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Bangkok is a fantastic place. We stayed at a hotel near Khao San road, the Four Sons Inn. It has air-con and sky for GBP 3.50 each a night! It does have a horrendously strong smell of soap though every time you walk into the room, but this goes when the air-con is on. Khao San road is like nowhere i've been before...it's full of street stalls selling everything you could think of, t-shirts, books, dvds, football shirts, fake ids, bags...the list goes on. Not only that but there are so many carts selling street food too that costs about 30p and some of the best food i've had all trip. It's cooked right infront of you with fresh ingredients. You feel bad paying so little but it doesn't stop you.
Our hotel is on the road parallel with Khao San, Rambuttri which is a bit more chilled out. There are some really good and still really cheap restaurants and nice bars. In one place we had a locals drink which is a jug of kiwi jucie mixed with thai whiskey, in the form of a slush puppy. You drink it out of shot glasses, and when we got it having had quite a few drinks already Emma piped up with, "It's a jog of shuts!" I think maybe we didn't need a whole jug of booze if she was already talking like that.
We spent one day being tourists and seeing the Grand Palace and Wat Pho which are pretty impressive buildings. It's taking a while to acclimatise to the heat though and our stamina for walking round and being tourists isn't great yet, so we got the water taxi back up the river and went for food and drinks before collapsing in our room and watching bad films. We also spent a day at the weekend market...when i said Khao San road is like no where i've been this market was a whole different kettle of fish!! 15,000 stalls selling anything and everything...it was fantastic but so so so so hot and humid. It's hard bartering and making decisions when you feel like that. Mum and Dad had found a cafe selling good coffee and playing good music, so when we felt overwhelmed we hunted for it. It was a good place to recover and build up strength before fighting through the heat and people to buy a last few things and find a taxi. We'll have to go back and stock up on things when we return to Bangkok after Vietnam, Cambodia and Malaysia to bring stuff home...that's if we have any money left anyway.
Some of you will have read this next bit already. It's what we did for my birthday while in Bangkok and I put this on facebook, so you can just skip over it: Between money from my parents and Emma i spent 2 days over my birthday in the Shangri-La Hotel in Bangkok! It was the most amazing hotel where everyone treats you like royalty. We were on the 23rd floor so had fantastic views across the city. The pool was perfect, there were free drinks and canapes between 5.30 and 7.30 in the evening. These were meant to be just a starter before people went out for dinner but we managed to eat so much that it was our dinner! We definately made the most of what was on offer.
We did though have to buy proper shoes so we were allowed into the lounge for drinks as all we had were walking boots or flipflops which unsurprisingly did not meet clothing regulations!
We had a kingsize bed, huge bath and sky tv. I woke up to the Guardian outside our door and came back to the room from the pool to find 2 birthday cakes!! The hotel had given me one along with a card, and emma had built this fantastic creation using chocolate wafers, m&ms, chocolate brownies, chocolate hearts and cocktail umbrellas!!! All sourced from very limited options around Khao San road in Bangkok.
After a very stressful day lounging around by the pool and stressing over which free drinks to choose we went out to the Blue Elephant restaurant. There are a chain off them all over the world apparently and it was really good food and great service again. We ate so much and then ordered a chocolate pudding on Emma's request which took a long long time to come. All of a sudden the lights in the whole restaurant went down and 9 thai waiters surrounded the table with a cake stand of ice cream and sang happy birthday! They did the usual version then launched into a thai version with clapping which was doubly embarassing but very funny. It turns out Emma insisted on ordering a pudding because they only sing if you buy one!! Thanks Emma, she just wanted to embarass me!!
We got back to the hotel room and mum rang. Had a pretty long conversation with all the family and ended up with them on speaker phone singing happy birthday along with emma, while i blew out the candles on her cake she'd made. Emma videoed it and it's pretty funny viewing.
We then watched a couple of films to make the most of having a tv and sky, one was a terrible horror film that left us actually too freaked out to sleep. so we had to then watch a soppy love film to send us on our way. Unfortunately it was quite a good film so we ended up watching the whole thing and not sleeping untile half 3 in the morning!! It was a great day though...not a bad way to turn 23.
Thanks again for your messages, miss you all lots...we'll be back before you know it. The 19th July is our return date. We are off to Vietnam for a month tomorrow, then Cambodia, followed by Malaysia, back to Bangkok before finishing in Hong Kong. We're back to being backpackers now for a while. We'll try and put some photos up soon.
Lots of love, Craig and Emma xxxxxxxxxxxx
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