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4 nights in Bangkok

We flew out of Tianjin early in the morning and first flew for 6 hours to Kuala Lumpur with Russ and Heather. The flight was horrible - really bad turbulence in the middle of the flight which left me a wreck, but at least the Air Asia planes are comfortable and roomy. No entertainment but we are used to bringing our own by now. We only had about a 2 hour stop in KL, and we were a bit worried because they hadn't let us check all the way through so we had to go through immigration, get our bags then check in again. Fortunately the whole process was very smooth and we had enough time to eat some McD's before saying goodbye to Heather and Russ and heading off to get back through immigration and to our gate. The flight to Bangkok was only 2 hours and in a smaller plane which wasn't quite as comfy but we had 3 seats between the 2 of us so it wasn't too bad. We arrived in Bangkok just after 5 local time (gmt +7) and found a taxi to take us to our hotel.

We got a cheap deal on this hotel from Hotelclub and it was really lovely - the Heritage on Silom Road, and it has "An Eclectic Hotel" written on the door. Everything was either white or black in our room (apart from the wooden floor) and black carpet in the hallway is just strange, but it was very nice and in a great location too.

The weather was a lot nicer in Bangkok than in China - still really humid but at least the sky was blue and the sun shining.

The first morning we were sucked into doing a canal tour instead of going on the public ferry but it was nice and in a private boat so it was quite nice anyway. It took about 1.5 hours to get to the Wat Pho stop and by the time we got there we knew the palace was closing at 3:30 so we headed right up there. A guy stopped us near one of the gates and said that the palace was closed this afternoon for a holiday, and then tried to sell us a tuktuk trip for 40B around some other temples. We ran away to get some lunch anyway at a nice café nearby, and then realised it was two of the scams warned about in the book - firstly the palace wasn't really closed, and second that cheap tuktuk rides usually end at expensive shops.

After lunch we went back to the palace and sure enough it was open and full of people, so we're not trusting any more friendly locals anymore. The palace itself has a big wat inside it with an "Emerald Buddha" which is really made of jade. The buddha has a costume that is ceremonially changed by the King three times during the year. The complexes were beautiful and had lots of shiny buildings - we're lucky that it was a sunny day. At Wat Pho we saw the huge reclining buddha, as well as a couple of smaller ones in the complex.

We got the ferry back to the hotel and then got ready to go out again - this time to Patpong night market, the infamous girly-bar area. The markets there are actually really great shopping - lots of knock-off shirts, jewellery and bags. We did a little bit of shopping and had nice dinner, and then went to a ping pong show. No, I don't have any photos of that.

Next day we headed to Khao San Road, the famous backpacker hangout to see what it was like. The taxi took ages because the traffic is so terrible here all day long. The road itself is lined with hotels, and covered in markets selling every kind of tourist tat and a lot of clothes. It was good to see but we are glad we're not staying there.

Later that evening we paid 500B each for thai ladies to beat us up for 90 mins - okay it was a Thai massage, with knees and elbows and everything! Shane enjoyed it but I felt a bit bruised.

We also went to visit Jim Thompson's house. He was an American army man who was posted to Bangkok and fell in love with Thai culture, and had a traditional Thai house built here to live in. The house is actually made up of several separate buildings connected by walkways and is all wooden - it's very open and has lots of arty objects inside. Jim himself disappeared in the 60s in Malaysia so it's now owned by a trust. They take you on a tour around the house and then you can look around on your own. It's very well organised.

After the house we got the skytrain back to Siam Square and went to see both Transformers 2 and Harry Potter 6 at the IMAX cinema there. They were in English and the subtitles weren't as annoying as we thought they might be. The HP movie even had a section in 3D at the start which was awesome :) Before each movie starts they play the national anthem and you have to stand up for it, which I thought was quite sweet.

Our last day in Bangkok was Saturday, so we took our bags to the train station and left them with the travel agent people there, and headed off on the metro to the Chatuchak weekend market. The market is enormous, with whole huge sections dedicated to clothes and accessories, jewellery, pottery and handicrafts. We bought a couple of presents but spend most of the time wandering around lost. If we hadn't had to carry everything home we could have spent a lot of money there.

Bangkok is a really nice city, once you get over the people everywhere trying to get your money or trying to sell you a suit. They are very polite people and absolutely adore their royal family - it was the Queen's birthday while we were there and there were pictures of her and the King everywhere!

A few days earlier, we had gone to the train station to try to organise train and ferry tickets to get us to Koh Phangan. We had mistakenly gone to a travel agent's info desk rather than the real train station desk, so when we tried to book trains the lady there convinced us that the train was fully booked and we should take a VIP bus instead. Whether the train was fully booked or not we will never know, but the bus cost more than we should have paid and we later read that some people have had stuff stolen out of their luggage during the night. But it's the only time we feel we've actually been scammed this whole trip so I guess that's not too bad. Anyway for a VIP bus which we paid a lot for it was really very uncomfortable - hardly any legroom at all. We stopped left Bangkok station at about 7 and stopped at about midnight at a food stall place, and then drove on until about 3 when we stopped again. Turns out even though our tickets said Surat Thani, we were actually being dropped at Chumphon, and had to wait until 7am for the ferry to leave, so we just lay around on the ground and waited.It was a nice sunrise though.