Well the Linneys are out in force in Thailand, the brother, the mother and me. James arrived on Thursday, failed to notice I’d chopped off all my hair and then went and got his cut much shorter, honestly, he is always stealing my thunder. By all accounts he had a wicked time in South Africa, Nambia and Botswana! Then Mum arrived on Saturday, James and I went to meet her at the new swanky airport in Bangkok with balloons (well they were my idea, James was slowly drifting away from me in the arrivals hall)! On Sunday James went off to see tigers and the Bridge of the River Kwai and Mum and I went for a day’s sightseeing with Hester and Tuli, two girls from the guesthouse.
We went back to Jim Thompson house and had a gorgeous lunch in the restaurant, they have a huge pond there that randomly has a large ray inside…bizarre. Afterwards we caught one of the local taxi boats up the Klong, one of Bangkoks original canals and amde our way over to the Grand Palace. Sadly my anal organisation had failied to take into account that the palace shut at 3.30pm and it was 3pm. Oops. So we went across to Wat Po instead and saw the huge, and I mean huge reclining gold-guilded, reclining buddha. It is housed in this beautiful temple with red painted wood on the ceiling, intricate paintings of the buddha’s life around the outside and the back is dominated by his feet, huge soles of black stone decorated with inlaid mother of pearl. Back down the river and into the heart of shopping wonderland that is Siam, Mum and I did some credit card massaging in the department stores before heading back to Suk11. We sent Mum off for a foot and shoulder massage and James reappeared having had his photo taken with some huge (apparently tame?) tigers and went straight off to update his facebook profile picture, good to know I’m not the only geek in the family then!
Now we are up in Chiang Mai and heading off on our three day trekking tour into the hill tribes of Northern Thailand…see you in three days!