Rob and Anna's travel adventure

Back to Bangkok

Anna's entry:
Well we made it all the way back to our original start in Thailand - Bangkok. Having learnt from a previous experience to stay away from the annoying backpacker ghetto in Banglamphu, we chose to stay in a more authentic (with a lot less tourists) district of China town. In addition, China district is where the major train station is located, which we will use for our new adventure to Cambodia. Staying in China town definitely turned out to be a different experience - the usual farang bars are replaced here by numerous stalls cooking all kind of crazy food exerting all kinds of crazy smells; however, even that was a lot more interesting than listening to the drunk ignorant tourists. China town became our base for exploring the other Bangkok - with real people.
Early morning we went to the Lumphini park, a good place for people, and as we found out large monitor lizard, watching. Anyway, some locals were doing Tai Chi exercises, some were dancing, some were jogging, while others (primarily Chinese) were strength building on various fitness machines located all over the park right under the open sky. Around the ponds,. Large monitor lizards, a size close to a crocodile, were going for a swim or just lazing a morning away on the grass. Yep, business as usual. After the park, we decide to ride Skytrain, which was a good and inexpensive way to see more of Bangkok cityscape. We also combined it with a river ferry to the Wat Pho famous for its 46 meter long (140 feet) reclining Buddha. That was an impressive image of Buddha, passing into Nirvana, modeled of plaster and finished in gold leave. The wat containing this large statue of Buddha was surrounded by a maze of numerous stupas and other Buddha images. After a day of sightseeing we took a bus back to our base, China town district, and prepared for our 5 a.m. train towards the border with Cambodia. Our current plan includes Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos, after which we are hoping to explore the Northern Thailand...

posted by Rob and Anna @ 6:44 AM