One night (and day!) in Bangkok

After arriving yesterday evening, we have now spent our first full night and day in Bangkok. This morning we went to Wat Pho, one of Bangkok's largest temples. It is very colourful and ornate and we spent a good couple of hours exploring the temple complex, even though we've both visited on previous trips to Thailand. It houses the giant reclining Buddha, a 46m long and 15m high statue of Bhudda, covered in gold leaf - an amazing site. Around the statue are 108 bronze bowls and Solana enjoyed dropping coins into each of them for good luck. Solana seems to love the temples and, in particular, the Buddha statues - today she kneeled down in the prayer area and bowed and "prayed", observing and copying the Thai visitors praying. She is very interested in it all, and taking it all in, with plenty of questions (some of which we can't answer ourselves!).

As many of you will recall (certainly those of you in our pub quiz team the week we had the question about him), in October last year, the Thai King Bhumibol died - he had been the world's longest reigning monarch at the time of his death and is highly revered here in Thailand. Many Thai people are still wearing black clothes or armbands or ribbons as a mark of respect and remembrance and there are pictures of him all over the city. The queues to visit the Grand Palace (where his body currently resides) were impressively long today. We had a tasty lunch in a little restaurant near Wat Pho, then got a taxi back to our hotel. The traffic in Bangkok seems to be incredibly busy - akin to rush hour on the M62 but at all times of the day and night! This afternoon we paid a visit to one of the hotel pools (there are 2!) and Jacuzzi.

This evening we met up with my Thai friend Jee, who was studying for her PhD at the University of Bradford as the same time as me. We haven't seen one another for about 15 years, so it was lovely to have the chance to meet up again. We all went out for dinner (see last photo here) and had a good catch up. We plan to spend some more time together tomorrow too.Read more