A world of pure imagination...: London by tuktuk...?

Bangkok

Our plane to Thailand was a BA flight so we were in amongst a large group of lobster-like Brits heading home, having spent the summer roasting themselves silly in the Australian sun. We arrived late into the new Bangkok airport, very impressive, and grabbed a taxi into the city and to the Asia hotel. The hotel is EXACTLY how I remembered it, hadn't changed a bit. It has the same crazy 80's American soap opera charm! Prime location though with it's own skytrain stop, close to the city centre, markets, malls, etc... We were dead on our feet, so dodged the Thai Elvis impersonator and lurid Cosmopolitans in the lobby and headed straight up to our room to hit the sack.

traffic below skytrain station at our hotel

On our first day we dived into the soup that was the Bangkok atmosphere and headed to the palace, wat pra geow and wat pho. The reclining buddha at wat pho was breath taking, the feet in particular were amazing with inlayed mother-of-pearl diagrams depicting the life of buddha on the soles. We were starting to melt, so jumped in a Taxi back to the hotel, where we took advantage of the swimming pool and pool side bar to cool down. We were still pretty beat so stayed at the hotel for dinner, at a Vietnamese restaurant (which Dad, Margie and Sue will remember!) and then headed back to bed.

wat pra geow

By day two we were feeling a bit more adventurous and decided to tackle the monolith that is the Bangkok shopping district. This of course involved an attempted swindling by a sweaty man wearing a T-shirt labelled 'tourist police', who told us that all the shops in the Siam Square, Siam malls and the MBK centre were closed until lunch because it was a national Buddhist holiday. We, rightly, were quite sceptical, and getting a little pissed cos he kept scribbling on our map, so when he offered to hire us a tuktuk for the morning we backed off towards the skytrain pointing at our watches and telling him we'd wait at our hotel instead. The malls of course did open at the normal times and we spent the morning looking through Siam Square, the flashy discovery centre, which has the BEST foodcourt downstairs with all these little kitchen booths with chefs all working away at whatever regional speciality they served, including one that serves the god of all deserts, sweetened condensced milk rotti!

reclining buddha, wat pho

Afterwards we headed off to MBK to check out cheap electronics and knock-off everything else. Jay bought himself a replica 80s calculator watch, and I found myself an elephant charm to add to my bracelette. Having visited MBK in 2004, I remembered it having a brilliant food court upstairs, which was more like a street market, so lots of individual vendors preparing really cheap, very tastey Thai fare. Unfortunately this has since been privatised and now it is a crappy international food court consisting of the usual franchises... so we opted for a place that had a buffet thai curry deal. It was quite good, you kind of assembled noodles, herbs, and other condiments on your bowl and then scooped the desired curry over the top. Jay selected something labelled chicken, which also included strange brown jelly like squares that he assured me was tofu (aha! Yeah right!) After Jay guzzled down quite a few jelly squares and I'd tentavilly nibbled on the corner of another, a friendly young waitress explained to us that it was indeed congealed chicken blood, hmm... not so tofu like... put that one down as a healthy experience and moved on...

Decided to retreat from the consumerism madness and visit the Jim Thompson museum. The museum is quite close to the shopping area and so thought we'd take a tuktuk, as Jay was yet to experience the 2-stroke engine fueled thrill. Of course it required 20 minutes of hard negotiation with the driver, who thought as a woman, I'd be far more interested in massive glittery stones and shiny goldness, finally I assured him that we were serious, so off we hurtled. Jim Thompson was an American ex-pat, who decided to reside in Thailand following WWII, he based himself in Bangkok and became a silk dealer, mainly selling to international markets. For his residence in Bangkok he built a massive property made from small northern Thai houses which he re-located and re-assembled into a larger structure, and the preceded to fill it with beautiful Asian artefacts. It's one of my favourite places in Bangkok precisely for this reason, despite it being a farang's house and a tourist destination, it's also unbelievably tranquil. That evening we headed out to the night bazaar, which is a massive series of covered outdoor markets with food markets, beer stands, and stage in the middle.

Jim Thompson house museum

On our last day we took it pretty easy, I spent the morning enjoying a manicure and pedicure while Jay was oiled up and massaged into a jelly state, then went out for a ferry ride along the river, took lots of photos, etc... Afterwards we grabbed our bags from the hotel and splurged on a hotel car to the airport (which had seatbelts!!) Good ol' BA allow early check in, so we could ditch the big packs and wonder into the duty-free filled departure lounge pergatory to wait for the flight to London. Flight was OKish, arrival in Heathrow much better than expected, as it wasn't peak tourist time the majority of passengers were British passport holders, so our customs line was short and we got through pretty quick. Found Patsy and my uncle Michael who zoomed us off to Stewartby and showers, bacon sarnies, and a waaaaaaarm bed! Bliss!