Temples, Travellers tales and a cat!

Some days go by where I don't meet any one new. I walk around the area where I stay that has become familiar and smile and greet the few that I know by name and have a chat.

There is the Thai girl who runs an Internet cafe with her Greek husband and their beautiful 3yr old son, sadly the husband is fed up with her and has decided she is worthless and thick, she shed some tears and I provided a shoulder.

Then there is the lovely larger than average Thai girl who provides massage, she too has man problems in the fact that she can't find a decent one (join the club love)

She has tried dating sites for larger women  and reckoned she received loads of responses... all wanting just one thing!

Yesterday however, I met and spoke with 6 new people, two ladies in their 60's from Holland, a couple also their 60's from Bristol, a girl in her early 30's from London and a guy about 24 from Germany.

One of the Dutch ladies had lived in Thailand for 5 years but said that the heat of the summer - April onwards is just too unbearable reaching over 40 degrees.

So now she just comes for the winter months and lives cheaply and comfortably until the weather warms up a little in Holland.

 

After a late breakfast I walked around and admired some of the many Temples in the city. You can't help but to marvel at their beauty, I love that they are just on a regular street alongside shops and banks, can't quite imagine this next to Primark somehow.

  

They are all individually splendid in their detail and all contain many forms of Buddhas inside.  

You have to take your shoes off when entering and be silent.     

How touristy is this photo? A Chinese guy insisted on taking it after I took one for him

In between visiting Temples I was browsing outside a Thai antiques shop and struck up conversation with the aforementioned couple from Bristol. They travel each year to SE Asia for about 4 months to escape the British winter. Each year they spend much of their time visiting some familiar places and countries such as Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Malaysia and then add on somewhere different, this year they will also visit China and Burma. They were very chilled and interesting.

For the recent festival all of the Temples had lanterns outside with small lamps in, now the festival is over a kitten decided it was a good place to hang out!

                                                   Or hide....

Or sunbathe................

Last night while having dinner and a beer, I got chatting to a girl travelling alone from London, she has been here for a month volunteering in an orphanage having already spend a month in Vietnam. Tomorrow she she heads South for another month to do some island hopping, and then,  after a couple of weeks in Cambodia, she will go home to spend Xmas and new year with her Mum in Edinburgh. In January she is off to Africa for 3 months!

Later on,  I stopped to chat to a German guy who was planing a trip by river through Laos, V'nam and Cambodia.  I asked how long he had been here and he casually replied that he left Europe 9 months ago and is on a round the world trip, having visited NZ, Oz, Latin and Central America and Malaysia and Singapore before arriving in Thailand, simply amazing!

I encouraged him to say where his favourite place was and he decided it had to be Peru for its shear diversity.

That is what I love about travel, you meet so many interesting people doing the most interesting and wonderful journeys.