Bangkok

Its been over a week since we were in Bangkok, but I thought I'd post the highlights anyhow.
We arrived around midnight, and found our way to outside arrival hall 2, which is where the green and yellow cabs are. They are the ones with meters that are supposed to work. We lined up, told a person in a booth where we wanted to go, and they handed the paper to the driver, who nonetheless asked us where we wanted to go. No traffic that time of night along the tollway and we were soon at Siam Square at our hotel. It was a Novotel, and really was quite wonderful, although anything with airconditioning would have seemed that way! We were pretty tired so just went to sleep.

In the morning, we went to the fantastic breakfast - so colourful and so much variation in foods from fruit and cereals to meat, sushi, juices, breads and more.

We decided to look at the nearby shops, which were a little upmarket for us, so we took the sky-train down to the river and avoided being taken for a ride on the narrow boats, and decided to just go by normal ferry. This took us to the royal palace. We walked to near the palace and were told by a very friendly guy that we would not be able to go in as we were wearing shorts and in any case it was closed for prayer, so would we like to go on a tuk-tuk ride to another temple or two and then to some shopping places. We agreed (silly to believe him) and set off. The temple was OK, but then it was just rip-off shopping places until we insisted he take us back, which after quite some arguing he did. We then found that you can borrow skirts and trousers at the palace and it was never closed. The palace was amazing - so many buildings and so intricately designed pieces everywhere you looked. They sure do like gold colouring.

We were pretty tired after that and just went back down-river and then to the hotel. We went to a nearby Thai restarant for dinner, and it was really good, especially the steamed fish in lime that Eva had, although it was a bit too hot for even her.

We had a late checkuot at the hotel, but left at about 9pm for the next phase - our flight to Helsinki/Oslo.

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