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We all woke up about about 6am as the train was supposed to arrive in Bangkok at 7am. We'd all slept pretty well, although I woke up quite a few times in the night - not used to sleeping on a train! We hung around and watched one of the staff members starting to change some of the beds back into seats again -a very streamlined procedure, it probably takes him 1 minute for each set of 2 beds. As it got to 7am it was clear we weren't going to get to Bangkok on time which was fine for us as our hotel doesn't open until 8:00! We eventually pulled into the station at 9:30, somehow 2 and a half hours late, although there were no announcements on the train so you never know what's going on!
We walked to our hotel (same place as we stayed last time) hoping we'd be able to check-in straight away - no such luck! There were people still in our room so we had to hang around for a few hours. We made the most of the time by putting on a load of washing! When we got the key to our room we all collapsed on the beds and turned the air con low! We finished the washing, had showers and then headed out to see Wat Po temple, which is famous for its reclining Buddha, one of the largest Buddha's in the world.
We decided to catch the ferry there, so we started walking towards the nearest stop to us. On the way we ate some street food (chicken skewers and corn on the cob!) and then stopped at a French bakery café for some pastries. When we got off the ferry it was easy to find the temple - we just followed the crowds. We bought our tickets and queued to see the main attraction - the giant reclining Buddha! We were even given little shoulder bags to carry our shoes in! The Buddha is 46m long and 15m high and covered in gold leaf. It's supposed to illustrate the passing of Buddha into final nirvana. We knew it was going to be big but were all taken aback by how HUGE it was. We tried to take photos, but it was hard to capture it all in one shot! After walking all the way around it, we were back outside and had a look inside some of the other temples - all of which were also stunning. You could easily spend hours looking at everything, but we were all very hot and Chris still not feeling great so we decided to go back to the hotel for a few hours. We tried to get a taxi but none of them were willing to put the meter on and wanted to charge way over the odds - we're getting really tired of this now! So in the end we got a ferry back and managed to get a taxi from the ferry stop to the hotel - we agreed to the driver's request for the meter price plus a tip! As the meter price was only 80p he got a couple of pence more!
Later on, Dave and I ventured out to find some food while Chris slept. We got the metro train to an area called Sukumvit which was supposed to have lots of bars and restaurants. We'd had enough of taxis so the train seemed like a good idea! After wandering out of the station and along a random road, I saw some bright lights so we decided to walk that way to see what we could find. It turns out we'd found the sleazy old men version of Khao San Road, complete with lots of bars with women wearing bikinis hanging around outside. There were lots of sleazy old men sat drinking and chatting to the Thai girls. Probably a few ladyboys too but we didn't look too closely as we were concentrating on how to get out of there as fast as possible!
After retreating a safe distance away from seedy street, we found an Indian restaurant and stopped there for some lovely food. It soon filled up with Indian families and groups of friends so we knew we'd made a good choice. We went back to the hotel quite early , armed with a subway and various remedies for Chris, after finding a Boots near the station!
An early night for us ahead of our next sleeper train journey tomorrow - we're heading south to Koh Phangan for the famous full moon party on Thursday!
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