When Matt eventually surfaced, we set out to catch a metro and then a boat down the river to the royal palace. It was a tourist boat and stopped at various sights along the route. Instead of getting off at the royal palace stop we chose to see Wat Pho first, probably the most famous temple in Bangkok. However, as our breakfast had only consisted of a yoghurt from a nearby seven eleven store, we stopped off for an early lunch when we got off the boat. I went for pad Thai (I felt I needed to as today was our last day in Thailand) and Matt had a curry. It was an enjoyable pad Thai and with my belly happy I was ready to see temples.
Wat Pho was incredible. There were many different section to the whole complex of temples, the best being a sleeping Buddha. This wasn't any old sleeping Buddha though, this was huge! It filled up a whole temple and was probably about three metres high and twenty metres long (my guess so not accurate). Covered in gold she looked quite wonderful, peacefully sleeping in the centre of Bangkok. There were other grand temples with lots of gold and colours around the Buddha, all of them impressing us massively with many different beautiful designs. It's up there with one of my favourite temples.
Outside of Wat Pho a tuk tuk driver stopped us and offered us a great deal. He told us that the royal palace was closed until 4pm for some reason but for 40 baht (75p) he would take us to three different temples and some cashmere factory which sounded interesting. We happily agreed to the deal (paying at the end) and our first destination was the lucky Buddha. This Buddha was very small compared to what we'd just seen but was made of pure gold therefore you could only look in through the windows. Monks are allowed to enter but due to someone trying to steal it a few years ago the security has tightened.
Next up the driver took us to the cashmere factory. It turned out to just be a tailor. We were told we could look inside for free so we thought why not. We got turned away straight away because we weren't looking to buy anything so felt really stupid. It turned out that the driver got a free fuel token if he took us to certain shops and we stayed there for a certain amount of time because of a promotion that was happening. He took us to another tailor and we reluctantly entered (we told him we didn't want to go in but he was very persuasive). I ended up being slightly rude as we were pretending Matt wanted a suit and I was saying how Vietnam is so much cheaper. It didn't end well as the shop assistant wanted to show us materials and we had to pretty much run away to avoid having to pay for anything. We weren't the happiest with our driver so when he dropped us off at the next temple we had a nice little bitch about the situation. This temple had a large statue of a Buddha which was quite nice but we'd seen our fare share of Buddhas for one day. When we came out we couldn't see our driver so assumed he had popped to a shop or something. Instead of standing to wait we got some good at a street stall which we shared (it was only a snack). It was a standard rice and pork dish so was rather boring but it filled a hole. We still couldn't see our driver and stupidly didn't realise until another tuk tuk driver told us that we'd been mugged off. Slightly annoyed but more amused (we hadn't paid) we got a tuk tuk to the metro and chose to visit a shopping mall that Joy had told us about instead. It had aircon and was super modern! It's called Terminal 21 and each floor is based around a destination. There's Rome, Paris, the Caribbean, San Francisco, Hollywood, London and Tokyo to say a few. It was really cool. The food area on the basement floor was similar to Selfridges. We stopped for a smoothie and checked out what foods they had to offer but it was still a little early for tea so we chose to wander round the surrounding area instead.
One thing we had got from the annoying tuk tuk driver was a map of the city so I easily navigated us to a lovely park. It reminded me of my favourite park in the world, Bryant park in New York. It wasn't big but was peaceful within this buzzing neighbourhood. High rises surrounded it but somehow protected it as well. We sat by the pond in the centre and Matt wrote some postcards whilst I listened to some music (I'm being educated) and people watched. The park was full of runners and exercisers as it was around 6pm at this point so was cooler. We chose to go into another mall for tea which was just beside this park and near a metro station. This mall was possibly even more modern and had an interesting food court. You had to get a card and put money on it to pay for the food that was sold out of posh hatches. I had tagliatelle style noodles with a thick gravy and greens and deep fried seabass. The seabass wasn't the greatest as it was chewy and lacked meat but the rest of it was quite pleasant.
As it was nearly 8 when we'd finished eating we needed to head back to the hostel to collect our bags. We hadn't found a postbox for the postcards so Joy very sweetly offered to post them for us tomorrow. She's the best. We left with our bags and caught two metros and then the airport line to the airport. We checked in and it all went very smoothly. We got some food with our remaining change (yes, we had two teas) and I went for a masaman curry which I worried would be spicy but it wasn't. It had the same potatoes and onions and chicken in like others I've had but didn't have any coconut flavour. I thoroughly enjoyed it But the realisation that we wouldn't be eating Thai food anymore really saddened me. Thai food has been the best.
Our flight to Manila was only slightly delayed which would actually work in our favour as we have a five hour wait for our connecting flight from Manila to Puerto Princesa. As it was gone 1am when we got on the plane I went straight to sleep and didn't wake up again until we landed three and a half hours later.
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