Bangkok Day 2

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Still not feeling great due to jetlag we had a late morning start before taking our familiar route on the Skytrain and tourist boat. Our journey took about an hour and cost 35 bht for the skytrain and 25 bht (50p) for a single up river…although the chap selling the boat tickets tried to give us a 150 bht day pass…not good value if you just want to go up and back.

Bangkok is a massive city, spread far and wide and seemingly every spot of it squeezed full of people, cars, temples, shiny new skyscrapers and ramshackle homes – sometimes these two extremes within metres of each other. There is hardly any green, open space and coming from London – where we are spoilt with fantastic parks – this really felt claustrophobic.

We wanted to lay out in the sun and take a break from the hustle and bustle, but couldn’t, so instead very much looked forward to chilling at our hotel at the end of the day. Really worth getting a nice hotel when in Bangkok!

So from the pier, we headed for the Khaosan Road – the mecca for all travellers. It didn’t disappoint – full of bars, stalls, shops, massage parlours, hostels, travel agencies, and little alleyways– a really buzzing, vibrant, positive place full of travellers resting and preparing their next step. Worth a visit if not actually staying there. Whilst there, we decided to search for the Lomprayah ferry office so we knew where our coach pick up point was for the next day’s journey to the coast. We couldn’t find it even with our map and, typically, having stood still looking about for 10 seconds, we were approached by a local. He wanted 10 bht to take us there – no thanks – ok, 5 bht to take you there – again no thanks. We swiftly got moving again and luckily found the place only 20 yards around the corner!

After this we turned down numerous offers of tuk tuks and taxis and set off on foot to find the National Museum…due to the busy, wide roads it turned into a 45 minute trek to get to a building we could almost see from the Khaosan road. We should have jumped into a taxi or tuk tuk and we’d have been there in 5 minutes….ho hum.

The museum cost 200 bht and you have to leave your bags with the ticket office…which we did feeling uneasy about leaving our cameras etc behind, but it was fine. The museum is the main repository of Thailand’s historical artefacts, although it was quite modest in size.

It has an interesting history of the country and its development, with English text on the wall panels and some buttons to push that make little lights appear on maps etc – always fun! We headed through the musical instruments room, the weapons room, the gold treasures room and skipped through the pottery and textures rooms. Out of the sun this was a good way to spend a couple of hours: worth a visit.

That night we decided to take it easy as we had a taxi pick up at 5am to take us back over to the Lomprayah office for our coach to Chumphorn and on to some Island adventures. Nothing too spicy to eat and only a couple of beers. Didn’t work for me – I failed to sleep much with the anticipation!

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