Sunday 11th Jan Today we visited Vimanmek Mansion Museum and Dust Palace - the largest teak house in the world. It was fabulous. Shoes off and on each time you enter another building. Bags had to be locked in lockers and in some of the exhibition rooms, you were frisked before you went in! No photos anywhere inside. Which was a real shame as the exhibits were beautiful. Exquisite gold and silver works, encrusted with diamonds and enamels. The needlework/embroidery were like paintings. You couldn't see stitches at all. And there is a beetle whose wings are iridescent colours and they are used to decorate textiles and jewelry. Sounds horruble i know but its just beautiful. Many of these skills were dying out but the queen has set up training centres / institutes to retrain people in these tremendous arts and crafts. We had lunch there too which was nice. They had those little tea pots Rita, that sit inside the cup like the one you bought Thelma. Really cute. Back to Kohsan Rd for meal this evening. Good singer on in one of the bars Monday 12th Jan Got the canal boat to Wat Pho today to see the reclining Buddha. It's HUGE!! at 15m high and 46m long finished in gold leaf. Thought it strange you could take photos in here but as it was so busy and so big, couldn't get much of a shot! Although this Buddha is impressive by the shear size, Wat Pho isn't half as nice a temple as The Grand Palace. The canal boats are like a well oiled machine. They're big and packed to the gills. Wouldn't like to think what would happen if it tipped up! They blow a whistle to say it's coming in. The boatman leaps off, ties it up, people rush off then on, boat untied and bloke jumps back on all in one slick movement. Had a nice lunch in a restaurant near the temple, didn't fancy the chicken ass, yes billed as chicken ass, we saw advertised nearby. We were going to have Thai massage today before we went back to the hotel but they were full so we headed back to our haunt and had Thai neck, back and shoulder massage. Sam needed convincing but agreed in the end as I told him it would be nice and relaxing. Wrong!!! Thought my ribs were going to crack! I was giggling to myself wondering what Sam was thinking. Well I think I know what he was thinking! At the end though it felt fine. Later in the evening I said to Sam that my neck felt fine, but then remembered there wasn't anything the matter with it before! Tomorrow we're planning to go on a long tail boat and maybe another Temple. Well, there are a lot of them round here!