We thought last night that we should get up early, head to the gym and get back in time for a nice (ish) breakfast at the hostel. This obviously went straight out the window. Although we did make progress on yesterday, we actually managed to get the breakfast at the hostel...just. (they stop serving at 11). I had the American breakfast (Egg, frankfurter, deconstructed coleslaw, sweet bread and watermelon) and Hannah had the Chicken Congee.

Still adjusting to the time zone, it really does hit you more than you expect, another similarly easy day, but we planned to get in a bit of culture as well. First stop on the highbrow tour was the Suan Pakkad Palace. It was originally a home for the prince, but was converted into a museum. Wasn't particularly interesting, but we did get a great gift with our tickets....

It had a few bits of old Thai peoples' history, including lots of ancient ladles and a random boat, but the most striking piece was in the gallery where they had a set of pieces of art focusing on phallic shaped animals. 

After this slightly disappointing start to the culture roadshow, we went to find lunch (I assure you that though the writing may not show it, a respectable amount of time has passed between our meals). Trying to stick to the more street food parts, we went to one of the more local malls (MBK centre) which was recommended because it has a really good food court, similar to Hawker centres in Singapore (which we are totally going to live in). In further effort to become less British tourist, we took the local public train system, the BTS Skytrain. Really easy to use and good connections, but unfortunately the nearest stop to the hostel was about an hour walk, but in the well to-do area, stations a plenty.

A rather proud moment, we looked for trousers for Hannah for the temples (can't be showing off that sexy ankle) and did our first haggle, 30% discount! To be fair though, she was dropping the price constantly simply because we weren't saying yes.*

*We would also find these very same trousers for cheaper later that day, so perhaps our haggling wasn't so good.

We then tried to give arts and culture a second try at the Bangkok Centre of Arts and Culture (no way... shocking...). Pretty good set up, 9 floors of free art and exhibitions, but it does kind of ruin it with people touting their tat all over the place. No I don't want a bloody handbag. 

We had a look around and honestly, I wasn't that impressed with the art. Maybe that sounds really barbaric, but it's just a bit style of substance. People saying "These random block of colours represents my connection to nature; the struggles of life and death; and the fact I didn't get my favourite power ranger toy for Christmas when I was 8". One picture was just a series of straight, parallel lines the artist had scoured in with a knife. I found my rule being proved right, "if i can do it, it ain't art" Quote by Chris Mead, said all the time. 

They also had a contemporary art section and the most difficult thing was trying to understand what was an exhibit and what was just a fixture in the room. Is this chair representing the laziness of society, or just somewhere to park my ass. The main exhibit was a mound of dirt, which just looked like someone had come along and dropped a big pretentious shit all over the floor. After this i think we both felt very arty farty. Sidenote: Hannah did enjoy some of the art and adjoining descriptions.

After this was a trip to Chinatown, which is always an experience no matter which Chinatown you go to in the world. Lots of smells and sights and smells. It's probably the downside to streetfood; there isn't really anyway of keeping it fresh, so the end of the day things are looking pretty done, especially in 35 degree heat. 

One of the stops at the start of Chinatown was the Temple of the Golden Budda, so we went to find that. Turns out that we also found another little treasure, the Chinatown Gate, so knocked two things down in one.

As Wat's go, it looked really impressive, at least from the outside and we got to see the Golden Budda which was awesome. We didn't go in as we have got quite a few Wat's and temples in our trip, don't want to dilute temple fever. **

**Later research would tell us the Golden Budda is 5 meters tall, so we very much did not see it.

From here we walked through Chinatown, who apparently haven't heard of diversifying their business from others. Literally every street corner was a jewellery shop with the exact same layout, exact same branding and exact same products. For a moment, I thought it was deja vu and I was in the matrix.

Walking through the city was really nice, wasn't horrifically hot (it was quite cloudy) and it's always best to get out of the tourist areas. One our way home, we found a great little park we decided to walk through, throw in a little green. 

Turns out, as it was after work, everyone was exercising here. There was an exercise class; a running track going round (some people were definitely trying harder than others) and a proper, full-on, gym. This made us feel very lazy. What was really weird was that at 6pm, over a load of speakers, a warning sound blared and everyone stopped dead... anyone sat down stood up... the national anthem then played out. When it was finished, everyone resumed activity, like they had been unpaused.. very odd... (No i did not say it was cult-y, i just implied it)

Our walk took us nearby the Grand Palace (we didn't look to hard, that's on tomorrows agenda, Arts and Culture part 2). We did however get a view of a few of the 400-odd temples within Bangkok, as well as what clearly must be part of the government ostentatiou-torium.  

Then, as a common theme in our travels, it was dinner time. In an effort to keep watching the pennies (but more because it was delicious), we went back to our favourite street food vendor, the duck broth-ecary (not what is was called, but that name is much better). I may have also, totally accidentally, had 2 bowls of the stuff!