Man, that is one biiiig Buddha

Managed to find my way to the National Museum today which was okay. The trouble is that it was mainly full of historical stuff about the Thai royal family (who they revere) and lots and lots of depictions of Buddha (who they also revere, but in a sliiightly different way). Now I have no interest in my own royal family let alone anyone else's and really, when you've seen one depiction of Buddha standing, sitting or kneeling in prayer you've seen them all. Would it kill them to shake it up a bit? Here's a statue of Buddha praying, here's one of him sitting cross-legged, here he is on a motorbike, now he's performing an appendectomy on a pole-cat, and here he's depicted having a spud-gun fight with some of the Ray Harryhausen skeletons from Jason and the Argonauts. You get what I'm saying?
After that I went to Wat Pho which is the oldest temple in the city. It was absurdly ornate. Who would have thought that Buddhists could be so ostentatious? I wasn't going to go in to see the famous giant reclining Buddha for the reasons stated above plus it was really crowded in there (it's in a chapel and you cant see it from the outside) but then I thought, it is one of the sights of the city, if not the country and I was glad I did. Not only was he reclining (which made a change) but he was fucking MASSIVE! Photos don't really do the whole thing justice.
The Wat is a centre for traditional medicine and Thai massages were available there. Actually you can get them all over the city but I thought I would go with a place that had more of a stamp of authenticity to it rather than just let some random stranger at the side of the road start yanking my head about. It was quite peculiar lying on a mat between two other people while a small but surprisingly strong Thai girl crushed you body into odd shapes but not entirely unpleasant. I did feel more relaxed afterwards but that only lasted until I left the grounds and walked a hundred yards down the teeming city streets.
After that I strolled down to a pier docking point and caught a river bus back to the area I'm staying in. I have moved on from the place that boasted an occasional piano rendition of a well-known British soap-opera as well as what sounded like an old woman hacking her lungs up at 7am to a place that is even cheaper. Now have the joy of shared shower/bathrooms and a ceiling fan that has no setting between off and a speed that makes it sound like there is a fleet of Huey gunships hovering two feet above the bed. Hope I dont stand up on the bed in my sleep and decapitate myself.
Will switch to a more expensive place for the last couple of nights here in order to wash some clothes, recharge my batteries and recharge some of my batteries.
Blimey, nearly eight o'clock, see ya'.