We'd decided to do some sightseeing on our short stay in BKK, so had booked to be picked up at 0630 to go and see the floating market about 100km out of town. By 0800 we'd progresed as far as picking up the rest of the punters on our bus. When we got to the market it was a bit of a dissapointment - on the way our 'guide' (not a great source of illumination) had told us that the locals didn't use it any more and that it was basically for tourists. So it proved, as a procesion of small noats full of daytrippers crawled round the market neing hawked trinkets and cack. A-M did find it hard to give up the wooden frog that was pushed into her hand at one point (you ran a wooden stick down its back and it makes a sound like.... a frog). Gridlock at one point resulted in lots of bewildered looking tourists sweltering in the heat and looking despondent. How we laughed (in the shade) until we padled across into their spot and sat in the sun for an eternity. After the visit was complete, our guide asked if we would like to pay extra to ride an elephant or to see a snake show ("very good! see snake fight a man!") We demurred on both points. Next it was off to a wood carving centre. Finally we baulked at the tour of a gemstone factory (admittedly after seeing a 70s style film show on the wonder of gemstones) and insisted on a return to our hotel (it was 1330 by now and in the whole day we'd only spent about 90 minutes at the market).

Some nifty web work sorted out the 2 remaining legs of our train trip to be made the following day. Then we headed off to meet Julian and Pote, 2 of A-Ms RBS colleagues in Singapore who happened to be in BKK. After some convivial chat (thankfully not 100% bak related, for Dave at least) we left them to head off and entertain some clienrts for the evening. We headed back to the Silom district and grabed some dinner before a brief tour of the local market and thence to bed again.