Bangkok

Today we had a very good day. After a breakfast at the hostel, which was included in the stay, and had a toast with a smiley face imprinted into it....there's really no other way to start the day...we took a short walk down to the river. It's a big river and it's very brown. On the way back, we were looking undecidedly at a laneway thinking it could be a shortcut. A guy walking past must have read our mind. "Yeah, you can walk down there". At the end of the lane, I was still getting my bearings and found the hostel directly in front of me. A rare occasion when a go at a shortcut actually turns out to be shorter than the other options.

We came back and chatted to a couple of girls from Austria. When I was reading about some of these scams that are renowned in Thailand, I said to myself "is anyone really dumb enough to fall for these tricks"?

So I asked the girls what they got up to. "Yesterday we went with a rickshaw driver, he took us on this tour for 10 baht (about 30c), and first he took us to a travel agent, then to a jewellery shop, after the third place we made him bring us back to the hostel". C'mon girls, that one is the oldest trick in the book....I guess they must be pretty young though as they said it's there first big trick. No harm done to them though anyway, it was just a learning experience that everyone, particularly those that drive rickshaws, is not out to give you a good deal.

We were lucky, as we had our local "tour guides" come and pick us up. No rickshaws, taxis, buses, trains, planes etc. Just airconditioned comfort and we headed north.

After driving out of the city limits, we stopped at an area where they have some seafood restaurants. We got a huge variety of food, which they said was less than usual. There was a little bit of everything, shrimps, crab omelette, a Tom Yum soup with shrimp inside, a big fish, rice, vegetables, the works. We left there with full tummies.

We got fairly sick in India and our eating habits on the trip have changed since then. We have really been eating only one big meal and then some smaller snacks throughout the day, but that's not the way in Thailand. More on that later.

From there we went to a couple of tourist locations. First was the Bang Pa-In Palace. I linked to the wiki article which tells me it's only used occasionally by the current royals, but it's a very nice place, with temples, gardens and lots of other features inside. One of the gardens is a collection of hedges in animal shapes.

Awesome.

We stopped in at a temple next, which had a big load of stairs leading up to. With the condition of our ankles it was probably a mistake to head up there, but there was a good view at the top. Not really worth coming to the temple and not actually entering it.

It was getting to about 6pm and our next stop was Sun's old uni, where every Monday and Thursday they have a night market. And it's not just a small market. You wouldn't see me back at UC for the Wednesday market day, I'll put it that way. Anyway, I don't like markets that much, so it would be likely for me to do something like to fake an injury to skip out of the markets.

However there was no faking, my ankle and foot were hurting significantly, so it was time to sit down. The gang gathered up some more food, though I wasn't too hungry. That didn't concern them..."it's 7 o'clock, it's time to eat!" Even though we hadn't actually finished our lunch until about 2pm.

Tomorrow we're going to go to the doctor. I have a lot of bruising on my foot, and Francisca's ankle has swollen up a bit. She also has a cough that hasn't rested since we were in India. So let's see how that goes. We've got one more night booked in here, but then I think they are booked out for a couple of weeks, so we will have to move on to some coastal paradise.

After tomorrow I will spend most of the day resting so I will try and add some more pictures to this blog. I also start back on my uni course next week. My subjects are "Online Writing" and "Writing and New Media", so I might talk about that a bit in here.

It's good that I can be in Thailand and still "get it done"