One night (and more) in Bangkok

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Every traveller's nightmare is a late night delayed flight! We had a 2 hour delay in Vietnam which meant we were on schedule to get to bed at 4am. Not a great start to our holiday but Bangkok is a 24 hour city and we have plenty of night shift experience, albeit some time ago now! Arriving at the airport was a breeze and we were staggered at how modern it was. Finding a taxi was no problem either, but when we were short changed at the road toll, we thought we had been scammed. It turned out to be an honest mistake by our driver and by the time we got to our hotel he still owed us money which he gave us without a fight!!

We opted to stay in the Best Western in the Pratnum area of Bangkok. This was because we thought a bit of comfort off a late night flight would be nice. Cue receiving keys for the room next to the lift and directly below the gym!! The area looked a bit tatty but it was fine and we enjoyed our 3 nights there, even if the hotel doesn't make it onto our highly recommended list.

What struck us straight away was the amount of shopping centres. These glitzy shrines to consumerism are everywhere. There's even Tesco and Boots for Brits missing a taste of home! It was a surprise to see Christmas being so widely celebrated (by the multinational corporations and their profiteers!!) and there was even a lego building competition for the kids. Outside many of these modern shrines you can see Buddhist rituals being performed at more traditional shrines. The sight of huge golden elephants adorned with flowers and being worshipped by monks and businessmen alike was quite something.

We hadn't come to Bangkok to shop though. A taste of home awaited us on our first night. A fellow evacuee from Tunisia, Richard, now lives in the city. He gave us a tour of a couple of ex-pat British pubs which were more Brit pub than a pub in Britiain!! The beer was good, especially the home-brewed bitter, and the gammon & pineapple was delicious.

The next day was our sightseeing day. We walked out to the Victory Monument which turned out to be a huge roundabout. The monument was inaccessible but we got a good view of it from the Sky Train platform. Bangkok's transport system is amazing, although there are parts of the city it doesn't reach. We travelled down to Saphan Taksin station which is on the river. From there we boarded the Chao Phraya Express Boat. Somehow we were talked into buying day passes for the boat. Don't bother if you are just going to go there and back as you can buy single tickets on the boat. For some reason they didn't tell us that!!

The boat took us along the river towards Tha Chang pier. From there we walked through the busy touristy market towards the whitewashed walls of the Grand Palace. It is huge! At the gates people kept telling us we couldn't go inside wearing shorts. We knew that, we were just looking for somewhere to perch and put the legs on our zip-off trousers!! Finally inside the walls the sight of the temple domes was amazing. We decided not to pay togo inside the palace and temple as the 400 Baht (£10) fee was 8 times what the locals pay and far more than we wanted to pay. We enjoyed it enough from the outside. Curiosity killed the cat, so they say, but for us it was a boon. We wandered around some of the back roads and found ourselves inside the palace gardens - for free!! Ok, so we didn't get to see inside the palace but the guardsmen and their stone elephants were cool and we saw a lot of the palace architecture.

Just up the road is the City Pillar shrine which is tall and thin. Inside there we saw many people making offerings and pressing pieces of gold leaf onto the statues of Buddha. It was a peaceful place. Nearby we saw people buying caged birds and setting them free. All of this was under the watchful gaze of the pink elephants standing guard over the roundabout.

A little further on and we found ourselves wandering around Wat Pho. This is an extensive site of towers and temples and we loved it. We got there around lunch time so there were very few tourists around. It was great just wandering around and popping in and out of the temples. Shoes on, shoes off, repeat ad infinitum!! The highlight was the massive reclining Buddha but you have to pay a little bit to see it. It's something like 46m long and more than impressive. The only problem is that's what everyone goes to see so it is always busy!!

From there we took a small ferry across the river to Wat Arun. Disaster struck as Russ ran out of battery power and his spare was back in the room! Shame really as it was quite a climb to the viewing level with great scenes of the river and its passing traffic. Exhausted, we retraced our steps and made our way back to the hotel for some rest.

That was really it for Bangkok for us. We'll be back because we fly back to Vietnam from the city's airport early in the New Year and, yes, we have some shopping to do!!!!

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