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Day 10
3rd August 2013
I wake up early on the train and go for a cigarette. We are still about 2 hours from Bangkok so I go back to bed for another couple of hours. I wake again and the porter comes round and strips the bedding and before long we are pulling into Bangkok station. We disembark the train and walk round the corner to our hotel and drop off our bags. We can't check in until around 12 so we all decide to go for our last breakfast together as some of the group are leaving us today. After breakfast we head back to the hotel to say goodbye to some of our G family, Hannah, Fabian, Patricia, Paula, Kevin, Hannah and Steve. Once everyone one has gone some of the group head out into Bangkok to explore but I stay and wait for my room and before long Bond appears with the room and its time for a much needed shower and change of cloths before heading off to see the Grand palace with Tracey. We head out on the street and flag down a metered taxi and off we go. When we arrive we jump out and head towards the main entrance and as we do so a guy stops us and asks us if we have tickets. We say no and he sends us off to another entrance down the street. We find this a little bit strange but we wander down to the other entrance. When we get there another guy approaches us and tells us that the palace is closed to tourists until 15:00 and is only open to locals to pray at the moment. He then goes on to tell us he can organise for us to go somewhere else first and then come back. Just as he finishes his spiel and we say no thanks politely an announcement comes across a speaker outside of the gate say the palace is open 08:00 till 17:00 daily, yea nice try mate but this isn't our first visit to Bangkok and we walk off back to the main entrance again. We walk through the gates with no hassle this time and go and buy out tickets. The palace is heaving with tourists hustling and bustling through to the main part of the palace. Trying to take any photos here without having loads of Chinese and Korean tourists in the shot is almost impossible. We wander round taking a few snaps and then out to the other part of the palace which is a little less crowed. Once we finish we leave and look for a taxi to take us back to the hotel. A guy approaches us and says he can take us there for 50 baht, bargain we think and start to follow him to his taxi and as we do he tells us he will take us to some shops on the way! We take the hotel business card back and say no thank you and walk off. We cross the road and flag down another taxi and ask for the meter to be put on. He says yes but doesn't switch it on and starts to drive, we make our request again and he says 200 baht to go to the hotel so we tell him to stop the car and we get out. Finally we flag down another taxi which has the meter switched on and we give him the address of the hotel and off we go. The traffic at this time of day is manic and by the time we get to the hotel the fair is 110 baht. We pay him 130 and go back to our rooms to get ready for the welcome meeting and dinner.
We meet in reception at 18:00 and sit down ready to meet our new travel companions. There are 2 sisters Natalie and Lauren, a Canadian couple Leslie and Raffie as well as 3 other girls Amanda, Jen and Heather. Bond goes through the normal stuff with the group making one or two jokes along the way about members of the original group. After the meeting we head off to the restaurant over the road for dinner and then after back to the hotel before those whose want to get Tuk Tuks to backpackers street for a couple of drinks. After a few drinks we all catch taxis back to the hotel and turn in for the night.
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