Bangkok-a-too

The border crossing from Cambodia was a long haul, lugging our bags from one exit gate to the entry point through Poipet, an area which seems to have an unsavoury reputation, which I could believe.. We queued for a fair while then when through waited for our bus group to collect, we jumped into a minivan to some peoples dismay (though it'd be faster) and set off - fortunately we were being dropped off just round the corner from Khao San road which meant no further transport costs for us. We found the hotel quickly somehow - more luck than good navigation - halfway down Khao San in an alleyway, pretty good considering what others would charge.
We headed out to see why this was the tourist centre for backpackers and holidaymakers alike, a fusion of love and hate, East meets West and small portions for big prices. Some things I'll spare your mind from, but overall it was as expected. We trawled the stalls and shops finding most things we'd seen elsewhere at half the cost, and after a full 24 hours there I was pretty tired of the surroundings.
Next day we went off in search of new areas of Bangkok, making it as far as the Democracy Monument on a roundabout about 5 minutes walk away when a local 'on holiday' chatted to us and explained it was Buddha Day so lots of the temples were free entry that day, and a tuk driver would take us round for only 20 baht.. Cue a tuk driver pulling up, and never one to turn down a bargain we jumped in. First stop was the temple of the Lucky Buddha, quite dainty but nice none the less and a plethora of statues there making it impossible to discern which was the lucky one?! We headed off towards a 'clothes market' which was just a tailors.. We walked through and out without sparing much time.. Then to a 'jewellery market' which unsurprisingly was a jewellery shop.. We took a bit more time here but still were out in no time. On to another 'market' where when we arrived our driver asked us to spend more time inside - say 10 minutes so that he could get his fuel voucher which was what makes the trip so cheap. After a painful 10 minutes in the tailors, feigning interest and walking away with nothing ("you are tight-fisted like Jew") we were offered to visit a tourist office to book trips to other temples out of town.. Well after this charade and with the sun setting I insisted we weren't interested in these places and wanted to carry on seeing the temples as planned.. So we headed up to Wat Indrawiharn the home of the Standing Buddha a 100ft tall image with feet as long as we are tall. There were some other nice statues and one temple had really different and nice paintings around the walls. We headed out to find our driver to move on.. But.. He was nowhere to be seen!! Abandoned!!!! Fortunately we were only 10 minutes walk from Khao San and glad to have finished our trial of a trip!! Turns out this is all intended as a scam - no surprise there - where you would buy gems or hopefully something, but our tight-fisted nature / genuine lack of money was a saviour!!
On the weekend we headed out of town to Chatuchak Market, a vast 35 acre market. We were looking for an identical pair of shoes that we'd bought at the start of our travels and had been coming to the end of their life several times had it not been for super glue. It was quite fun but to say it was baking hot is an understatement. We spent a few hours there, zig-zagging then methodically weaving our way through the aisles but alas though the same shoe was there not the same size - and we weren't going back the next day irrespective of the certainty of a perfect fit. We'd bought a few odds and ends and settled with another pair then headed back.
Our next day out was to a cookery school, Ma-Sa-Man just up the road with the popular Chef Lee. We were in a class of only four, an American couple from a cruise ship tour making up the numbers. Firstly we headed to a small backstreet market to pick up our fresh ingredients for the day - crossing the canal on the way we happened to see a monitor lizard bathing on some wood - then a turtle, and then a much larger monitor swimming along shortly behind!! We soon got back on track and spent the next few hours chopping, mixing, frying and eating a variety of currys, soups and desserts. It was really informative, tasty and good fun, I just hope that we can find some of the ingredients when I'm back!!
We moved hotel the next day as the price had started to rise where we were, so arriving at our new place we accepted the space given and headed out - maybe we should have inspected it a bit more first; that evening from 8 onwards we had live cover music being jammed out yards from our door on the ground floor, then around midnight we realised we weren't alone in bed.. Bedbugs!!!! A first, and we soon packed up, got our money back and moved to another place we'd checked out. Needless to say this was much better and was a comfortable stay before we set off to the airport early one morning to begin the next leg of our trip. We'd done the full circle of Asia, and were sad to be leaving - although Bangkok was definitely the most unfortunate of cities!!