Entries about shopping

Returning to Thailand it felt strangely quiet. Nobody was trying to sell us anything and nobody was shouting at us in the street. There were times in Vietnam when we weren't sure how we would cope if there was no one there telling us we needed to eat or drink but somehow we managed it. In fact, we managed to buy more here than we had done on the rest of our trip, yet not a single person had actively tried to sell us anything. Interesting that. There was one Vietnamese market we had wanted to browse, but stallholders began to almost fight over us in desperation that we bought their goods that we ended up just walking straight back out.

After a busy few days, the remainder of the morning was spent relaxing in our hotel, taking full advantage of the complimentary hot drinks and pool table. I am still awful at pool and Chris only appears better because I am so bad!

In the afternoon, after booking our train tickets to Surat Thani, we enjoyed paying 20p for lunch from the street vendors before heading downtown to the endless shopping malls. We have visited about 5 in a row, each one incredibly fancy and surprisingly busy considering the competition. We stocked up on a few necessities before heading to Lumphini park which has a pleasant circuit around a couple of lakes. We returned here the following night to take some night shots of the lake with the tower blocks rising up in the background.

The next day, we headed back up towards old town, taking the riverboat. We were trying to find a street Thanon Tanao, which wasn't named on our city map and didn't link together across the various maps in our guidebook and so a little guesswork was required! As expected, we went wrong, but found ourselves walking down a very pleasant residential street set on both sides of a canal. It was so peaceful along here with flowers and plants along the canal edge and the bridges that you could forget you were in Bangkok. We also passed a park where a group of about 50 school children were taking part in band practice and flag dancing. Although some sections were impressive, others still needed a lot of work and watching them walk the wrong way and then run back while still playing their instrument or waving their flag was quite amusing.

We eventually found Thanon Tanao, described as a street lined with restaurants, to find it pretty bare and nondescript. At least the walk there had been interesting. We found ourselves at Khao San, the backpacker street where we enjoyed people watching on our previous visit. Unfortunately we were a little early this time and although busy, it was more just passing people than drunk backpackers.

We took a riverboat back down to Wat Arun, in order to see it lit up by night. This temple is made of colourful bricks and rises high up on the water's edge.

As mentioned previously, we took a tuk tuk back to Lumphini park to take some photos before having a delicious dinner in the food market just outside. As we walked around the park it began to get a little chilly and I had to put my cardigan on. I didn't know it ever cooled down in Bangkok! Generally it was a much more comfortable temperature here this time round, especially coming from Cambodia.

After that, we caught our night train to Surat Thani in our very comfortable but freezing cold second class seated air conditioned night train.