8 May 2008 - bangkok...a sting in the tale!!1

8th May

Today we decided to get up early and head to the grand palace. We headed off down the road and had a lovely bowl of fresh fruit and muesli and for breakfast.

Excited about the day ahead we headed in the right direction. After a while we stopped to check the map. There was a street vendor by us and one of the locals started talking to us. He was really pleasant and gave us some tips to bear in mind. He then told us if we got the chance we should visit the floating market and go on a river tour (one of the Irish girls had mentioned this to me yesterday). Just before the guy left he also gave us some tips on the tuk tuk because a lot of the scam you, and showed us one that was government run, so like idiots we got on and headed to the Pier!!

The tuk tuk took us to a part of the pier where the boats went from, we got off and inquired the price, it was as the local guy told us. It was expensive and we weren't sure to start with but we thought we'd do it as it had be recommended by 2 people. As soon as I'd handed the money over Dan and i knew it was a con and well over priced!! We got on the boat and stewed for the trip which only took 30Min's instead of 1hr. They also took us to the "floating market" which interestingly had 1 boat?!!!

We were livid!! We knew we had been stupid to listen to the man in the first place but he just seemed so genuine. This was a big lesson for us, we always thought we were pretty aware of these people trying to con us but this guy got us good!!

We tried not to let it ruin our day but it makes you look at all locals in a bad way, like why are they talking to me, what are they selling!!

So we headed to the grand palace but we couldn't go in until 1.30 so one of the guards suggested another route we could do to see some of the other temples in bangkok. So we got another tuk tuk and started our new trip. This was pretty rubbish, most the things we saw weren't really that interesting but hey it at least only cost us 30baht/50p!!

We finally got back to the palace and were told Dan would have to rent some trousers as he had shorts on. We decided to give it a miss, todays budget had been well and truly blown and we really weren't in the mood for it anymore. We decided to walk back to the hotel!!

It was a nice feeling getting back into our familiar zone!! Tomorrow we are going to explore the city again but this time we will do it all on foot and research a bit before acting on someones suggestions!!