24th-27th October
I arrived in Bangkok around 10pm on a Tuesday night, after a flight made slightly more nerve-wracking than it should have been by the salaryman sitting behind me who kept trying to use his mobile phone - until the smiley Japanese stewardess informed him that this was likely to screw up the plane`s radar system and kill us all. I love flying with JAL: as well as the overly attentive cabin crew you`re usually provided with 3 seats to yourself, free wine and a personal TV screen on which you can play video games or choose from a fairly wide selection of movies, of which mercifully `Snakes on a Plane` wasn`t one. Lisa met me at the airport, which was fantastic as I hadn`t seen her since leaving the UK in January. After some faffing about we managed to locate a taxi, which delivered us at hair-raising speed to our hotel (pretty decent - cheers, Lonely Planet). After a couple of glasses of sake from a bottle I`d purchased earlier at Chubu Airport, we went to bed in preparation for hitting Bangkok bright and early the next day.
We made it up in time for breakfast the following morning, which turned out to be an excellent move. On arrival in the restaurant we were confronted with a huge buffet: Thai curry, rice, soup, eggs, bacon, salad, cereal, toast, fruit etc. etc. You name it, you can eat it for breakfast in Thailand. I love buffets. This was looking like it would turn out to be my kind of country. Unfortunately breakfast proved to be just about the high point of Day One. Within ten minutes of leaving our hotel, armed with a map of the city and (of course) a copy of Lonely Planet, we realised that Bangkok was in fact an extremely hot, extremely polluted city. Having just about survived the summer in the concrete sauna that was Nagoya I appeared to have volunteered to repeat the experience...and hot weather makes me grumpy. Add to the heat hordes of pushy tuk tuk drivers, all attempting to `persuade` us into their motorbike-powered taxis, and my patience boundaries started to feel severely tested; by 5pm `no thank you` had degenerated into language that nice middle-class girls from Cambridgeshire really shouldn`t be using. To make matters more frustrating we naively fell victim to a common scam whereby a helpful Thai local stops to ask where you`re going, then assures you that the temple containing the giant reclining Buddha is currently closed, but that his friend, the equally charming and obliging tuk tuk driver, will happily take you to the much more impressive Temple of the Kneeling Buddha Plucking His Eyebrows for only 10 baht. Did I mention I had my Lonely Planet with me? I obviously hadn`t read page 100 , which gives full details of this particular con. Ah well. The prize for the most creative way of attempting to rip people off must, however, go to the pair of crazy women who planted open bags of birdseed on us so that we got mobbed by a frenzied mass of pigeons, and then tried to charge us for the privilege. No chance, love.
So saying, it wasn`t an entirely wasted day. We made it up to the top of the Golden Mount, which provided us with amazing views over the city, and ate at a very pleasant vegetarian restaurant off Khao San Road. Khao San Road also gave me my first reassuring glimpse of Boots for ten months, where I was able to purchase tubes of REAL toothpaste at half the UK price. I`m not hard to please really.
Day Two was subatantially better. Bangkok still wasn`t making it
into my top 10 favourite cities, but it had at least risen above Coventry. Realising that we`d been taken for a ride (sometimes literally) the previous day we decided to forego all offers of assistance from helpful strangers and headed for the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew (the Temple of the Emerald Buddha), which was breathtakingly shiny and spectacular. We then moved on to Wat Po, where we stared with awe at the largest reclining buddha 
in Thailand (at last)...or maybe the World, I`m not quite sure. Our last stop before lunch was Wat Arun, on the other side of the river, a vast temple decorated in a mosaic of Chinese porcelain. All very impressive. Many photos were taken. 
After our productive day`s sightseeing we decided to fight the onset of temple fatigue with a visit to China Town that evening. By chance our visit coincided with a vegetarian food festival: hundreds of lantern-bedecked stalls lined the streets, selling food of every shape and colour - proof that you can do just about anything with a vegetable if you set your mind to it.
After consuming noodles and drinking beer through straws, sitting on plastic chairs at the side of the street, we had a brief look at the nearby Chinese temple (one more wouldn`t hurt) and headed back to our hotel. A much better day all around.
