Lizards in the park, chedis on the roundabout.

After Stan kindly copied the photos from his phone I found that there are more than I thought. Most are from last weekend when Stan, Pook and I went to Ayutthaya for the day. Ayutthaya is the former capital city of Siam and has many ruins. There're also a selection of random pictures taken in and around Bangkok.

Just been up the road to the local Café and had the usual selection of roasted (think BBQ but with a small dish of chilli sauce) chicken, minced pork (think with garlic, chillies, spring onions etc) and papaya salad, which for some reason they took the liberty of making mild today. I would've preferred it to be hot like normal. I don't know why they did it today because I've eaten there a few times and had take away a few more and they've never reduced it's kick before. Maybe it was because I asked for them to not put nuts in it and they associate a dislike of nuts with a dislike of chillies when dealing with farang?

Anyhoo, because it was all tasty I stuffed myself and now I feel sleepy... Think I'll go and read and sunbathe on the balcony for a bit. To the distaste of many Thais. I've noticed a number of whitening skincare products so I had my suspicions but after talking with William (who joined me for lunch today) my suspicions have been confirmed: over here people consider being tanned to be "lo-so" (low society.) Presumably because historically poor people would have worked outside, farming etc, and couldn't afford to stay in the shade.

Right, enough talk, time to post some photos. Firstly, here are some random ones from in and around Bangkok taken over the last couple of weeks. The picture of Aunty Anne's pretzel place is dedicated to my aunty Ann, in case you were wondering. I've not suddenly become a fan of fast food.

A few other notes: the band pictures were taken in a bar called Saxophone, which is very near Victory Monument in Bangkok. They were really good. You can't see them but there was a keyboard player playing a Hammond style keyboard and another guitarist. It was kind of bluesy stuff mostly, very entertaining. The next two were taken in Swensen's (an ice cream shop in case you couldn't deduce that from the photos) at a shopping centre (MBK if I recall) in Bangkok. The fruit list picture was taken because it has Oreo biscuits on it. The Aunty Anne's pretzel shop was next door. There's a selection of pictures in the park next - the monitor lizards just roam free and there are terrapins in the water again too. Then there is the Giant Octobus. A spelling mistake or a hideous mutant public transport/cephalopod hybrid? You decide. Speaking of hideous mutants the double banana was nurtured by Kriang's gardener's own fair hand (note the singular) on a tree in Kriang's yard. Definitely not speaking of hideous mutants we come to the last picture: of Kriang and me taken in a nice little place just round the corner from where Pook works in Bangkok. We went there just before going swimming, which was ace. We swimming in the dark in a big outdoor pool which was virtually empty. Plus for baht 100 you get as long as you want in the pool, a loan towel and free shampoo and shower gel. Bargain.

Next up are the photos from Ayutthaya where we went on Sunday.

I won't go through them all because there're too many but note the different style tuk-tuks in Ayutthaya, the town called Techno which we passed through on the way (Bangin!) and the other road sign for Wang Noi. It's a bit abstract this last one but if I explain that noi means "little" in Thai, it might help. If it doesn't help, don't worry you're not missing out on much.

Whilst we were in Ayutthaya we went to Wat Yai Chai Mongkol which is where these last few were taken.

Ones to note in this last set are the bats on the wooden roof of the chedi and the picture which proves I'm less that two feet tall. Indeed. The pictures of swords in cases are for Ricko.

I'm going to curtail my blogging activities and sally forth yonder to the balcony. Toodle pip.