Days 336-340 - Bangkok, Thailand

BANGKOK (03/12/09 - 07/12/09)

On arrival into Bangkok from Singapore we had already decided to cut our trip short by a couple of weeks. A combination of factors had led to this decision including: extreme difficulties in booking accommodation for our last few weeks; frustration with people trying to rip us off hundreds of times a day; the limited amount and variety of veggie food; wanting to see our families for Christmas... the list goes on. These were by no means new problems and we had probably dealt with far worse during the course of our trip. What it really came down to was that we were both exhausted and it was time to go home. Travelling, as anyone who has done it for an extended length of time will know, is not like an ordinary holiday. Constantly organising transport, food and a bed for the night and never having a consistent base is very draining. Please don't think we are complaining, we both know how lucky we have been to be able to do what we have done and we have had a truly amazing adventure, we were just tired and both happy to return home a little early.

Anyway we decided to spend our last few days getting Christmas presents, mostly from the quite staggeringly huge Chatuchak Market. There are in the region of 15,000 stalls in the market selling virtually everything you can imagine. We spent two full days there and could not have seen it all. These Buddhist Monks were accepting charitable donations from the stall holders, presumably in exchange for their blessings to bring in large numbers of stupid tourists to pay their vastly exaggerated prices without arguing.

As expected in Bangkok there were large numbers of Tuk-tuks around. We decided to use metered taxis instead since most tuk-tuk drivers offer you an extremely low fare but will only take you via their friends shop or tour office, losing you at least a couple of hours out of your day.

Boxes of miniature fried Quail's eggs!

We decided sight-seeing in Bangkok could wait for another trip, although we did stop to have a look at this spectacular gold temple just around the corner from our hotel.

As we have already explained we were extremely exhausted by this point. Certainly not unhappy we spent our time, when not shopping, relaxing and finding as many cold drinks and shady spots as possible to cool ourselves from the blistering sun.