Hello again from the mental city that is Bangkok. Bang bloody kok. Soph and I are still unsure whether we like it here or not. Actually I think Soph positively hates it. I’m still yet to make my mind up.

We woke this morning with Soph in a similar condition to yesterday. Sick, tired, tummy ache. Not a great way to be feeling when looking to trek around some of Bangkok’s main attractions. So you’ll never guess what we did today….

We started by making our way through the park towards the Grand Palace. Oh yeah, we decided not to visit the monkey town until Soph was fully fit. Just in case there was an uprising and she wasn’t in a fit state to runaway quick enough. We’ve recently watched Planet of the Apes you see.

Anyway in the park we were stopped twice. First by a group of Thai students with a questionnaire on how foreigners got to Thailand. We duly filled this out before being stopped again by a nice man who taught at the school over the road from the park. He told us the palace was closed until three but drew us a map on places we could go. This was really nice as before him I literally didn’t trust anyone who could be mistaken for a local.

After a seemingly endless walk we discovered the Sleeping Buddha. Or reclining, lazy, chilled out, gets all the others do the hard stuff, Buddha. We pictured another life size gold statue with bright coloured walls and candles around it. But boy were we wrong. This reclined Buddha was huge. Like totally massive. It was extremely impressive and definitely something we are glad to have ticked off the list of things to see in Bangkok.

We walked around the surrounding temples for a while before moving on. Although we feel like we’ve seen more gold than Michael Phelps during our time in Thailand, it almost feels disrespectful not to take a photo of every single angle of each and every temple we visit.

As we left we ran into a group of Tuk Tuk drivers on the prowl. But amongst the scramble one man gave us advice on how to reach our next stop, Wat Arun. Didn’t even ask for money. Today was totally changing our perception of the Bangkok residents.

We found ourselves at a small pier where we paid 3b each to cross the river. Again something Soph could really have done without, but we did it anyway (what a gentleman).

2 minutes later we had reached the shore of Wat Arun and started to explore the temple. This was a different type of temple to all the others we’d seen. Of course there was gold and buddhas and candles and walls that told detailed stories. But this temple was more of a ruin than any of the others we’d visited. We climbed the steep (and I really mean steep) steps to the top, to see a view of the city. Hovering above the built up metropolis that is Bangkok, while still looking down on the dirty, crowded, almost third world state of the city. Another place we’d never even heard of before arriving yesterday but definitely worth the trek to get to.

We walked  back with intentions of visiting the Grand Palace. There were tons of people hanging around the various entrances to the landmark. Unfortunately though another local explained how it was now closed but would be open again tomorrow from 8:30am until 3pm.

Walking back towards the park Soph was really starting to struggle. A man then popped out from nowhere to give us some more advice. He mentioned how he works at the palace and just wanted to tell us what we could do next around the city.

Such a nice man….

He told us about the Sitting Buddha, the Standing Buddha, the Cartwheeling Buddha (jokes, that doesn’t exist). He then Pointed us towards a Tuk Tuk for us to jump. Now if you have been reading since the beginning you will know we have had this before. The suit shop incident…

Anyway with Soph being so tired it was probably best we got alternative transport to take us to our next stop. And with our track record today of nice, helpful locals, we thought why not. But of course after agreeing a price of 50b before getting in, the driver told us 100 yards down the road that we would have to make a stop at his sponsor first. And guess who his sponsors were. A bloody suit factory.

We politely told him that we wouldn’t be interested in a suit. Once….Twice….Five times! Then when he finally got the hint he told us to get out. He couldn’t possibly take us anywhere without visiting his sponsor’s joke of commission feeding suit factory. So we got out. Dick! Properly angered me. So much I had to count to 10. TEN GODDAMMIT. I am pretty sure we won’t be getting in another Tuk Tuk again. Twats!

We had dinner in a road that runs parallel with the famous Koh San Road. It was really nice. Soph had some noodles. I had a chicken fit for 2 to 4 people. They even lit it on fire. I need to try make those vests seem more fitting somehow.

Tomorrow is the Bangkok marathon. Neither of us are running it of course. But we may go support.

Thanks for following x