No Rest for the Wicked

I didn't turn the light off all night, and slept fitfully, wearing the long-sleeved Indonesian shirt and wrapped up tightly in my sleeping bag. During the night I read Sherlock Holmes stories that I had stored on my laptop. There's no place like Holmes!

In the morning the arms showed a slight improvement on the previous evening, but I felt I needed to get out of that hotel!

I walked around and tried all the better-looking hotels in the neighbourhood, that is, in the alley running alongside the monastery and all the adjoining alley-ways, but none of them had rooms free (and this was in the off-season!). I crossed the main road at the end of the alley and tried the street on the opposite side, which runs parallel to Khaosan Road. Hit gold with the Tuptim Bed and Breakfast (:http//www.tuptimb-b.com), which cost 399 Baht for an air-con with separate bathroom, but the price included breakfast! The room is much cleaner and even has four coat-hangers and a place to hang them—that's where my washing will go! On the downside, there's not a single electrical outlet (no television, so obviously not needed!), so I'll have to ration the time using the laptop.

After moving in in the afternoon spent the rest of the day in my new air-conditioned room listening to a Thai jazz program playing lots of nice tunes and started reading Jeffrey Archer's "Fourth Estate", which I bought second-hand for 100 Baht (it has the legend on the cover "This book may be sold only in India", and inside has stamps from used-bookshops in Katmandu and Darjeeling).

At 11:00 I went downstairs to the restaurant for some supper and a nightcap, and this elephant (not pink!) walks in off the street and stops in front of my table. Sorry to say, I just wasn't in an elephant mood!