Back to Bangkok

We headed back to Bangkok for another six nights at our favourite hotel (so far). We had a good, relaxing time here - we went back to the Chatuchak Market area to visit the Children's Museum, unfortunately the travel guide did NOT mention that it's closed for renovation... there was quite a bit a disappointment on Liam's part. We consoled ourselves with some cold drinks and a wander past the tens of shops all selling the same thing - live ornamental fish.

Afterwards we were sitting in the park and were accosted by two schoolgirls who wanted to interview us for their English class. After going though their questionnaires, they then recorded our answers and after some giggling (them, not us) and a couple of photos, off they went.

We visited Lumphini Park and had a go on the pedelos and a close up look at the resident monitor lizards. There are masses of them and some are huge!

We went to the Grand Palace and forgot about the dress code, so whilst I was okay, Cliff and Liam had to borrow some long trousers to maintain their dignity. The same day we visited Kao Sang Road which is meant to be the backpackers haven. Lunch was okay there but I really hope that this isn't the only place travellers in Bangkok get to. On the way 'home' we took the riverboat. I genuinely thought that we would sink. It was so overloaded and the conductor kept insisting that everyone move further inside to allow even more people on. We insisted on staying near the back where we could jump off easily. At one stage a river police boat came alongside to check it out and had a word with the driver, but seemingly satisfied that it was okay to have practically double the amount of passengers, off they went.

On the Wednesday night we went along to MBK and watched a couple of rounds of the Thai boxing - Muay Thai. The first fight was between two 17-year olds and the second fighters were older and were Australian and French. They also have female fights but we didn't hang around for that.

Cliff then came down with a nasty stomach bug (no pictures of this, you'll be glad to hear!), we don't think that it was food poisoning because we'd been having the same thing and had been really careful with drinking water since we've been away. The bug pretty much wiped him out for two days, we were a bit worried about travelling to Koh Samui but he bounced back. Luckily we have a good first aid kit and I found an electrolyte drink in Tescos called One More Free that looked like urine (but fortunately, didn't taste of it) which seemed to help.