Keeping this blog updated and staying on top of my photo management is proving harder than I thought! Often I’m just too tired or don’t have the time or internet connection. So once again here’s a bunch of posts at once!
Day 3
Lugged my bags to a guesthouse right next to Khaosan Road. Then I roamed the streets determined to eat some street food for breakfast. I stopped at a likely stall and realised as it was a “made to order” place I didn’t know how to explain what I wanted (there aren’t obvious things to point at at these stalls). As soon as I started miming the guy immediately pointed to the next stall down the alley so I went there. The guy there spoke a few basic food words so I ordered noodles, chicken! I was annoyed to fail at the complicated stall but happy to get something authentic and cheap – street food is at least half the price of any restaurant. Whilst I was scoffing my delicious dish, a passing guy gave me a friendly punch and smile, clearly impressed to see a farang (foreigner) eating as the locals do!
The easy kind of street food, you can just point at what you want!
Spent the rest of the day chilling out in my room and sleeping. A proper monsoon hit in the afternoon and this was the first of many to come in the following days. Never seen such heavy rain even in Costa Rica. Unfortunately having slept too much in the day I couldn’t sleep at night and woke up at 5am!
Monsoon
Day 4
I walked North for a few hours in search of a palace where there’s a free traditional dancing show. On the way I found a small Wat with some nice shrines inside. People in the Wats tend to be quite friendly and say hello, and there were a few monks around, some of who were giving blessings to visiting Thai.
After getting a bit lost (glad I brought that compass now!) I found the palace. Unfortunately an armed guard explained to me it was closed today! Gah, a gruelling walk wasted. Still the place was good to look at from outside and next to it was the zoo which I wanted to see. Outside the palace there were hundreds of policemen gathered for some training or induction or something. There were street vendors selling them belts, badges and other bits and bobs, guess the police here have to equip themselves!
As I was taking photos of the palace some nutter was running laps around the statue in the huge area in front of it. The sun was blazing down and the guy was baretopped and looked like he was about to die. After about twenty minutes he gave up and stopped to pray at the statue. Maybe the gods are punishing him, because you wouldn’t see me do that madness!
Just then I ran out of battery and to my horror discovered all my spares were out too. Novice mistake! I headed back to the guest house to recharge and met Mark for some refreshment. Later he took me for dinner to a local place over the river and we ate some firey Northern Thai food including a great herb soup. I got the local bus back, complete with roof fans.