Spent the day yesterday walking around Bangkok. As I left the hotel, it started to rain so I ducked under a canopy to stay dry and met a few girls from the UK. Tess and Lauren are toruing Asia on during their gap year. Since we were all lost, we figured we’d team up and check out the sights.

We stopped first at Wat Pho which was thoroughly impressive. It has a 150 foot long reclinging buddha covered in gold and has ivory and mother of pearl feet. It was beautiful. The rest of the Wat complex contains more images of the buddha than anywhere else in Thailand.

Next we tried to get into the Royal Palace, but it was closed due to the death of the King’s sister. We would discover that much of the city’s cultural sites are closed for mourning. So we hopped on a tuk-tuk and headed to the tall buddha. Once we got there, we we approached to buy a cage with 5 birds in it to release for good luck. After the tall buddha, the tuk-tuk driver took us to a local tailors. He’s a government driver and only gets his petrol ration by taking tourists to local shops. We didn’t have much else to do, so we went with it. You can get a custom handmade wool suit made overnight for about 6,000 baht – $175usd. Impressive!

After the tailors we took a river ferry down to the sukhamvit area becaus the girls had heard about a restaurant called cabbages and condoms. The whole restaurant is decorated with condoms and birth control pills and the profits go to fighting overpopulation in Thailand. Interesting to say the least, but the food was amazing.

Back to the hotel after as I was exhausted and already had a few blisters. I will try and post some pictures as soon as I can. The internet connection is very slow and uploading pics is tough.