Nick’s world tour

Flight SQ62 touches down in the “City of Angels” at around midday, June 4th, in the year 2549. I get the 30 day stamp in my passport, and get my ‘convict photo’ taken US Immigration style. I must remember to leave by July the 3rd!

I take the airport bus to the Banglamphu area near the infamous Kao San Road. I manage to find a decent guest house without any hassle from rickshaw drivers, we even are dropped off in front of a guest house and are allowed to walk away unaccosted! This will take some getting used to!

As I’ll be passing through Bangkok a few times, I see a few sights, but leave some things to do for next time. The Kao San Road is fairly busy, but seems to be lacking the crowds and atmosphere I was expecting- though there are the creepy old men and their Thai “girlfriends” to laugh at, and lots of “Daddy’s girls” just out of public school swanning around.

I spent an afternoon at the ornate Wat Phra Kaew (temple of the emerald Buddha) and the Grand Palace.

Everywhere is decked out in yellow and the national flags in preparation for the King’s 60th anniversary this weekend. The museum was quite interesting, though I’ll be quite happy not to see another room entirely devoted to Buddha statues… The rest of my time is spent working out where I want to go next, buying some new clothes (I’m sick of the same three t-shirts now!), and finally finishing off “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”. One of my first tasks when I return to England will be to find the girl in Waterstones in Stafford who told me it was funny, and point out her grave mistake.

Tomorrow I’m off to the ancient City of Ayuthaya, about 2 hours north of here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 8th, 2006 at 6:23 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.