Jan 2007

Well, it's been a very long while since this was updated so apologies to our faithful readers..

New Years Eve seems like ages ago now.. we had a good one despite the bombs.
It was all a bit surreal to be in a city that had had 7 explosions go off, partly because it seemed to have very little effect on
the population here. We were at Matt's Thai boss' party when we found out (it was on Thai news) and the person who told us casually said "I think 4 bombs have gone off, one at victory monument.. not too sure what's going on.. right, time for some party games"
The people in the streets seemed none too concerned either (though there was a strong police/military presence). The bomb at victory monument was the one closest to us, about a 10 min bus ride from our flat. It's where we get the skytrain too as it's the closest skytrain stop to us, and we figured out a couple of days later that we were at a busstop at victory monument quite literally minutes before the blast.. maybe 2 or 3 minutes..

But as I said, people seem remarkable unscared by it all. Maybe it's because Thais believe more in kharma/fate than we do, so they aren't so fazed by what we would see as unnecessary random deaths..
in any case we headed to khao san road around 9pm and it was busy as we'd expected it to be before we knew about the bombs. We had some food, a few drinks at a petrol-station-turned-bar (only in Thailand!) and then went to a bar/club.. pretty much new year's eve as per usual.. Clubbing was cut short as everything closed at 1am (we found out later is was because police were evacuating the area as they had just diffused a bomb nearby!)..

Since then there has been very little progress regarding the bombs.. politicians in power are blaming Thaksin & co (those ousted by the coup) by they deny it.. this is one whodunnit mystery that seems like it will remain unsolved. And life seems to go on as usual..

After new year we had a couple of days off and decided to use one of them for some tourism. So we packed our bags with suncream and hats on a very hot day and headed about 15 mins down the river to the Grand Palace and its adjoining temple (Wat Phra Keao) which houses the most revered buddha image in Thailand: the emerald buddha (which is actually made of jade). As you can see from the photos it's all very beautiful and incredibly bling-bling, though we couldn't take pictures of the emerald buddha who was dressed in a gold-chain mail tunic!! It's his winter dress apparently.

Incidently the King doesn't live at that Grand Palace, he lives in a palace down the road from us which you can't visit (that's right, we share our postcode with the King himself!)

Anyway, our tickets also got us a guided tour of Vinanmek Teak Palace (a palace/mansion built by one of the Thai kings, it's made entirely of teak wood and very beautiful).. as it's only a 5 minute trot there from our place, the following saturday saw us back on the tourist trail to visit this much more chilled palace.. unfortunately we couldn't take photos so you'll have to come visit it if you want to see it for yourself.

I'v finally managed to uplaod the photos for this entry so you'll be hearing about our Ayutthaya adventure next...

xxx