I arrived in Bangkok around 10pm on a Tuesday night, after a flight made slightly more nerve-wracking than it should have been by the salaryman sitting behind me who kept trying to use his mobile phone - until the smiley Japanese stewardess informed him that this was likely to screw up the plane`s radar system and kill us all. I love flying with JAL: as well as the overly attentive cabin crew you`re usually provided with 3 seats to yourself, free wine and a personal TV screen on which you can play video games or choose from a fairly wide selection of movies, of which mercifully `Snakes on a Plane` wasn`t one. Lisa met me at the airport, which was fantastic as I hadn`t seen her since leaving the UK in January. After some faffing about we managed to locate a taxi, which delivered us at hair-raising speed to our hotel (pretty decent - cheers, Lonely Planet). After a couple of glasses of sake from a bottle I`d purchased earlier at Chubu Airport, we went to bed in preparation for hitting Bangkok bright and early the next day.
We made it up in time for breakfast the following morning, which turned out to be an excellent move. On arrival in the restaurant we were confronted with a huge buffet: Thai curry, rice, soup, eggs, bacon, salad, cereal, toast, fruit etc. etc. You name it, you can eat it for breakfast in Thailand. I love buffets. This was looking like it would turn out to be my kind of country. Unfortunately breakfast proved to be just about the high point of Day One. Within ten minutes of leaving our hotel, armed with a map of the city and (of course) a copy of Lonely Planet, we realised that Bangkok was in fact an extremely hot, extremely polluted city. Having just about survived the summer in the concrete sauna that was Nagoya I appeared to have volunteered to repeat the experience...and hot weather makes me grumpy. Add to the heat hordes of pushy tuk tuk drivers, all attempting to `persuade` us into their motorbike-powered taxis, and my patience boundaries started to feel severely tested; by 5pm `no thank you` had degenerated into language that nice middle-class girls from Cambridgeshire really shouldn`t be using. To make matters more frustrating we naively fell victim to a common scam whereby a helpful Thai local stops to ask where you`re going, then assures you that the temple containing the giant reclining Buddha is currently closed, but that his friend, the equally charming and obliging tuk tuk driver, will happily take you to the much more impressive Temple of the Kneeling Buddha Plucking His Eyebrows for only 10 baht. Did I mention I had my Lonely Planet with me? I obviously hadn`t read page 100 , which gives full details of this particular con. Ah well. The prize for the most creative way of attempting to rip people off must, however, go to the pair of crazy women who planted open bags of birdseed on us so that we got mobbed by a frenzied mass of pigeons, and then tried to charge us for the privilege. No chance, love.
So saying, it wasn`t an entirely wasted day. We made it up to the top of the Golden Mount, which provided us with amazing views over the city, and ate at a very pleasant vegetarian restaurant off Khao San Road. Khao San Road also gave me my first reassuring glimpse of Boots for ten months, where I was able to purchase tubes of REAL toothpaste at half the UK price. I`m not hard to please really.Day Two was subatantially better. Bangkok still wasn`t making it
into my top 10 favourite cities, but it had at least risen above Coventry. Realising that we`d been taken for a ride (sometimes literally) the previous day we decided to forego all offers of assistance from helpful strangers and headed for the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew (the Temple of the Emerald Buddha), which was breathtakingly shiny and spectacular. We then moved on to Wat Po, where we stared with awe at the largest reclining buddha 
in Thailand (at last)...or maybe the World, I`m not quite sure. Our last stop before lunch was Wat Arun, on the other side of the river, a vast temple decorated in a mosaic of Chinese porcelain. All very impressive. Many photos were taken. 
After our productive day`s sightseeing we decided to fight the onset of temple fatigue with a visit to China Town that evening. By chance our visit coincided with a vegetarian food festival: hundreds of lantern-bedecked stalls lined the streets, selling food of every shape and colour - proof that you can do just about anything with a vegetable if you set your mind to it.
After consuming noodles and drinking beer through straws, sitting on plastic chairs at the side of the street, we had a brief look at the nearby Chinese temple (one more wouldn`t hurt) and headed back to our hotel. A much better day all around.
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