Bangkok or bust

Arriving in Bangkok on yet another overnight bus, we blew our meagre budget on a night watching muay thai boxing. (Very small men kicking the out of each other to a shouting crowd of men in the cheap seats feverishly betting on the outcome.) In one fight we calculated that both the fighters (plus possibly half the referee) might still have weighed in on the lighter side of Shaun:

It seems every second person in Bangkok is a muay thai professional. The next day our tuk-tuk driver - who got out of his tuk-tuk to smack a taxi driver in the head in the middle of the street - informed us he too was a muay thai champion. Perhaps in the late 1970s.

We also made the obligatory visit to the Grand Palace in 33 degree heat to wander around pointy buildings with little golden tiles on them. Very pretty. Michaela tried to make friends with the locals ..

... but all this guy was interested in was the phone number of the cute Thai student across the path. We lent her a pen in the interests of romance. Next stop Laos ...