Khao San Road, Bang Lamphoo—Not!

Since we leave in two days, we have to get some of the touristy things done in Bangkok. We head down to the water and catch the tourist taxi boat to stop 8 where one can tour Wat Pho, the reclining gold budah and across the street see the Grand Palace.

The weather is far cooler than when we left and we are comforably not sweating today.

We get off the boat and I follow Victor as he walks forever down the street. I don't know why...but I do. Finally a Tuk-Tuk driver asks us if we want a ride to the temple, which is now far behind us.

I knew that.

Victor thought we were just going to walk around the complex. Hmmm, what fun is that, we should see the sleeping statue. We turn around and walk back to the complex entrance and we are peeking in the window and can see the mass of gold lying down. Wow! When we get to the gate, they want 50 Baht. We walk on figuring we have seen it through the window, and the fussy camera is sitting on the recharger at the condo.

We walk towards the Grand Palace that while located on the next block, it is a huge block. All this tourist activity makes us hungry and we decide to skip the palace and go find a restaurant instead. Wouldn't you know it, we end up back in Bang Lamphoo. I should have brought the guide book to sell back to the lady!

We think we are on Khao San Road, one of those world famous streets like Sunset Strip. In fact we are only a block away. We have a wonderful lunch sitting at a sidewalk cafe watching the very entertaining street life. We even have sellers come to our table with their trinkets and we do a little more shopping for the folks back home. This too is one of our best days. Very type B!

We are planning how to make our escape from Bangkok. Our flight leaves at 6:30 Sunday morning. Will we find a cab from the condo? We have to leave at 3:30 AM to get to the airport on time. Victor suggests we go to the airport after dinner and just hang out over night. I think we should move to a guest house in Bang Lamphoo. This place is open all night for a taxi.

We head back and I take a nap before we head off to dinner. We have chosen to visit V9 again, by far the best dining experience we have had this whole trip. We again love it! They have this wonderful small plate platter that is out of this world. We order the Spanish ensemble this time and enjoy every bite, even the muscles!

Bangkok in the daylight

We are ready to try out our superb knowledge of the rail system and head out of the condo and take the other way out of this neighborhood. As luck would have it, we get to pass over a canal, exciting....until we get there. The smell is powerful. The street lined with food sellers backed up against this sewer-canal, an amazing concept. Blessedly, the walk to the train is just a few minutes.

We immediately try to buy a multi-day pass, only to learn they have one day, three day or one month passes. We choose the 3 day for 300 b, $9. As we are in the process of the transaction, one of the workers who speaks English comes to talk to us. After learning the pass does not include the Sky Train, but only the subway, we decide this will be useless and are going to purchase only a single trip ticket. Hmmmmm....not so. The man has already started to give us the 3 day passes. He can't unsell them. So we buy the one he has already coded. That makes it ever more so useless as everything we are planning do in the next 3 days is together.

We are frustrated and leave with a bit of a pout, deciding the walk is not too far. Guess what....It IS!

Did I mention how hot Bangkok is? UGH!

The computer that comes with the condo has some security features on it such that I can't access aol or any of the sites where I have to log in. This is troublesome as the time Vic is in class I am to do the blogging...So we head over to the computer market, Pantip Plaza. We walk for hours here. There are no deals. It seems silly to buy an Asian computer now just for this trip. We find the internet cafe and catch up on Emails.