Hey everyone,

We were sad to leave Koh Samui on Saturday morning, and even sadder to arrive in the Bangkok heat. We headed straight out to see the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Keo - this involved going through 'old Bangkok', which was a bit more touristy. They didn't have a Skytrain in that part of town, so we got a river boat along the Chao Phraya river. The river was a nice way to see the city. When we got off the boat the heat was unbearable, which was made worse by the fact that we had to be in long sleeves and long pants to enter the Palace grounds. We were directed to what we assumed was the main entrance where a seemingly friendly man informed us that the Palace was closed for a few hours while the King made a visit. He suggested other places to see in the area and directed us to a waiting Tuk-tuk. He also mentioned some nice shops where we could buy some 'Cashmere'. Once in the Tuk-tuk alarm bells started ringing and we released that we'd been had. Luckily our Tuk-tuk man needed petrol, and it wasn't long before he pulled into a petrol station and took our opportunity and got out of there as quick as possible. After a nice lunch we found our way back to the Palace which was in fact open!

To our disappointment most of the Palace was outside and we had to take our time because of the heat! It was beautiful, and we went to see the Emerald Buddha which was smaller than we were expecting, and was not made Emerald at all! On our way out of the Palace we stopped for an ice lolly to cool ourselves down, and chose what we thought was a fruity one. After a few minutes of trying to decipher the flavour, we were surprised to find what looked like sweetcorn in it! After a close inspection of the packet we realised that not only did it have sweetcorn in it, it also had green beans and garlic! Fin was disgusted, and threw his away, but I gave mine a go and didn't mind it apart from the green beans. We were relieved to get back to the hotel that night, and didn't think we could cope with another day in the heat and traffic fumes - so we decided to spend Sunday in air conditioned malls! We had a nice day window shopping, where Fin got excited about the auto gallery in one of the malls. On the walk back to our guesthouse we thought we were delirious from the heat when we saw an elephant on the pavement ahead of us - only in Thailand!

We arrived in Sydney this morning to much cooler weather and a few drops of rain, but we are not complaining! After having no sleep on the flight we are having a relaxing day and will start our sight seeing first thing in the morning.

Hope you are all ok,

Sian and Fin xxx