Dame ‘Awkes Travels

First day in Bangkok

We slept to well, so failed to leave early for a visit to the Royal Palace. Breakfast was a little noisy. By the time we got there, 9am so did lots of guests. Along with Mrs Mills tinkering the ivory ‘s playing all Christmas songs, the Thai family next to us with the small boy playing some loud phone game and the pleasure boats passing with the female guide squawking away HELP. Breakfast was good though. The ferry to the Palace is 5 mins from us and cost 3.5 baht ( 10p) We arrived at the Palace. WOW is this some premonition of an Asian invasion. Thousands of people, most with umbrellas filing into the Palace entrance, the queues seemed never ending. We decide to give the Palace a miss. We came across the national museum, in addition to their normal exhibits there was a temporary one of Terracota Warriors.

This exhibition was something else. Kodak moments everywhere and great for Sylvia having seen them in China 15 years ago.

On our walk back, I was guessing on directions, we found ourselves in the University grounds. No one seemed to mind, we went in a great student restaurant, nice place for lunch and very reasonable, no alcohol though. Ferry back to different pier. Where we had to go through a market, first experience of Thai markets, interesting!! Spent rest of the day by the pool. Off to find a roof top cocktail bar. Back down to the market we found a hotel with a roof top bar. OK it’s not the Sky Bar, so no Sky Bar prices. Very good cocktails, interesting ingredients, like Gin with a fresh pepper corns on a stalk. We decide to eat there. The restaurant is down stairs. Both our main courses contained so much chilli we could be a fire eating act. Back to the hotel to cool off.

Tomorrow we are going to get up early ( we hope)and beat the rush, make that the two rushes (not rashers) the breakfast and the Palace.

Leaving home on a wet and windy Thursday.

Our house sitters Mona and Pieter were kind enough to give us a lift to Pombal station. Train to Lisbon then metro to airport very easy journey. The Emirates flight was full, like all airlines they have made cost saving cut backs, no hot towels before take off and only one alcoholic drink with the meal. At Dubai the modern new terminal has many bars and restaurants. We ate at Jacks a Gastro pub with very good food. Next stop Bangkok. This time on an Airbus 300 with seats on the upper floor, we didn’t expect this flying economy. The take off was so smooth we hadn’t noticed, then glanced out of the window to see Dubai looking like Blackpool illuminations. At Bangkok airport the usual chaos, big airport and very crowded. Immigration, one end of the airport, baggage carousel back the other way. Then search for the desk to buy a phone card. It was worth it to see this young Thai guy input so many numbers on our phone his hands worked in a flash. Next find exit 3 in arrivals for our prebooked taxi, of course we might have guessed, other end of airport. But what a taxi, Tommy taxis!! The car was either a hearse, or bed board on wheels, lovely ride to hotel. This time the driver had a challenge. The hotel was down a really narrow road that wasn’t one way and people everywhere, but we made it. Nice hotel, we were very tired. After a siesta we head to hotel restaurant which has a river frontage. Happy Hour 6-8, but only choice of 2 drinks. Bangkok has an amazing skyline so many skyscrapers mixed in with temples, beautiful when all the lights come on. The river is like the M25, you have never seen so much LED lights go floating by. Unfortunately we did not rate the food at hotel restaurant and needed some sleep so early night.

Too many people

Off to Lisbon airport