After seeing things I didn't want to see and things that I didn't even know we're possible last night, today we wanted to explore a bit more of what Bangkok has to offer.

We walked to the Grand Palace (pictured) which is the most famous and recognisable temple in Thailand only to find out it was closed to foreigns until 1pm today because of the Chinese New Year prays - great start when the temperature was well into the 30's.

We hanged around in Subway for an hour or so (since it had A/C) before entering the palace. Until 1925 it was the home of the kings of Siam and Thailand and is now used for official events and ceremonies.

After we decided it was best to go see if our visas were ready meaning we had two options. Easy and expensive or cheap and interesting. Realising we hadn't stuck to a budget very well so far and still had so much more of the city to see, we headed on public transport, river boat for 30 minutes (costing 7p) and then Bangkok train service to the embassy; Public transport - easy, finding the road on foot - not so easy.

Visas collected, we headed back to KSR in a taxi to book our transport to Chaing Mai.

I'd planned to travel North via the overnight sleeper train, but due to the Chinese New Year, these were all full so it left us with two options, either wait a week for the train or get a bus. Not wanting to waste a week on Bangkok, we decided on the bus for 10 hours - at least it had air conditioning and was a bit cheaper than the sleeper train.

The evening was mainly spent relaxing at the hostel and getting some fake student ID which will hopefully result in a cheaper journey down under in a few months time.