First Impressions of Thailand

We visited a floating market and on the way saw this fruit stall. Can you identify any of the fruits?

We named this local drink "lizard pee". We recommend you don't try it if you come to Thailand. Even with coca cola it was undrinkable, but somehow we managed.
Reclining Buddha at Wat Po - one of the 424 temples in Bangkok. Only 420 more to visit!
The back door of the Throne Room at Vimnanek
The Teak House at Vinmanek. This is a really beautiful massive mansion made entirely of teak without any nails. Any of you budding DIY enthusiasts fancy a try at this?
Buddha at Wat Po.

Health and Safety at work again
Just thought we'd slip in one more photo from Sri Lanka. Our last night in Colombo was spent with some really great guys in a local bar that had never been visited by tourists. Three locals were curious about us and came over to have a chat. They were nice guys and wouldn't allow us to pay for anything including the tuk tuk to the train station. Hope we didn't get them into trouble by keeping them at the pub too long!!

Part of the Grand Palace in Bangkok
Another part of the Grand Palace

And another part of the Grand Palace
Garry's head up a drum - maybe an attempt to get away from Alison's nagging?
This is one of the millions of street vendors selling excellent food
A local custom of feeding loaves to fish. These fish were so huge they can down a whole loaf in one mouthful! Swimming not recommended!
This is the actual Grand Palace!

Sorry the photos are not in chronological order - we are still learning.

When we arrived we booked into a great hotel smack bang in the middle of town - a short walk from the Grand Palace. There is too much to see and do but we have tried. We have been up and down the river and on a fabulous canal backwater tour seeing houses on stilts.

The Grand Palace is spread over around 15 acres and consists of loads of temples and amazing historic buildings. Each time a new king comes to power the done thing seems to be to add another bit. One of the highlights is the emerald buddha, and guess what - this is a buddha made from a single piece of........jade! No photos allowed.

This takes us nicely to an evening out with Greg (Martin Hasler's nephew). He took us to see the sights (again no photos allowed). We were probably the only tourists not to get ripped off that night! The touts offer menus for the shows with items such as sparklers, ping pong, razor blade, cigarette smoking etc. If you need more info, drop us a comment!

On Sunday, we went to a floating market just outside of Bangkok. All the locals go for a food fest. There are all types of food - noodles, rice, chicken satay, pork, sausages, frogs, eels, terrapins, minced bird (not sure what this is), buckets of dodgy looking things. We stuck to something we could recognise. We had one of those huge fish - barbequed. We joined a boat load of locals on a canal tour and they were kind enough to share their food with us (fried banana) so we made them eat our jack fruit. If you get the opportunity - don't try it! It started raining so as we couldn't see a number 79 bus we jumped on a truck bus type thing. A very friendly local girl not only put us off at the right stop but also took us in her taxi back to the hotel. She refused to take any money which seems to be typical of the real thai people (ie not the touts who tell us everywhere is closed to get us to go on a tour with them!)

Generally people have been absolutely lovely.

We have used all forms of transport - sky train, river boat, songphew, tuk tuk, taxi, underground, bus - just the motor bike taxi left to try out.

We have found Thailand (Bangkok) vastly different to India and Sri Lanka as you would expect. In summary, it's cleaner but the food is not as good.

Now we are off to Chaing Mai by train - hopefully to do some trekking if the rain keeps off.

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