Got up earlier today and went off to go to the Downtown area via the river ferry and skytrain with Chris. The river ferry was excellent, a great breeze and nice and easy to sort out, and amazing value for only 20 pence or so to go the whole length of their route! The water is pretty minging though, with loads of boats pounding up and down it all day throwing diesel and oil everywhere... yum!
The skytrain was equally easy to sort and was only about 2 quid (can't find the pound sign on this keyboard!) for a day pass to hop on and off where ever we liked... bargain. It only has two lines, but they go to the key areas.
We went to see the famous Jim Thompson's house, which is now surrounded by tower blocks after he took the trouble some 50 years ago to bring various authentic asian buildings and artifacts to the site to build his home. It is now a national treasure and museum with proceeds collected going towards blind kids in the city. He was a famous American explorer who had a hand in the silk trade being exported from Thailand and obviously loved the place. It was very interesting, time well spent.
We walked all over the downtown area and went to the Banyan Tree House hotel to get the best view of the city from their roof top, only to find they weren't open until 5pm! Bah! I'll have to try and go there when I come back to fly to Australia... Went into the shopping centre, which turns out to have the same stuff as the UK malls and for pretty much the same prices!
We also braved the crazy roads to go to the central Lumphini Park in the downtown area, which is really nice and was quite empty. Completely surrounded by massive office blocks... I saw a large lizard wandering around in there much to my surprise!
We then headed back feeling the heat to the Khoa San Road area where I went to buy some sandals for more laid back wear, and did some more haggling and then chilled for a bit and showered ready to go out to eat again. Had chicken with cashew nuts tonight, with steamed rice which was nice (some larey fried chilli's in there too... runny nose FTW!). Lunch today was noodle soup with pork balls in town which went down nicely too! I like the food here... velly much! ;-)
Just chillin now writing this in a nice airconditioned cafe... one which allows me to upload my pictures so far too, which are over on photobucket for you to see... Nice to be able to save them somewhere (and onto my USB key) in case of accidents...
Will go have another beer shortly, then go chill in my room, dip my head in my guide book for more ideas for tomorrow and then sleep a bit better hopefully!
Going to stay one more day here, because I have yet to visit the Grand Palace or see the Leaning Buddha, which I will do tomorrow.
Not sure what I'll do tomorrow night yet, Chris is off oop north tomorrow on route to Chang Mai, so I'll hang out near the hotel I expect...
The day after that I'm off to make the journey down to Koh Chang Island to meet Steve... gonna do some chillin there and enjoy the scenery and beachery! Lush!
Chuurs... Sloggs :-)
