Saturday, June 17, 2006
Bangkok
Our Asian journey so far has been a bit like traveling through time, backwards. Japan was super modern and super efficient. Hong Kong was equally modern in most places but it was more organised chaos and with a glimpse into it's past at the street markets. And then there's Bangkok. We stepped onto a plane at Hong Kong's 21st century airport and stepped off it again at the soon to be replaced Bangkok airport, parts of which look like they had any kind of funding removed years ago! (Although for the golfers amongst you we discovered that there is actually a course right in the middle of the airfield. Photos: 1,2,3)The World Cup was well under way by the time we got here (and England were still in it) so there was much excitement amongst the football mad Thais. As it happened our hotel had a big screen TV in the breakfast area so of course we had to be there at 2am for the big games, particularly as happy 'hour' at the bar was 6pm-6am during the competition. Fortunately we'd given ourselves a few extra days here to make up for the lost sleep that would occur!
Since we'd decided to steer clear of the most dodgy (and cheapest) backpacker accommodation we weren't all that close to the main tourist attractions, this meant numerous rides in Taxis and Tuk Tuk's (but more on that later). We used the river boat service quite a bit to get around as well, this is very cheap but you definitely don't want to think about falling into the river. It's apparently not always this bad, but because we were about during the rainy season the river was a fairly unpleasant brown colour.
The Grand Palace is the big attraction here but there are many temples around as well. The architecture of Buddhist sites has been constantly changing throughout our trip. In Japan the temples are mainly wooden buildings and are generally quite dark and plain in their colouring. In Hong Kong there was much more colour and more stonework. In Thailand things are different again, but the number one rule seems to be: Make it BIG, give it a pointy roof, and paint it with as much gold as you can lay your hands on!
More photos from around Bangkok here.
![[Valid RSS]](http://roundtheworld.mm.st/img/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed"){kind=small}