The kings Birthday and leaving Bangkok!

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I met up with Nicole for breakfast the next morning and Sheryl joined us from her conference later that day. We spent the day shopping, catching up and then took a nap. We woke up when the fireworks began to go off. We had forgotten to wake up earlier. It was the King of Thailand’s birthday! We ran outside and stood in front of giant screens watching the ceremony, were given yellow candles to light for the King's health and it was amazing to see the whole tourist sector silent except for the screens and to see the whole street glowing in candle light. It didn’t even stop there. We started to walk to where the ceremony was and there were more people in the streets then when the flames had their play off run and the distance covered was probably longer than the distance from the Saddledome in Calgary to the hospital on 17th avenue. We walked probably over 2km down the main road which had lights hung every foot the entire way.

The trees ablaze with lights, the center of the road spouting water features, lights and pumping loud music. Streets vendors selling all sorts of food and drink, people all wearing pink, the color of the king, orchestras playing, floats driving down the streets, dancers, singers everywhere. It was likely the biggest celebration I have ever seen. The fireworks also were magnificent. They came from every direction from all throughout the city so that no matter where you looked you witness the same fireworks throughout all of Bangkok. There were at least three displays you could see from every direction you looked and like I said, you could see them from anywhere in the city so you really have to appreciate a city like Bangkok and the amount of fireworks it would take to put on that kind of display. The police presence as you can imagine was quite large because it is an offense of about 3 years in prison to deface anything with the King’s face on it or to insult the king, even tear a bill of baht with his face on it. They are very strict. The night was fantastic and despite the festivities we went back to Kao San road and had a few drinks at the bar in the Irish bar. I randomly ran into Alex, the German from Chiang Mai, in the bar and he came to join us with some Swedish girls and some Swedish guys asked if they could join us so we had a new crew. We went to the dance club after and called it a night early in the morning.

The next day we just shopped for some last minute things and traveled to Chatachak market, the largest market in Bangkok… Wow. The sheer size of it is massive. Something like 15 or 20 000 shops. That’s quite a few. Bigger than the Limpini Market I went to but this one is only on weekend or for special events. We went back to Kao San after a few hours of wandering around there and then went to stroll down the area we went the day before for the King’s birthday as it was still closed for a 4 day festival. Saw many of the same sight but not as many musicians, dancer, floats or fireworks happened that night. We had dinner then we went out for a Pin pong show. Now this is a unique story to tell and an experience I think you can only have in Bangkok. I will not write down what I saw there as it is nothing that should be read by many eyes so if you would like to know more please talk to me about it. We had a few drinks after wards then Nicole had to leave early in the morning so we said our goodbyes.

I made it to the airport and it is a good thing I booked my airport shuttle an hour earlier than I was going to because it took an extra hour to get to the airport and my flight had moved forward an hour. If I hadn’t taken the earlier one I would have had 45 minutes to make it through the airport which would’ve sucked!!! I made it anyway and began my flight to Norway. =)

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