Linda and Mals Asian Adventure: Thailand: Bangkok

Thailand, Bangkok. Didn't we pick a good time to come to Bangkok ! The first day we were here the Skytrain was attacked with grenades, this effectively put the station involved out of action and the line from it suspended. We accidentally bumped into a Red Shirts blockade at Siam City but was able to backtrack quite quickly! Apart from a few other isolated bombings it's been reasonably quiet, just a few roads and rail links which are either not working or are blockaded by the Army.

One of the reasons for being in Bangkok was to get Visas for Myanmar, hopefully by 3pm today we will have our passports back from the Embassy, The first few days here were mostly "sorting stuff out days" flights to Yangon, Hong Kong etc, Air Asia has had a sale going on so we thought it was best to grab a few good deal while we could.

Because we have been to BKK a few times we didn't want to repeat too much of the sight seeing we have done previous, so we ahve carefully selected a few places which are new to us. A mention must be made to Mal's walking boots which gave up the ghost in Nepal..

Our first sightseeing venture in BKK was to the Golden Mount temple, not easy to get too when the trains are not running ! but hey we got there, eventually. The Temple is really quite small but the steep spiral path to the top gives some nice 360 views of the city. As usual we find ourselves somewhere where it's really hot ! May is about the best time to come here for scorching temperatures, the average daily temp has been about 37 degrees peaking at 41 a few days ago. So climbing any sort of hill is quite a sweaty affair ! After visiting the Golden mount we wandered off to look at some new temples not shown on our map !

The next day we did something quite nerdy, we visited the Bangkok Shell museum, it was really different and really interesting ( we think ) !! The shapes and sizes of some of the shell displays were quite amazing, these shell were different to those we had heard about on the news, the basic difference was they were not the exploding type.

We were staying in a hotel off the Sukumvit road which was really quite nice but a tad touristy, the road outside was one line of hotels and Western bars, so we decided to move to the Silom Road area ( this was a bit closer to the troubles ) but a lot more interesting, that night we went to the Silom Village Seafood restaurant, fab stuff ! With most of our forward planning complete it was back to sight seeing so we decided to pay a visit to Ayuddhaya ( one of the old capitals of Siam ) we had been here previously but as there are some 250 plus temples we were able to see all new stuff ! Our return back to Bangkok was via boat along the Chao Phraya river. Over the next couple of days we are off to see the Bridge over the River Kwai and the Tiger temple, as there will be a ton of pictures from these, they will go on a separate blog !

The Boots.

Bells at the Golden Mount Bangkok

Top Rank or Take Your Pick ! ( only the old gits will get that one ! )

Buddhas at the Golden Mount.

Temple wall designs

Lions Guarding the Golden Mount.

Temples across the road from the Golden Mount

Bangkok skyline a new block underwraps.

The Shell Museum.

The Shell Museum even the wall lights use shells !

Night out on Silom Road. Traditional dance and cracking seafood.

Pa Bang Temple Palace near Ayuddhaya.

Topiary Elephants at the Pa Bang Palace.

Temple wall carvings

Pa Bang Palace

A slightly scruffy but friendly topiary Elephant !

Pa Bang Palace

One of the many Temple ruins at Ayuddhaya.

Ayuddhaya

Ayuddhaya Buddha Statue

Ayuddhaya

Siamese style Stoupa at Ayuddhaya

Bridge and tree flowers.

They have one of these in Pisa don't they ??

Ayuddhaya

There is a story to this, apparently the head of a Buddha statue fell off and landed at the foot of this tree. Many years later the head has become encapsulated in the lower roots..