Sawadee

Last Night we braved the Khao San Road and were pleasantly surprised. You can get everything here. Cheap clothes, cheap food and cheap everything else. It seems to be non-stop and the sellers are persistent but you can pick up a bargain if you barter well, last night we picked up a wooden frog that croaks, it reminded us of our time in Koh Tao and was a quid!!!

It's been Day 2 in the ladyboy capital and we took in a couple of sights today. The sun was out early and it was baking hot today at a guess 34 degrees. From our guest house it was a 20 minute walk to the Grand Palace. We arrived and found that we were both inappropriately dressed to enter so had to rent some extra clothes to get in. Mel needed a shirt to cover her arms and I needed some long pants as shorts were a no go. Once we had sorted out our dress irregularities we paid our money and entered the palace grounds with what felt like 10 thousand other people.

The place was packed and everyone was trying to get through the turnstile to get into the grounds, once inside the buildings were stunning, all intricately decorated with glass mosaic tiles. The palace was built in 1782 by King Rama I and is still the official home for the King of Thailand.We spent a few hours wandering around and visited the emerald Buddha as well, personally it was a bit of a let down, Mel has better Buddha at home and it is made of jade.

It was so busy, we tried to get some nice photographs but people being people got in each others way. Mel told an American lady that she was really rude but she just kept on doing what she was doing and we gave up our photo op!!!!

From here it was a short walk luckily to Wat Pho to see what we think is the world's largest reclining Buddha, perhaps!!!!

The Buddha stretches 46 metres and is gold in colour, we managed to get a few nice photos here, it's feet are inlaid with mother of pearl that illustrate the story of buddhism, and we timed it right as prayer time was about to start when we were leaving. On the way back a lady in the park offered us corn to feed the birds and we declined as they want money, she was persistant and stuffed 3 bags into Mel's hand and another 3 into my rucksack, we kept saying no and she eventually poured the corn into our hands saying it was good luck from Buddha!!!!

We dropped it onto the floor and then she wanted money but we made a hasty retreat across the road with her swearing at us in Thai!!!

Tonight it was round 2 and back to the Khao San Road in search of cheap food and maybe another bargain, we found the food but no bargain tonight. Both of us had a Thai green curry with prawns for a princely sum of 80THB/about a quid!!!!

Mel was looking out for the guy who was selling crickets and grubs to eat but he did not appear but we will search again tomorrow. It's nearly 8pm here and tomorrow we have an early start to visit the Tiger Temple and the Bridge over the River Kwai which we are both really looking forward to as we both love the movie!!!!

Lots of Love

M & M

xx