Sunday 14 October 2012

Last Day in Bangkok - Khao San Road (Part II) and Wat Indharavihan

We were pleased to find that the Trang had a lovely pool, free Wifi in the room and (to Nicola's delight) a couple of cats roaming around the outdoor lounge area. We made the most of the relaxing atmosphere and spent an afternoon updating our blog, swimming in the pool and taking a well deserved shower. We had a little womble down the road to get our bearings but decided instead to stop at a 7 Eleven (they are EVERYWHERE in Thailand) and treat ourselves to a microwaveable (don't judge us we spent 3 days in the jungle and almost 3 weeks eating noodles) ham and cheese toasties (which were delicious) and chicken burgers (not so good). My choice of chicken burger (chicken teriyaki steak burger) turned out to be chicken flavoured steak...bizarre.




As the beds in the Trang were brilliantly soft, we had the best nights sleep so far in Thailand and woke with a new energy and decided to have a walk across Bangkok to MBK, the shopping mall we previously visited. It had come to our attention that I only had two pairs of shorts, both of which were stained at the time (and before you judge us again, one pair was sent to the laundry in Chiang Mai and came back dirtier than I had sent it there...the other pair was just stained, no excuses) and it would be a good idea for me to buy more. So we used our map and Nicola's faultless sense of direction (mine went on the blink from time to time) we spent approx 45 minutes walking across Bangkok to MBK - we even got caught in the tropical storm that had blown in that weekend. We made it in one piece and I managed to haggle some bargains, three pairs of shorts for 950 baht, with a saving of 400 baht through haggling...yeah yeah yeah! We also bought a pair of hand carved (I hope they are hand-carved or the quality is terrible) wooden elephant candle holders that are now nestled in my rucksack. After our purchases in MBK we went back to the hotel to chill for the rest of the evening...it's a hard life.

On another bizarre note, on the way back to our hotel room we passed the hotel conference room/breakfast room and saw that there was what appeared to be a Thai W.I meeting. Although, in true Eastern style, rather than sitting around knitting/gossiping/eating cakes and being generally reserved, we saw a couple of middle aged Thai women belting out a karaoke tune that was completely incomprehensible  to our ears...they may have been singing in Thai, but they may well have been singing in English...either way it was awful,but bless 'em, they sang their hearts out regardless.

After another fully relaxed night, we rose just in time for breakfast and then made our way to Khao San Road (shopping for clothes).  We were planning on using the pool, however, when we went for breakfast we saw what appeared to be a number of student photographers with models using the pool for a photo shoot, posing in the pool. We thought it would have been weird/uncomfortable if we had joined them in the pool so we thought it best just to had straight to Khao San Road. To our relief, it's not so busy during the day, but due to the humidity it still seemed like an intense experience...people hassling us to buy suits, dresses, all sorts of things; honestly, who buys a suit and winter coat when its 35 degrees! Nicola bought two lovely dresses for 200baht and 180baht and we then booked our airport transfer and headed back to the Trang...to pack up ready for our flight to Australia!!!

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