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Published: January 14th 2020
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We are once again in Bangkok.
Our first day was mostly spent with a quick swim in the pool, a meander along the streets just to see what had changed and then lounging around in the air con room.
We were suffering from a bad dose if jet lag which is unusual for us but it was probably due to dehydration. On the seond leg of our flight from Abu Dhabi to Bangkok we were trapped in our seat. We had the window seat and the middle seat. A lovely young Thai lady was allocated the aisle seat. She smiled sweetly as she sat down and then promptly pulled down the tray table, plonked her I pad on it and plugged in her ear phones. As usual with anyone from this area of the world , within minutes of take off she was flat out asleep and stayed that way for practically the entire seven hours. We did disturb her once to get out but it was such a performance to get past we didn't repeat it meaning restricting the amount of water we drank.
Once at Bangkok airport we went to find a taxi, they have s new system
now, you pull a ticket out of the machine at the public taxi rank and get allocated a bay number. Ours was 32 of course it was the only bay that was empty all the rest had taxis waiting to whisk you away. He soon turned up and we negotiated the price to Mango Lagoon. 500Baht. Suprizingly it hasn't changed since we first started coning back in 2006. He was quick to point out that he couldn't drive us all the way there as there were '"many people walking" we understood and agreed to be dropped off at the main road. He seemed quite relieved. You can actually drive down Soi Rambutri but like he said there are so many people walking it would take forever.
He gave a friendly tour as we battled with the choked up traffic. Despite being 6.30pm on a Sunday it was more like rush hour back home.
Once we made it to the hotel it was a quick change into lighter clothing and out for a cold drink and a bit of people watching from Gecko Bar.
We didn't really do much next day apart from a dip in the pool and a
visit to a Wat close to our hotel. By evening we were recovered. We'd arranged to meet Christophe at 7pm. We'd first met him on Kapas back in 2012 and had bumped into him a few times since, over here in various places.
It was lovely to catch up and after a long chat and a beer in Gecko Bar we all went to Ranees, our favourite restaurant, where they do an amazing massaman curry.
As the title suggests Bangkok is crazy, to get back from Ranees we had to negotiate crossing the main road. A tourist policeman stood in the middle of the crossing, arms stretched out, taxis and motorbikes slowing down to stop, people from either side began to cross when the policeman shouted " go go go" and gestured us to run as a private car roared past. Pedestrians scattered everywhere out of the way.
We had a couple more drinks in various bars on Rambuttri before Christophe left to make his was home. He was living 20 kms away on the outskirts of Bangkok so had quite a journey. We, on the other hand had a two minute walk back to our hotel.
Feeling
much better next morning we took to taxi river boat along the Chao Phraya river to Wat Traimit ( Wat meaning Temple) which is supposed to house the largest golden statue in the world . It's made of solid gold and weighs 6 ton and is worth 250 million dollars
It was a bit of a walk from the pier to the temple which took us through back streets lined with rusty oily spare parts from old cars and the odd engineering workshop. Stan found that bit fascinating. I, on the hand was glad to arrive at the Wat.
By the time we'd travelled back along the river to our hotel we were more than ready for a cool dip in the pool.
Tomorrow we leave the chaos being and head off to Koh Lanta, an island close to Krabi.
......scroll down for more photos.........
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Eileen Harrison
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Another jollie ?
Thank you for showing us your latest adventure. Looking great!