Advertisement
Published: August 27th 2012
Edit Blog Post
It's time for Caroline and I to begin our trip to Europe and this time we are flying to London through the east, with a three night stopover in Bangkok. Our flight from Auckland is with Royal Thai Airlines, and luckily for us, the flight is not full. Yes, a bonus, we manage to snag exit row seats. Numerous movies, and twelve hours later, we touch down in the rain at Bangkok airport.
Thai immigration and customs is a breeze, and we have a cunning plan to save us dragging all our luggage into the city. There's a left luggage counter at Bangkok airport, we drop our suitcases, and catch sky-train carrying overnight bags. House of Travel has booked us into the Bel Aire Princess on Soi 5, close to Nana Station. Very comfortable, and central. We give the hotel a big thumbs-up. Nana station is a 3-5 minutes walk and the sky-train will can take us anywhere in the city.
Monday, August 20th I'm up early, my body-clock's alarm goes off at 3.30am. I whisper at Caroline “are you awake”, the reply is
Mural
At the Grand Palace less than friendly, so I toss-and-turn until 6.30am and rise and shower. Caroline gets up shortly afterward, and rather than eat breakfast at the hotel we set off down Soi 5 towards Nana station. Before reaching the train station we strike a small 24hr diner (Took Lae Dee) where we have breakfast, coffee, toast, juice, eggs and a slice of bacon for around $2.00 New Zealand. This is a find! After breakfast, we negotiate Nana Station in rush-hour and take the sky-train to the river. Today'sgoal is to tour the Grand-Palace, It's unbelievably crowded, and after two hours of Buddha, spires, temples, Royal Palace, gold paint and orange tiles, we are ready for lunch.
Bangkok has numerous ethnic areas and today it's Chinatown for lunch. Both of us have a craving for dim-sum. And while we would expect Chinatown to have restaurants to spare, all we can find are gold shops, selling bright glittery jewelry. Finally, we spy an eatery across the road, cross and find seating. Looking up on the wall there are a number of paintings, and my eyes are drawn to one of them. It looks familiar, and the realization
dawns that I know this place, it's a painting of the R Tucker Thompson docking at Russell Wharfe, with our village in the background. “Of all the gin-joints in all the world,” here we are in a Chinese restaurant in Bangkok that has a large painting of Russell, the town in New Zealand where we live!
The afternoon takes us to the teak mansion of Jim Thompson (no relation to R Tucker), world famous in Bangkok, supposedly this is the man that single handedly introduced Thai silk to the fashionistas of the western world. The teak mansion is now surrounded by high-rises, and if he were still alive, Jim might have found it claustrophobic, but is still a little oasis on the side of a small canal (Khlong). We are lucky to have a female tour-guide with an irreverent, wicked sense of humor and both enjoy the tour immensely.
In the evening, it'ss our quest to find good Thai food around Nana station, this might sound easy, but we soon find the majority of the restaurants are Middle Eastern in nature. Yes, this is an Middle
East enclave in Bangkok, with restaurants and hotels catering to the Middle East. We didn't come to Bangkok to eat Arabic or Egyptian food! Not what we were expecting, but it does show the cosmopolitanism of the city. We do find a restaurant, but it's pretty average.
Tuesday, August 21 My nights sleep is better, the mattress is as hard as a rock, but my back feels great, however I am still awake early, 5.30am. Better than the 3.30am of the previous night, but far less than the full night's sleep that I need and deserve. After a shower, it's back to the local diner for breakfast then sky-train to the river. Today, it's Wat Arun and the teak palace, Chitralada, in Dusit park. Wat Arun is magnificent and well worth a visit, the design is based on Angkor Wat in Cambodia.. And the teak palace is worth a visit, however I would suggest that you get on one of the twice daily English speaking tours. We were late and had to make our way around, and there's not even a paper guide in English. We enjoy the palace, but
knowing the history would have made it so much more pleasurable. Enough of temples and teak, so we make our way back down river on the river-bus and sky-train to Nana. Along the way, I stop for a haircut and while, expensive by Bangkok's standards, 12.00 NZD, it is well worth the baht!
In the evening we go to Siam Square and dine at one of the restaurants that adjoin the gourmet food store, the meal is expensive by Bangkok standards and probably the worst we have had on the trip. But it's given Caroline a chance to browse the stores and partake of the Siam Plaza experience!! Then to round off the evening we go to the cinema to see the Bourne Legacy. Luxury, pure luxury, with reclining seats, Whangarei has a lot to learn..
Wednesday, August 22nd We rise early, have breakfast on the way to the sky-train to the airport. The Thai Airlines flight to London leaves at 12.30 and we have to be there 3 hours before.. The left luggage bill is the princely sum of 500 baht for
2 pieces for 2.5 days storage. A quick repack of the suitcases, check-in and a coffee and donuts and it's into the departure lounge. The flight to London is full, we don't score an exit seat, but never-the-less it's not a bad flight. Touchdown in London is 12 hours later and again we breeze through immigration and customs. To be continued........
Bangkok is a city of contrasts, from the swanky Siam Plaza with all of the high end stores such as Gucci, Loius Vuitton, Burbury and more, to the beggar with no legs pulling himself along the pavement and pushing his begging bowl before him. It's certainly vibrant and for the tourist it's a bargain bowl! The Thai people are polite and what is more they have adopted queuing theory and practice; the only people that seemed to jump the queues were Americans and Europeans. Food is cheap and good and ethnic restaurants abound, from Indian to Egyptian. Did we enjoy ourselves?
A resounding yes!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.085s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 10; qc: 25; dbt: 0.0338s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Jay Brara
non-member comment
Terrific!
Terrific! Brings back memories of our trip to Bangkok and Angkor Wat a few years back.