Bangkok, Thailand 28.03

After we arrived at the airport, we took a taxi to meet the brother of one of Artur's friends. We met him for drinks at the bar in his appartment building.
It was a great place, we thought it was a hotel! We had a great time drinking and chatting with Andrew. We were very lucky, he let us stay with him. It would have been tough to find a place because we arrived so late.

Royal Palace
The next morning we got up early to see the Royal Palace. We arrived by taxi just before the gates opened. The sun got hot very quickly as the time passed.
We explored the inner section of the Royal Palace, where there are many temples, and monuments. We really liked the temple with the Emerald Buddha. It was filled with gold and jewels, everything was so ornate and valuable. The jade buddha was relatively small for the size of the temple, but it was beautiful.

We also loved the murals that were painted on the outer walls of the palace. They showed the mythical creatures that were supposed to have lived in the palace and the wars between them.

There were so many tall buildings and huge pagodas covered in gold. We also saw a model of Angkor Wat from Cambodia. It was beautiful to look at, it was modelled as it would have looked before the decay of time.

We only had an hour and half to explore, but we did well at seeing everything. It was so hot, that people were handing out cotton wool balls soaked in ammonia to stop people from fainting. It took a while before Loren figured out why everything smelt like a hospital!
There were some pretty cool soldiers that were standing guard for the whole time we were there. One cool guy in white gave the tiniest nod, when Artur asked for a picture with him. At least they move more than the guards in London.

The King
Before we headed to the airport for Hong Kong, we stopped at a little market. We bought some badges of the King of Thailand to pin on Loren's t-shirt next to her badge of Stewie from family guy. Everywhere in Thailand, there are pictures of the King - his time as a monk, as a soldier, taking photos, waving like the pope. Very amusing :)

Bangkok was much better this time around. Our drivers were taxi drivers instead of tuk-tuk drivers, and they were honest. We were much better off staying with Andrew instead of where we were before. He told us that we stayed at the worst place, no wonder we had a hard time before!