Hello everyone,

So, were in Phuket now! I'll just update you on what we got up to in Bangkok since our last blog...

On Friday we moved to the hotel over the road, it was posher but didn't have as much character as the other place. Afterwards we went to the grand palace. Unfortunately it was raining when we got there and we did get pretty drenched. The place is huge and is made up of various temples, statues and other buildings, all of which are beautiful. The temple of the emerald buddha was particularly impressive, we just had to make sure not to point our feet towards Buddha when we sat down! After we'd dried out in the heat on the walk back we went for some food and drinks. In the evening we went out for cocktails, beers and yet more food in a bar down the road. It's a good job we both like noodles and rice! A man asked us if we wanted to go to a ping pong show, we declined...

On Saturday we headed out of the hotel and got the best street food ever, it was actually amazing. It's great, you can watch them cook it right in front of you. I'm definitely going to hunt that lady down again when were back in Bangkok. Afterwards we went to Wat Pho, another temple next to the grand palace. Inside we saw the reclining Buddha which is gold and massive! I love the temples, they're so relaxing and peaceful to walk around after having just come off the manic streets of the city. We then got a tuktuk to the train station where we bought our train tickets to Phuket and Chaing Mai. This was surprisingly easy as you get collared by someone straight away who tells you where to go. Another tuktuk ride then took us to Chatuchak weekend Market which apparently covers 35 acres (a little Wikipedia fact for you there). We wandered round for a while checking out the stalls whilst getting pretty disoriented in what is pretty much a giant maze. We then took our third tuktuk ride of the day through the crazy streets of Bangkok back to Khaosan. I think we may have knocked off a few days off our life expectancies through the amount of pollution we inhaled but it is actually quite fun. We came to the conclusion that choosing the older drivers is the safer option.The sky had turned black when we got out of the tuktuk. We each bought an ice fruit shake from a street seller and headed back towards our hotel as quick as we could in the hope we could make it. We failed. The heavens opened and by the time we got back we were soaked through, it was kind of fun though. When we went out again in the evening we discovered we couldn't buy any alcohol because of the election results the next day which was a bit of a disappointment but oh well.

On our last day in Bangkok before heading to Phuket we just chilled out and did a bit of shopping, then caught a tuktuk to the train station. As we left it was raining again, in fact we didn't have a day without rain but it was quite refreshing when it did.

Lots of love,

Jo and Ryan xxx