After a very sad time saying goodbye to our lovely Willow, we set off on our flight to Bangkok with a very rough itinerary of 2 weeks first in Thailand, then Laos, Cambodia and ending in Thailand again. Our Qatar flights were good with aisle seats to Doha ( with lots of bubbly) and a spare seat between us after our very tight connection. Just big enough for me to curl up on however the turbulence meant we had very little sleep. We arrived and easily found the hotel which was great except the pool was shut and we’d especially picked this as it had a good pool. After a little gentle complaining about lack of information at booking, we got the use of the partner hotel’s pool 5 minutes away and free breakfasts added so it wasn’t too bad.

That afternoon, we explored Benchakitti Park nearby to stave off the tiredness and ended our very long day with a great street food meal as the heavens opened- well it is rainy season! The park is quite different to Lumpini Park in that it is meant to be able to prosper and grow with very little human intervention – something we could do with in our garden! Next day, we headed to Wat Pho for the third time but this time we hired a guide. Who knew we had missed so much and that there were so many ashes hidden away in the chedis that we thought were just ornamental – a family buys a side of a chedi and then the family ashes are added when someone dies so everyone is together and the family is responsible for the chedis upkeep! In the afternoon, we headed to another temple over the river with the biggest Buddha in Bangkok. It had the quietest, calmest garden and sat on a canal. We climbed up inside the new chedi and couldn’t believe the art work inside. We always imagine places of worship to be old (especially as we live so close to an old one) and it was fascinating to watch the art on the walls actually being done whilst we were there. The huge Buddha was pretty cool too.

The next day, we headed to the outskirts of Bangkok on the BTS to a tourist attraction called The Ancient City, an attraction not frequented by many foreigners which is a real shame as it was amazing and one of the best things we’ve done here. Basically, all the important temples in Thailand have been replicated there with the intention of building a sense of identity and pride for the Thai people. We hired bikes there and sweatily cycled round for nearly 5 hours.To be honest, we didn’t know were to look; there were so many amazing sites and some that have been reconstructed from the remains and descriptions in manuscripts which explained why we’d never seen them on any tourist information sites. It was a really fantastic day out and we felt it was a real shame there weren’t more people there. We attempted, in the evening, to visit Jodd Fairs night market but the torrential rain changed our mind and so after a tasty, if spicy, local meal in a plush shopping mall for £2.50 (Callum was very pleased with an eye on the budget), we headed back.

The pool called us the next morning and we booked and planned to see a cabaret show in the evening after visiting China town . Unfortunately, a rather nasty bug Callum picked up had us grounded from the afternoon onwards (which he swiftly passed to me a few hours later. – memories of our last visit with Covid week 2 when he did the same were shared!) We ventured out briefly the next afternoon to Lumpini Park to watch some local dancing and giant water monitors making it to the cabaret in the evening. We were very impressed that the company we booked through changed the previous nights tickets even after we had missed it! The cabaret was extremely professional with the ladyboys lip-synching to a wide variety of music including Rihanna songs, music from the Chicago show and Candy Man. We did enjoy it though it all felt a little too serious after the one we had visited in Chaweng in Koh Samui.

Off to Kanchanaburi next to see WW2 sites and waterfalls as well as to let Callum rest up (though he’s enjoying the ride there watching everyday Thai culture from the train- latest count amusing him is 5 people on one moped!)