FIRST DAY AND NIGHT IN BANGKOK, THAILAND

Here we are in Bangkok and so far a bit slower than the rest of the holiday.  When we arrived at the hotel, we were greeted with the most spectacular view of the city.  We are on the 22nd floor of the Hilton Millennium Hotel and the window in our room has to be 7 feet high and 15 feet long.  We are not overlooking air conditioning units and mechanical areas like I have only seen before - here we are looking at a Millennium dollar view.

 

So our first afternoon and evening we were on our own with the only other 2 people that decided to opt for the add on excursion to Bangkok.  Candace and Tom from Chicago are our travelling companions for the next days.  We spent yesterday afternoon going to visit Jim Thompson's teak houses/museum not far from where we are staying.  It was a great chance to use public transport.  Bangkok has a sky train similar to our own - only the station names are really weird and the characters that is their language are weird too.  Fortunately the anglicised name is written in the alphabet that we recognize and that helps tons.  The fare from our hotel to the station we needed was the equivalent of $1.30.  So not a lot of money. 

It was an interesting way to spend an afternoon.  For dinner, at Candace's suggestion we went to a restaurant called Harmonique....sounded amazing - ok so we were in for a surprise.  First surprise was the look of the restaurant itself.  Second surprise was the bathroom.  When "ladies" are sitting down to ....(well you know) right at nose level is the men's urinal.  Nice.  But the food was good, inexpensive and the beer was downright cheap and nice and cold.  Way to go Candace!

Then to a market to further exhaust ourselves and then home to shower and fall into bed.  I slept like the dead!

Today we had our tour in the morning.  First up was a long tail boat ride up the river and into the smaller canals.  It was a lot of fun - we stopped and fed fish outside of a temple.  It was a feeding frenzy.  There must have been thousands and they were climbing on top of one another to get the bits of bread that we were throwing in the water.  It was quite an experience. 

Then we went to the Temple of the Dawn.  What a beautiful temple.  It is very  tall - you were able to go up the stairs and walk around for nice city views, but the steps were very steep, very shallow, much taller than normal steps and no railings - a good reason not to make the climb as far as I was concerned.  Besides I had some great chances to take pictures where we were.  The temple is ornamented with pieces of Chinese porcelain in all kinds of floral decorations - it looked amazing.  Bells were tinkling and the sun was glinting and I was seated in the shade with a small breeze - It was wonderful.