After a superb sleep (thanks for the earplugs Annah!!! ;-)) I got up
and had my first Metered Taxi ride to get to the Grand Palace, the guy
was a maniac and nearly crashed twice on route, trying to squeeze into
spaces that didn't exist! Muppet... still it was cheap and saved my
feet after stomping on them for two days already.
The Grand Palace is pretty impressive,
some mahuusive buildings and all very ornate and covered in either gold
leaf or a mosaic of tiny tiles of all types... I took waaaay too many
pictures, so will only put a selection up onto photobucket.
Whilst
I was sitting in some shade (it was VERY hot today) a group of Thai
High School kicks approached and asked if they could interview me for
their school project...! I obviously agreed to do that and the tech
savvy kids whipped out their dictaphone and started asking questions,
Lol. I couldn't really answer all of them having only been in Thailand
a few days, I didn't really know what the best bit was, but it was
quite amusing having a chat with them. They gave me a little hand made
elephant keyring as a thank you and shuffled off laughing to
themselves... five minutes later they shuffled back over and asked for
a group photo with me! Lol, I guess it took them a few minutes to get
the courage up to come back to ask for that, and to decide who was
going to take the photo. It was quite amusing, I guess its a good way
to get the kids here intergrating with the tourists and to practise
their Engrish.
I walked around the outside of the Grand Palace grounds (there is only one entrance/exit gate) to see the Reclining Buddha,
which was pretty amazing. It's huuuuge and completely gold apart from
the bottoms of the feet which have very intricate mother of pearl
inlaid images.
From there I got my first tuktuk to go up to the Rajdamnoen
Stadium, where the Muay Thai boxing is on tonight to get a ticket. I
bartered a deal with the old driver and off we went. It is pretty
smelly being on one of those, the exhaust fumes and heat from the coach
engines are right in your face, but it is a great way to zoom across
the city. I felt safer in this than the taxi from earlier! The stadium
didn't appear to have a box office open, so I went to the official
tourist centre which I knew was just around the corner and bought my
ticket there. I recall Steve saying they were around 2000B for a VIP
ticket, so this official tourist place obviously doesn't rip you off as
it was 2000B, which is about 32 quid. Quite expensive in comparison to
everything else here, but what the hell it'll be good. Got my ticket
sorted and then talked about my plans for tomorrow to go to Koh Chang
Island in the south east. I decided to buy a deal from them where they
collect me in minibus from the hotel, drive to the aircon buses, then
the bus goes to the port near Trat and the ticket includes the ferry
over to Koh Chang. I probably paid a little bit more than if I'd bodged
it all the way along the same route, but for only 550B which is just
under a tenner, I ain't complaining! I'll see you tomorrow Steve! I
will call you on route with an arrival time... ;-)
I walked back to the internet cafe I'm in, which is just round
the corner from my hotel as I already knew the way from day ones' mad
walking session. Hopefully other internet cafe's around the country
will be equipped like this one so I can copy my pics to USB key and
upload a few... it is how I imagined it would be, and was why I didn't
plump for bringing a laptop in the end.
I did my best piece of bartering today too, to the point where
the lady told me to go away, so I did and she came running after me to
agree to my price! Lol! Bartering hard FTW! ;-)
So, thats it for today unless I come back on after the Thai Boxing later. Looking forward to that!
Tomorrow morning I'll be off by 8am on my trip to Koh Chang... lush!
Cya!
Sloggs :-)
