One Night in Bangkok…….

We actually had three nights but that’s not half as catchy a title so let’s just go with the above.

We arrived late evening after another long day of travelling. This time we went from Dubai to Bangkok via Bahrain, not the most direct route but we got there eventually. Rob had attempted to arrange a transfer from the airport with our hotel. They had given us a quote of 1300 baht (about £31.50) and not knowing how far it was we accepted this blindly. When we had searched every possible arrivals venue for a card with our name upon it and waited at each for an accumulated time of about half an hour we gave up and joined the taxi queue. Within five minutes we were on our way.

It is always a little stressful when you arrive in a new country, need to catch a taxi, have no command of their language, they show very little ability in yours and yet you put your fate in their hands. I also have an innate fear, inherited I think from my slightly paranoid (yet otherwise pretty perfect) father, of being ripped off. I needn’t have worried at all. Even though, in our haste to arrive as quickly as possible, we’d agreed (after much confusion and gesticulation) to take the highway and pay the tolls our whole ride, including a 20% tip, only came to 400 baht (£10). We don’t know what our hotel had quoted us for but, in retrospect, were delighted that they were a no show.

On arrival we had a quick explore of our hotel, a short wander around the hotel’s immediate vicinity and a futile attempt at extracting any useful information from our reception desk before retiring to bed with no fixed plan for the morrow. Our only clear idea was to get up early in order to maximise our time in Thailand’s capital.

I am not generally the best at switching off and rarely, in real life, sleep through a whole night. Since our travels have begun however, with no worries of work and few concerns beyond where to go or what to do next, I have found this much improved and have enjoyed many undisturbed slumbers. This night, for whatever reason, was not one of the best. I woke about 3am to go to the loo and despite many efforts to the contrary remained awake reading and catching up on writing our blog until about 6am. Then, confident in Rob’s ability to set an alarm, I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Never had confidence been so misplaced and as I awoke, nearly four hours later, to Rob still sleeping soundly beside me my first thought was to hold the pillow firmly over his head. Luckily my murderous thoughts were only momentary as a much more pressing realisation usurped them in my list of priorities – it was now 9.52 and breakfast finished at 10!!!

Having lasted purely on aeroplane food the previous day I was desperate for real sustenance and jumped out of bed like a shot from a cannon. Although tempted to punish Rob by abandoning him to starvation my instinct to get my money’s worth over rode this and I ‘gently’ woke him ‘inviting’ him to join me.

Four minutes later (not a bad feat from bed to breakfast table considering we were on the tenth floor) we were hurriedly navigating the dining room having been told that all the food would be removed promptly at ten. Under such pressure we gathered an interesting array of culinary delights and sat in contemplative silence, Rob barely awake and me aware that I’d already nursed thoughts of murder and revenge despite only having been conscious for approximately nine minutes.

Thankfully the day did improve as we experienced our first tuk tuk ride, (mildly terrifying but also a great way to see everything),

enjoyed a lovely boat trip on the Chao Phraya river,

and saw more temples and buddhas than I’ve ever seen in my life before (or need to see again).

They were absolutely beautiful but there were just so many that by the end of the day they all seemed to have merged in to one and it was hard to know our Golden Buddha from our WatPhra Kaew or our Wat Pho.

It was a lovely day finished off with a lucky discovery of a small food market with live music called the light festival. With food stalls all around the outside, a stage at the front and tables dotted all through the middle it had a lovely atmosphere and an extremely good selection of appetising treats.

The tuk tuk ride home was again a little scarey but by the time we got back to the hotel, despite our late start, we really felt like we had maximised our day.

The following day, having had enough of sightseeing (particularly temples) we instead set off for Siam Park City, a theme park/water park about 45 minutes from the city centre.

Although the place is a little tired and Rob and I are getting a little old we had a lovely day. We spent the morning in the theme park where the boomerang ride was one of the scariest rides I’d ever been on. It totally surprised us by reversing the whole way before sending us hurtling forward (the clue might be in the name🤣). We were shell shocked for a little while so thought we’d spend a more relaxing afternoon on the water park side.

The first slide we went on gave me my first (and last I hope) experience of colonic irrigation. Never have I had to move so fast, firstly to adjust my badly misplaced swimwear and then to climb out of the water and find the nearest loo. We have been on so many slides in so many different countries before but I have never before experienced this. It was the weirdest feeling and not one I wished to repeat so we avoided that for the remainder of the afternoon.

Probably the highlights of the park were how quiet it was and a couple of hours spent by the worlds largest wave poollistening to the world’s strangest Christmas music and enduring the world’s most painful (but strangely relaxing) Thai massage.In Rob’s words the whole park was fairly surreal but still very enjoyable and a nice change from the previous few days. The journey back was a little traumatic right from the haggling with the taxi drivers who wanted to charge us more than twice as much as our earlier driver, to the endless traffic (this explained the inflated fare and made us feel a little guilty for having agreed such a low price). Eventually, once we knew we were within a few kilometres of our hotel, we abandoned the taxi to its gridlock and wandered back, stopping off to dine and enjoy the Christmas lights on our way.We left Bangkok the next morning very, very excited about the next stage of our journey.Bangkok airport.