line, when we got there we where met by a member of staff(lady boy ) who explained the layout, cost etc etc all the while eyeing grant up and shaking his hand for a little to long lol. Its a cool museum very interactive and it's all about Thai culture and history and as we where leaving I was grabbed by a group of giggling Thai teenage girls who showed me how to make a traditional Thai body scrub and gave me a massive pot to take away (love a freebie). As we there pretty tired from our journey we spent the rest of the day hanging around the kohsan area eating and shopping.

After spending so much time chilling in the islands and being a bit lazy we decided to go full on touristy in Bangkok and do as much as we can, so on our second day we headed off to the giant laying down Buddha temple which is based in a huge compound consisting of lots of other Buddhas and walkways and temples inside temples, the Buddha was pretty cool and it's an iconic image of Thailand so was good to have done. After grabbing some lunch we heard over to the other iconic temple in Bangkok the Arun temple which is the one used by Thai royalty and the image is on the 10 baht coin, it's a pretty cool place and we hiked up some steep steps to get to the top, around the back of the temple we entered a room where a monk was sitting on a stage not sure what to do we sat down, he then called me forward and gave me a blessing of good luck and tied bracelet around my left wrist hopefully that's some good luck for the rest of our travels. That night we decided to go out for a few drinks after dinner we ended up in a club called the brick bar which was so much fun we where the only westerners in the place and it had a live full on band with trumpets,trombones, the works they where playing a mix of Thai and English and loved a bit of Bruno Mars any way two bottles of vodka and only a couple of hours sleep our third day in Bangkok did not have the best start. By the afternoon I was feeling much better, grant never drinks vodka and was In a pretty bad state so I thought some shopping might make him feel better hehehe , so we headed off to an area called Siam it's the main shopping district of the city. If there one thing Bangkok does well it's shopping we headed for the main malls in total hitting up five of the 12 main malls in the area and these aren't small where talking 7 levels minimum, huge buildings, the good thing is everyone's different MBK sells all knock off goods, there's a uber posh one, a high streets one , one with a sea world in the basement the list is endless, and if malls aren't your thing then there are loads of day and night and floating markets all over the city I was in heaven.

On our last day in Bangkok we went back in to tourist mode and visited the grand palace and temple of the jade Buddha, the jade Buddha has some amazing temples and domes and the grand palace is all connected so its a cool day out we even managed to see a palace guard and I had to get a picture with him and grant it was a little surreal, the palace and temple are well worth a visit but to enter men and women have to have legs and shoulders covered. With the ticket into both of these you also get in to the queens Museum of textiles which had all the royal dresses and some traditional clothes. After the palace we walked to the golden mount which is a massive mount with a small temple at the top to get to the temple you take stairs around and around and around till you reach the top which was fine but as we got to the top it pored down and when it rains here it rains hard , so getting down was pretty much like walking down a waterfall. After some fun days in Bangkok where now heading off to kanchanaburi to ride the death railway .

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Photos

off to get my monk blessing
arun temple

temples temples temples
arun