Thursday, April 26, 2007

Bangkok, Thailand

At the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew.


Bangkok is hot!! We arrived to 40 degree heat. Reena and I detest hot weather... if only we had read the Lonely Planet intro for Thailand, we would have realised that April is the hottest month of the year... We're going from one extreme to another. One good thing about leaving the snowy mountains behind is also getting rid of our winter gear. We've managed to offload 10kg from our backpacks making life a whole lot friendlier... not only that, we have more space now for shopping!

The food here is sooo good. I've stuffed myself with green curries, red curries, panang curries, pad thai, noodle soups, bbqs, fruit shakes, banana pancakes with chocolate!. The street vendors are so cheap in Bangkok too. Curry for 60p, pad thai for 30p, bbq sticks for 15p. I'm starting to get myself a little belly. Reena said to me the other day "Becky, your belly is starting to poke out... it never used to do that!" Ha! I've decided to stop ordering the extra bowl of rice. The portions here are tiny... I don't get it. You get a massive bowl of curry, and a tiny dome of rice... no way enough rice for the curry.

yum


Reena with some food from the street vendor in the background.


We skipped the infamous night scene in Bangkok, e.g. thai kickboxing and pingpong shows, it wasn't quite our scene... but we took a walk down the Khoa San Road which was just around the corner from where we were staying, a very busy place at night! There are loads of shops, bars, restaurants, neon lights, market stalls, etc... lots going on.

Reena and I on an evening out.


We took a day to see the main sights in Bangkok. Reena and I take so long to get up, get ready and have breakfast we end up walking around town in the midday sun. Its absolutely debilitating! Even when sitting in the shade the sweat just poured out. we saw a lot of westerners with clothes that looked like they'd walked through a water hose!

Monkeys surrounding Wat Phra Kaew


The reclining buddha at Wat Poh


We also found the Wat Poh School of Massage, the home of Thai Massage and got a 30 minute session. Theres a lot of pressing (really hard) and clicking of joints... I had to keep biting my lip for fear of either bursting out into laughter because it was tickling me, or for yelping "ouch!" because it hurt so much! If anyone reading this knows Romana, I have to say that her massage is much better than what I got here in Bangkok. If anyone is looking for a good masseuse in London just let me know!

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