With Meikyo out of the water and the more involved work we needed done kicked off it was time to turn our attention to other matters.  In early May, while Meikyo was having her rigging replaced and Serenity was up for sale, our Malaysian visas came close to running out and the Immigration Service granted us a two month extension.  That extension ran out on the 3rd of July so at 0820 on the third we were on a flight to Thailand.  We were booked on a tour to the north of the country, but that didn’t start until the sixth so we had three and a half days to explore Bangkok on our own.
To make things easy we stayed at the hotel the tour started from, a fairly modern place in the old city alongside one of the many canals built as defence and as a transport system.  We were there by midday so walked to a nearby restaurant for lunch: we found plenty of vegetarian and vegan options for Sarah during our stay in the city.  In need of a walk we carried on towards the nearby Golden Mountain temple, stopping to look at the Royal Pavillion on the way.  It was there, on our first day in Bangkok, that we were caught by Bangkok’s well known (except to us) Black Buddha scam.  It was an elaborate affair involving apparently friendly passers by and Tuk Tuk drivers aimed at getting you to a shop selling jewellery and souvenirs.  We worked out what was going on before getting too far and made the Tuk Tuk driver take us back to our start point ending up worse off by about £1.50 and an hour of our time.  No more casual Tuk Tuk rides for us!

When we got there the Golden Mountain temple was an attractive place, with waterfalls statues and a great view over the city from the top. Bangkok was the first big city we have been in for a while so we took the opportunity to do some shopping between temples, visiting a city centre mall for some new Keen sandals.  We haven’t been able to buy these since our last visit to the UK.

On another day’s sightseeing we visited the Grand Palace, which was the Royal palace from 1782 until 1925 and is still used for ceremonies. Sarah is used to having to cover knees and shoulders when visiting temples, but Phil was surprised that he had to cover up as well.  The vendors were taking advantage of those not properly dressed and a pair of long trousers cost 150 bhat instead of 100 in the market! Within the palace compound was the Temple of the Emerald Buddha.  This was a bewildering array of sumptuous buildings and it took us a while to find the actual temple.  The Buddha was high up on his golden stupa and was quite small and is apparently made of jasper rather than actual emeralds.  He is clothed in gold and has a different outfit for each of the 3 seasons!  You could not go inside the palace buildings, but from the outside it was beautiful.

Grand Palace
A ferry ride took us to the flower market: a glorious riot of colour, then in the evening we had a street food tour by Tuk Tuk.  This was disappointing, particularly after the tour by Vespa motorbike we did in Vietnam.  We found the food less tasty than the meals we had eaten in cafes close to our hotel.  
We were due to meet our tour group on Sunday evening, so decided on an easy day before the trip started and went to watch a display of traditional dance.  It was school children getting experience of performing on a stage with an audience mostly of family members, but they were very polished and the costumes were beautiful.

The young dancers
The first day of the tour started with a boat trip around the canals: interesting to see this aspect of the city, then a visit to the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, followed by a 3 hour ride on a local bus to start our tour of Northern Thailand in Kanchanaburi.