Day 2 - Bangkok

Ok, because we're staying in an Israeli run hostel, I've had to navigate a page displayed in Hebrew - I hope this post works. So, last night I decided that to go to the floating market we should get up early. Recovering from the flight and the previous night's stronger than average lager, we got up at midday. The late start was partly due to the fact that we had forgotten to put the air conditioning on in the room and woke up at 5am sweating and hungover. Also, I still had a fried cricket leg wedged between my molars, which irritated me for 2 hours during the night before eventually getting back to sleep.

Having missed half the day we decided to travel by tuk-tuk and see the surrounding temples and sights. This proved difficult without a guide book but we were, of course, greeted by a friendly local who offered to take us all over the city, for the whole day, for 20 baht (30 pence). In return we walked into a taylor's and a jeweller's - and walked straight back out, allowing our Thai chauffeur to get free 'gasoline tokens' from the store owners. In the end he didn't even ask for his 20 baht so it was pretty good value at nothing. We visited the 'lucky buddha', a giant standing buddha, and some other temple I can't remember the name of. We walked home via the hill top temple from which we got an awesome panoramic view of the city and 3 hours later we were back at the KoahSan road. We're going to save the kickboxing for the return journey, so tonight just a few bars and an earlyish night before leaving for our flight tomorrow morning. Staying clear of Patpong... and fried insects... and locals of ambiguous gender...

Overall opinion of the city: fun but loud, busy and a bit tacky with all the sex tourists. It's a shame we can't see more of what Thailand has to offer in the north and the south, but I'll save that for another year.