Not At All the Bangkok I Remembered

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The last time I travelled to Bangkok, it involved a tedious six hour stopover in transit in Moscow airport, diversions to Tashkent and New Delhi and took in excess of twenty four hours (see Heading East, But Not Quite in the Right Direction). As we were no longer slumming it with the cheapest-backpacker option, this flight was direct and took half that time. Additionally, the food on this flight was excellent, unlike the inedible Soviet slop that we got last time.

We didn't want to fly to Australia directly, but this flight to Bangkok was still the longest flight that the kids had ever been on, but it soon passed. The only incident involved the obnoxious woman in front of our daughter who had her seat fully reclined for most of the flight and then complained when it kept getting knocked. The old hag (quote) “Didn’t want to get into an argument about it” when the reclined seat was pointed out. Mind you, I would probably have found it irritating having a child in the seat behind me before we had children of our own.

Bangkok had certainly changed a lot since I was last there, actually over seventeen years ago (see Living in Style in Khao San Road). It was a lot more modern and a lot more developed, which was evident immediately as we were being driven to our hotel - again another advantage of not backpacking. There were tall, shiny, modern office buildings everywhere and the roads were wide and modern - not at all what I remembered.

Our driver pointed out a building that was shaped like an elephant, which we all thought was amazing. This was a kind three towered building with the addition of eyes, ears and tusks. Bangkok had however lost a lot of the primitive charm that I remembered, which seemed a shame, but then that’s progress.

Something that I didn’t remember from last time was all the pictures of the King (the world’s longest reigning monarch by the way) and his family that were all over the city - even painted on the side of some of the massive, modern office buildings. Apparently a lot has happened since I was last here and his role in events such as the 1992 anti-government riots, where he helped to defuse the situation, have really revered him to the Thai people.

The hotel was very different to the hostels on Khao San Road from last time - the air-conditioning was a lot different to the ineffective fan that cut out when the lights were turned off at night.

Given that we were seriously jet-lagged, we spent the rest of the day relaxing in the hotel, sleeping and a bit of time by the pool.

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