Day 10 - MRT Adventure

This morning we woke up after a very hot + sweaty night (no air con)! I went for a walk and came to a public park where there were heaps of public group exercise classes going on - so I decided to join in for 15 minutes of yoga under a beautiful rotunda. Back at our room we got ourselves ready and headed down for some breakfast in the communal kitchen. 

We had a bit of a relax and then checked out of the backpackers, walked down the road and hopped in a taxi to Hua Lamphong station. We then decided to buy a daily train ticket for the MRT (Metropolitan Rapid Transit) to do a bit of exploring. Opened in 2004, the MRT currently only has one line and is one of three rapid transit train systems (the other two being the BTS skytrain and the Airport Rail Link) in Bangkok.

Our first stop was Terminal 21 shopping centre for some lunch. The food court there is amazing - nothing like in Australia. It's like they have collected some of their best street vendors, kept their cheap prices and lumped them all together in a big hall! We had a brief browse around the shops and then it was back to the train.

Our next stop was Chatuchak Park. We had a nice (but very sweaty) walk through the park and finally got the Bangkok Butterfly Garden and Insectarium. We didn't think it was possible but somehow they managed to get it even more humid inside the Butterfly house so we had a nice look around but didn't last too long!

At this point we were relatively close to Chatuchak weekend market so we thought we would walk there and check it out. The market is absolutely huge and packed with clothing, homewares and food. We had a bit of a look around, got a refreshing lemon ice drink and then hopped back on the train. 

It was still quite early but as we were going to hop on the night train we thought we should grab some early dinner. We still had credit on our Terminal 21 food court card (they work on a credit basis so vendors don't have to deal with cash) so we decided to go back for round 2 and try some new dishes. It was then time to grab some snacks from the supermarket and catch the train back to Hua Lamphong station and board the night train to Surat Thani.