Well what a start, after hitting the hay last night we were welcomed with a huge thunderstorm throughout the night until 5:30 in the morning.☁️⚡️ Amazing lightening flashes and crazy thunder, very thankful we were in bed rather than in the aeroplane! Until that was we were consumed by the stench of raw sewage, it appears the drainage can't cope with sudden downpours and the drains start to bubble up, very pleasant!
After a few hours of very broken sleep we awoke to find our room was flooded with a couple of inches of flood water off the street, wading through we headed to the hotel restaurant for breakfast; which consisted of cereals, powdered milk, Viennese whirls, chicken stir fry, fried rice, hotdog chipolatas, bacon, fried eggs, toast and croissants, quite an eclectic mix!
We arranged to meet Pete and Charlotte in the City Centre, little did we know it would take an hour and a half taxi ride just to make the 20km journey through Bangkok to the city centre. The driving is somewhat skilfully s*** and pants wettingly bad! There are dotted white lines on the road indicating separate lanes for traffic, however they appear to be blissfully unaware of what they mean, insisting on driving 120km per hour where possible, weaving in and out and along the dotted lines, quite amazing how 3 lanes can fit 6 cars across at such speed! However we did manage to arrive just about in one piece!
Our touristy day started with a walk to the Grand Palace, we weren't however appropriately dressed (no shorts or open toed shoes, and long sleeves required too) and we weren't too keen on paying the admission price or wading through the hoards of people, so off we headed for a day of TukTuk journeys, river boat cruises, strolls through the city and ended with our first(definitely not last) Chang beers. The 3 of us chose pad Thais for dinner, however something that resembled spicy cat sausage arrived for a distraught and disappointed looking Andrew, but he still ate it. We then decided to head back on the train (seemed like the safer option) Which was a much nicer and much much cheaper too, plus a hell of a lot better for your health!
Had an early night after our first hectic encounter with Bangkok and as we had an early pick up of 6am in the morning for a day trip the next day.