Day 7 - Temples

An early-ish start today to attempt to beat some of the heat and hit some of Bangkok's cultural landmarks. There are a lot of temples in Bangkok, thousands and thousand, but we decided to aim realistically and just go to some of the biggies, Wat Arun, Wat Pho and the Grand Palace.

We started off getting the boat along the Chao Phraya river to Wat Arun. Some parts of Bangkok have an amazing transit system whilst other parts rely on canals - unless you want to try and persuade a taxi driver to turn the meter on like they're supposed to rather than scam you. Wat Arun is the Temple of Dawn. It was quite small compared to put afternoon stops but very pretty.

As a note, apparently it's very offensive for a woman to sit next to/bump into/go too near a monk so I spent a lot of today on high alert - and we now have a little song called 'Don't Bump The Monk' in the style of an old Big Breakfast game tune (which is probably offensive in itself)

Next stop was Wat Pho, Temple of Reclining Buddha. Again beautiful, especially in the sunshine as it was covered in coloured glass. The focal point as the name suggests is a huge gold plated reclining Buddha housed in a long temple.

Final stop was the Grand Palace. A big site with lots of temples and buildings built for housing various important items; including the Emerald Buddha. (No photos allowed of this one). The site was very busy with people coming to pay their respects to the King who passed away last year and by this point in the day we were so hot and temple-fatigued that we called it a day and got a tuk tuk ride back to the pier. Not too hairy a tuk tuk ride really as the traffic was pretty bad but it's something you have to experience at least once in BK.

Next stop was China town and a hubbub of markets and people riding mopeds between stalls. We were both getting hangry so stopped as a place serving fish ball noodles. Every time I eat I await the food poisoning but still hasn't arrived yet...

We came back home for a couple of hours to shower and get ready to go out. We picked one of the more casual roof top bars, Cloud 47, but as a couple of non-romantics we forgot it was Valentine's Day so it was pretty busy. Everyone else was there all roses and looking into each other eyes whilst I double parked on special offer wine and Matt had a solo pitcher of Chang. Classy.

Final stop of the day was the infamous Khao San Road. We got there with a crazy taxi driver who kept going on about Tony Blair getting his wife pregnant in the Caribbean, how expensive Europe is and going 'bomb, bomb' whilst turning around to slap Matt on the knee and shout Yorkshire. Khao San Road is party haven for backpackers and took me back to my summer holidays as an 18 year old in Gran Canaria except with more people selling scorpions on sticks and wrist bands with various lewd slogans on which I won't repeat here. The words 'youngsters' and 'too loud to have a conversation' were uttered as we chose a quieter bar where I enjoyed bottles of wine cooler. I have no idea what a wine cooler is but felt like a 'classy' alcopop. Rock and roll. A less eventful taxi home and bed by 1am - by the end of the trip we might have managed something more party respectable.

Last partial day in Bangkok tomorrow and then we head north to Chiang Mai on the sleeper train for a quieter pace of life.Read more