Bangkok 06 Mar 2017

Bangkok is a manic place! A city that never sleeps, horrendous traffic, thousands of tourists and steamy hot; I love It! The constant buzz of tuk-tuks, car horns, police sirens and people buying and selling on the streets is overwhelming, but it doesn't take long before the whole experience wraps around you and you become part of the scene.

We had a slightly late start and took breakfast at the hotel. After the prices in Australia, we didn't turn a hair at paying £7 for all you could eat breakfast this morning. Suitably fortified, we headed down to Sathorn Taksin pier to catch a ferry. At the pier we were briefly distracted by someone persuading us to catch the tourist boat up river. Tickets were 40 Baht, about £1, but we bought tickets for the local boat for 15 Baht instead. The boat was crowded, but we got a seat and enjoyed our trip. There is plenty to see on the Chao Phraya River. Ferries, tourist boats, rice barges and 'long-tail' boats. The local boats call at all the landing points and people clamber on and off at each one.

We got off at Tha Chang and fought our way through the hawkers to the entrance to the Royal Palace. The crowds here, were amazing. Initially, we thought it was just tourist groups, but then it dawned on us that there were a lot of local people there all dressed in black. King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand died at the age of 88, on 13 October 2016, after a long illness and the country is still in mourning and will be for at least another 6 months. Hordes of people come daily to pay their respects to the dead monarch.

As a result, it was extremely difficult to visit all the temples in the Royal Palace, some were closed and others so full of either tourists or mourners it was impossible to get inside. Added to this, it was extremely hot. We did see as much as we could of these extraordinary buildings, but eventually gave up and found the exit. We managed to walk around the outside of the Palace and get to Wat Phro, the temple of the reclining Buddha. This was much more peaceful and we paid our respects to the largest statue of Buddha in the reclining position. He is huge and covered in gold leaf.

By now, both of us were hungry, thirsty and hot so we found a small local eatery near the temple and dived inside and found a fan to sit beside! We both had a rice and meat dish with a beer it came to 220 Baht. A very tasty bargain meal.

All templed out, we hiked back to Tha Chang pier and caught another local ferry back down the river to Sathorn Taksin. 

Our hotel has a roof-top swimming pool, it didn't take us too long to get changed and head up there. It is rather pleasurable to be swimming on top of a tall building looking down on the crazy traffic, an oasis of cool and calm! The pool is surrounded by garden, plants and trees too. Whilst we dried off, we sat in the shade and had a drink.

This evening, we headed around the corner from our hotel into the lanes surrounding it. We saw several tempting places, but settled on Nalin Kitchen, a small cafe serving local food. After some chicken and prawn starters we had chicken, sticky rice, cashews and noodles for main course. We rather like both the quality and tastiness of the food and the very reasonable prices.