Yesterday we were up quite early, after yet another failed attempt at an early night (!) and set off for Vimannmek Museum and Palace and the Elephant Museum after we enjoyed sharing a bowl of yoghurt, fruit (tropical!) and muesli - so sweet n tasty! It was a good long walk up there, but no worries, as there we street vendors in abundance, so we enjoyed the snacks on offer (couldn't really tell you what exactly they were, most of the vendors that end of town didn't speak much English).

Vimanmek used to be a palace where past kings and their families used to reside and we had a really interesting guided tour that informed us of the use of each room and the purpose of certain ornaments, etc. The building was a gorgeous, kind of octagonal, building with lavish ornaments and furniture. A lot of the rooms are still used today, by the current king to entertain guests and receive royal visitors. After our tour we made our way over the otherside of the complex to the Elephant Museum - not much a museum, but a room with a huge picture of a man (possibly a past king) riding an elephant in military gear and housed 6 massive elephant tusks and several weapons and elephant related decorative attire and objects. Not all that riviting to be honest!

From here we made our way back over to the other side of town, just past the Grand Palace to the temple of the 'Reclining Buddha'. The is simply a hugh golden buddha lying down on his side, proped up by his arm. Yet again another beautifully lavish complex surrounded the buddha.

After the buddha we went over to Chinatown, just to check it out! Note, all of this is on foot and we hadn't managed to get much sleep last night - get us being all fit n stuff! The main road through Chinatown, Sam Peng, wasn't all the that exciting, just some stalls and street vendors (obviously we tried more food, including mini pork ribs and some sort of deep-fried jellied green veg, unsure exacly what veg, though!), so we headed back to Khaosan via the Democracy Monument (que more 'arty' night snaps!), picking up a bag of fresh cut pineapple en-route.

Before we knew it, it was 9.00pm and time to meet Jarve and Stu at Gullivers on Khaosan Road. It was fab to see them and catch up and exchange travel stories. After a couple of cocktails (cheers, Stu!), we finished the night off with a banana and chocolate roti, naturally! And literally flopped into bed!

We slept like babies and woke 8.30am-ish to sort out stuff before checking out of our room and heading for some more yoghurt, fruit and muesli. Yet, again Sarah bumped into some friends, who's room was next door to ours!! This time it was Canadian buds from camp - Elise and Phil.

We made (another) long walk to the downtown area, stopping for a sausage (with garlic!) and ending up at the Baiyoke Tower, after wading the street markets. The views from the 77th floor observatory were stunning and even better from the 84th top floor rotating platform. Even better than this was sitting on the 83rd floor bar enjoying our complimentary cocktail (pina colada - Laura, blue hawaii - Sarah) and salted popcorn! We felt so spoilt! After a brief browse around the shops and market stalls we got our first tuck tuck in Thailand back to the Khaosan area, where we got provisions for our overnight bus journey to Ko Pha Ngan and filled up on Phat Thai and springrolls.