Sunday 13th June 2010

Julian and I woke up at about 5am. We were still on Melbourne time. We decided that we would get up and go for a walk to familiarise ourselves with our surroundings. We had seen a restaurant called the Antique house on the map so we thought that we would go and see if we could find it. The streets were just coming alive and it was a lovely temperature. We realised that we weren’t very far from it so decided that we would go around the block crossing over the Ping river and along past all of the restaurants. We took lots of photos and looked at all of the restaurants and decided that we would book Deck one for dinner on Monday night. We then realized that we were not far from the flower markets and thought that we would get Judy some flowers. So we walked across the footbridge and bought some lovely roses and caught a tuk tuk back to the hotel.

 As we were running out of time we didn’t get to go back and look for Antique house.
After breakfast we enquired at the desk of the hotel about going to the handcraft villages. The receptionist told us that we could get a mini van for 200bt for as long as we wanted as long as we stayed in the same area. We left the hotel at about at about 9.15 and visited the silk village, where we bought lots of beautiful things. We then went to the  Umbrella village where I had my netbook cover and my camera cover painted.

Judy had her shorts, glasses case, netbook cover and camera case painted. We had to stop her as she was getting a bit carried away.

We then went to the world’s biggest jewellry store as they had a money exchanger but the rate wasn’t very good.

We bought a tiny Jade elephant charm here. Most of the jewellry was very overdone but it was beautiful. I really wanted to buy some Saa paper but the one that I had seen at the umbrella village in a yellow colour wasn’t to be found anywhere in the paper village. I really wanted it in a cream colour. We also went to the celendon factory where we bought some pepper and salt shakers in the shape of a lotus blossom. We arrived back at the hotel at about 3pm. All this for 200bt which is about $7.54. We did give a very generous tip.

After a short rest we had a beer and fruit shake at Café de Siam. We then hailed a tuk tuk to the walking market. 4 people squashed in a tuk tuk, what more can I say……

We bought lots of bargains at the market and didn’t push the bartering as the prices were so cheap. I got some lovely cotton scarves for 20 bt.

We also tried some grasshoppers, crickets and some sort of lavae.

Our feet were killing us so after having dinner at the far end of the market in a lovely little restaurant that had lovely trees and water features we walked back and caught another tuk tuk back to the hotel. Early start tomorrow for Flight of the Gibbon.