No-one tells you about the smells...

This is the view from our hotel at around half 6 every night. Seriously, the Sun runs like clockwork. It'll set between 6:20 - 6:30 every single day without fail. It certainly makes it easy to make plans for what you want to do with your day, though waking up later than you planned doesn't really help.

Saying that, waking up at 9:30am isn't that late, but we did plan on being up and about by then. Thankfully they were still serving breakfast so we were able to go get some food before we made our way into Bangkok. The hotel runs a shuttle ferry to the nearest Sky Train station a little way down the river which we took just to get us a little bit closer into town.

As we didn't really know where we were going from where the ferry dropped us off we looked about for other touristy looking people and followed them towards what we assumed was the way for town.

We were only walking for a few minutes before we found a department store, usually we would just carry on walking as a department store is generally like any in the world. This one however was called Robinsons so naturally we had to go check it out. And to our great surprise.... It was like every other department store we had ever been in, except this one seemed to have a fascination with Stitch. And I also saw 2 different, completely fake versions of Beauty and the Beast.

Anyway, moving on from our little detour into Robinsons we carried on walking into Bangkok itself and just like everyone had warned us, it wasn't long until a Tuk Tuk driver slowed down beside us on the road asking if we wanted a lift. It we hadn't been told by our friends about them we would have totally got into one however we declined his offer and carried on or way.

Theres one thing people don't tell you in the documentaries about Bangkok, it has a very... 'distinctive' smell. It certainly hit me like a sledgehammer to the nose though again, like most things here it seems, it wasn't long before I got used to it. Though the fact no-one tells you about the smells its as if they leave that little nugget of information from you so you can experience them yoursel first hand.

The next thing to hit me after the smell was the heat. It wasn't as hot as I was expecting it to be but thats not to say it wasn't warm. There was a very helpful sign that informed us the temperature was a pleasant 32°, though it didn't feel that hot at all. Though about an hour into our wanderings I had a formed a very sticky layer of sweat (which wasn't very nice but I carried on nontheless, i'm 'living the dream' dammit!)

Surprisingly neither of us were hungry throughout the day (which if you know us is quite surprising) though we did manage to keep our water levels up and thats the important thing right? (RIGHT?!)

One thing i've come to terms with about Bangkok is that none of the maps actually tell you where you are, we passed two maps not 20foot from each other that told us we were in 2 completely different areas of the city. As it was we never got lost and didn't really need the map as we formed our own (very clever may I say) way of working out where we were (and no, it did not involve breadcrumbs! The stray dogs ate them) Today was a day based around getting our bearings in Bangkok (which worked) and building up our courage to be able to venture into a completely different city and a) not get lost and b) experience the culture of Bangkok and Thailand in general (which worked wonders) There was many a time when we would venture down a random sidestreet because 'it looks interesting' though apparently a lot (well 2) of the locals wanted to guide us to i'm guessing touristy markets and away from the things we wanted to see. (and if you've not seen at least 3 7-Elevens a day in Bangkok you're not doing it right! Seriously, even if its just for a quick blast of sweet sweet air-conditioning)

At the end of the day Bangkok is so much more than we ever expected it to be! And we're only 2 days into being here. Though I might start to get a phobia of dogs soon from all the ones we've seen so far!