Got up around 7:30, and went down for breakfast shaking off a light jet lag. There wouldn’t be any spicy food served for breakfast, obviously, so I got a plate of somethig that looked nice and took a big bite. How wrong I was. Strictly as a face saving exercise I ate most of it then rushed back to my room to drink several gallons of water. I phoned Wee, and we agreed to meet at 12, which left me enough time to buy a map of Bangkok. Wee arrived on time and suggested visiting a floating market but this turned out to be too far away. Instead she took me on a brief tour of the city by bus, ending up in her favorite hang out at Siam Square, a very westernised shopping and entertainment complex. We met Wee’s friend Jill (pronounced ‘Dew’ for some reason I was unable to establish), and I got my first proper taste of Thai cuisine, as well as a crash course in speaking Thai from Jill and Wee, who found my pronounciation very funny. To my amazement, Wee and Jill both support Enlish football clubs, Liverpool and Leeds respectively, although Wee doesn’t know where Liverpool is, and Jill only knows the location of Leeds because her boyfried lives there. As relationships go, I don’t think you can get much more long distance than that!

After lunch we visited a number of Wats, which are buddist temples that you can see all over the place. There are, however, a few particularly special ones that are always popular with visitors. We hailed a tuk-tuk to get to the first one. The tuk tuks (pron. took took) are an attraction in themselves, a motorcycle with a cab bolted on the back – fast, fairly cheap, but also exposed to the polluted air and not very safe. I learned early on that if you want to get you your destination at the same time as the tuk tuk, you have to hold on tight.

We hurtled across Bangkok into the city’s chinatown district, where we found Wat Traimit, which contains a five and a half tonne statue of the budda, made of solid gold. The statue was apparently covered in plaster when it was discovered, and it took an accident and some chipped plaster to reveal the gold underneath. It is thought that the plaster was applied to prevent the statue from being stolen by Burmese raiders during the war.

We took a second bus to the Temple of the Reclining Budda, inside one of the largest and oldest Wats in Thailand – Wat Pho. The budda is often depicted in the reclining position, but this is often misinterpreted as a resting posture, when in fact it represents the budda’s transition to Nirvana – his death. The temple itself was undergoing heavy rennovation, and there was only one spot where the full statue could be seen properly without scaffolding getting in the way. Nevetheless, it was very impessive. The rest of the Wat includes a large number of other Budda depictions, some very ornate architecture, and a meditation school. There was also a line of 108 pots, into each of which you are supposed to deposit coins for good luck. Sounds like a good way of raising money anyway.

As we walked on from Wat Pho, a group of Uniformed Thai schoolgirls approached armed with tape recorders.

“I am learning English and have to practice, can you help me?”

A microphone was held in front of my mouth – I was on the record.

“er.. ok”
“What is your name”
“Andrew”
“What do you think of Thailand?”
“It’s a beautiful place”

Wee and Jill were finding this very funny for some reason.

“And what about the people?”
“Very friendly”
“And where do you come from?”
“London, in England”
“How long have you been in Thailand?”
“Only a day – I have lots to see yet”

I think the last answer departed slightly from their list of expected responses, because I could see eyes starting to glaze over. The girl asking the questions smiled and thanked me, and they all clicked off their tape recorders.

We returned to the Viengtai in a second tuk tuk, which almost collided with another while making a very suspect right turn. We walked down the very touristy Khao San Road where I left Wee and Jill and headed back to the Hotel. Making a dash for the pool, I did a few lengths while deciding what to do the next day.

At the hotel’s tour booking office, I decided to explore bangkok’s network of canals that used to make it famous as ‘the venice of the east’. I booked a canal tour for tomorrow, set a wake up call and went to bed.