Gaining a little confidence in the city, we decided to catch an "express boat" down the river as we were going to see the Grand Palace. It worked really well and we arrived at the pier right outside the Palace. We were soon approached by a "helpful" Thai guy who informed us that the Palace was closed until 1.00pm, but we should go and visit various other sites which he was marking out on the map. Fortunately we've become wise to these helpful strangers and didn't believe a word of it. Unlike India, where you are almost expected to be rude to these kind of people, it's more difficult to tell the Thai people to b***** off as they as so polite and do everything with big smiles on their face. We ignored the advice and set off in the other direction. The palace was open and we spent a couple of hours walking around taking some pictures.

Feeling a little cultured and pleased with ourselves that we'd avoided a scam, we jumped back on the river boat heading to Chinatown. We wandered around and had some lunch but after an hour the fumes in the town had become too much and we headed back.