3rd June 2008

Woke up and pottered around for a while until I got thrown out by the scruff of my neck and got conned by a nice tuk tuk driver to my new hotel in preparation for my intrepid tour. Very posh and nice hotel, sharing with only other guy out of 16 of us. I wandered towards the temples, batting away people trying to con me with Buddhist holidays and various suspicious foibles. Eventually after discovering the National Museum and The National Gallery was in fact closed via a coincidence of them being lazy on Mondays, I participated in some daredevil road crossing and headed on down to the Grand Palace, where I once more dodged some tour guides, got given some cool floppy trousers to wear, and headed into the Grand Palace/Temple grounds. My general conclusion was that it looked like it had been made with Lego and painted with tacky thick gold paint. Was interesting though, and I saw the only(?) emerald Buddha in the world, respectfully kneeling, with shoes off, not pointing feet at the Buddha etc. Melting some what on the way, I exited out of the grounds and fell into a coin museum, which was airconned but pretty dull overall. Collapsed in a dizzy state of starvation in a food supplying café and then wibbled back towards Khoa San Road. On the way a crazy birdseed selling woman CHASED me down the street trying to put the bags in my pocket.

To reward myself for surviving I bought a DV from 7-11 and as I was about to leave when I locked eyes with a random guy who looked strangely familiar. After 10 seconds we both finally twigged, and realised it was Mark and Kelly from Taupo and Wellington. Crazy coincidence and we had a good chat over what we had been up to etc. Nearly got lost going back to hotel and met my room mate (Karl), so chatted for a while with him. Meeting was at 6 with Pete (our Cambodian leader) and the 15 other members of the group (Debs, Steph, Lauran, Holly, Phillipa, Jess, Pren, Sarah, Harriott, Charlotte, Ellen, Lauren, Tereasa and Annie). All girls apart form Karl and I, and all UK apart from Annie who is from the US of A. Later in the evening Pete took us for a nice meal in a Thai restaurant just off KS road, where I had a yummy Pad Thai, and we went on for some drinks at a pavement side bar. Pete seemed to taken an (un)healthy liking to me, much to general amusement, and we had a number of beers before our group splintered, some returning to the hotel and the rest of use went to a bar in Koh San Road. A bucket of vodbull later (shared with Lauren S) and we were moderately tipsy and happy.