Day 2 - Bangkok

After a long sleep (well Graeme slept like a log), we awoke to go and get breakfast. We decided we'd embrace the culture of the city by grabbing a cheese and ham toastie from the supermarket 2 doors down! We then got a really good tuk tuk deal for a guy to take us round to several places for only 20 baht - about 40p! In return for going into a suit shop as it was a 'special discount for tourists' day - (lol we are sure it will be special discount for tourist day tomorrow as well). We'd been warned about this but still agreed. As we were being whizzed around the town the tuk tuk driver, Jo Jo, was chatting to us about this deal, and said every time he delivers tourists to these shops he's given a petrol token, whether we buy anything or not. So we decided to help him out for the day and went to 80! Not really, we visited 2 shops, had a look at their lovely suits and dresses but kept turning them down. The assistant told Graeme 'these aren't the shops for you sir' as he tried to haggle the price for the lovely silk lined Armani suits by comparing them to the ones he'd seen in Matalan the week before for £23! So we left disappointed as the shop assistant would not sell the Armani Suit for £10 even after Graeme offered to buy one for his Dad as well, but Jo Jo got some vouchers so he was pretty happy.

Graeme got out a packet of harribo (after me whinging I was hungry!) and he offered one to Jo Jo, who took one and looked at it as if it was a slug or something, but he slowly ate it as not to offend us.

He then took us to visit past the Democracy monument and then to The Golden Mount (Phukhao Thong). This was a tall building with a few flights of stairs, which didn't seem too bad until we started climbing in the 34-degree heat and blazing sun. But we reached the top and got some great views of Bangkok.

He then took us onto a small temple place with a Lucky Budha where if you bow 3 times you get good luck. There was a school teacher sheltering in here from the sun on his lunch break who had a chat with us (teachers always seem to bump into each other, even in foreign countries!).

After being impressed with Jo Jo's superb tour guide skills, he finally dropped us at the Palace where we were told it was closed until 4pm. Another kind man then suggested instead we take a tuk tuk to an area where we could have a boat ride round the river, and then go back later. We took his advice and went on a river tour for 900 baht each (about £20). We saw some real Thai shanty houses and we saw some wild large lizards which were so cool. We were dropped off conveniently, for the boat driver anyway who whizzed off, at a pay point for harbouring. They looked a bit scarey so we paid them the 40p, watching our boat driver drift off into the distance. We then realised we may have been a bit ripped off for the boat trip when another chap offered us the same trip for 600 baht for two, but then he still could not understand why we didn't want to go again. We tried to then get back into this palace but were stopped by 2 army men - we still have no idea why but tomorrow we are going to try climbing over the wall in a different area.

We then decided to try and walk back to the guesthouse and finally made it back after 100 tuk tuk drivers kept begging for us to get in. We freshened up and cooled down in the nice air-conditioned room quickly and then headed back out for a quick drink and noodles while waiting for Martin and Sophie to arrive. We are now just waiting in the Guesthouse lounge for them to arrive and then gonna go find some more food, yesterday we passed a fried insect stall with a nice selection of about 10 to pick from so think that will be on the menu tonight.