I was up at 8 and read for a few hours before waking Em at the agreed time of 10 am. A quick shower and we headed off to grab a coffee to help blow the cobwebs away. I took advantage of the city coffee shop vegan chocolate cake (concerned that once we left the city behind, we would also leave the vegan options behind) and Em had her usual coffee, with a muffin. We sat there looking out on a hot city day whilst listening to Wham’s ‘last christmas’. We stretched our legs through the mall and enjoyed some nice coconut smoothies like proper little mall rats. Back to the hotel room and we had a call to say our car had arrived (Sent by Ems Dad). Bags safely loaded it was only now that I truly appreciated Bangkok’s size as we snaked along the intertwined road networks leaving the city. The buildings slowly decreasing in stature, being replaced with much more humble abodes. As the sky scape opened up the 3 d feel of a high rise city was replaced with a 2 dimensional plain and green started to replace the grey and glass. The jumbled mass of electrical cables strung along the roadside had me contemplating exactly how an engineer could possibly find a fault.
I was impressed with the cleanliness of the city, despite the lack of bins it was almost spotless, no litter anywhere, putting our UK cities, towns and even villages to shame. Despite Wales being the 2nd best rated country in the world for recycling we have a serious litter problem. There were people scratching a living by collecting recyclables on the Bangkok streets making a good job of scavenging what they could. No doubt nature’s number 1 scavenger, the rat, also does it’s fair share of work cleaning up any edible scraps from the city streets.
There were some homeless beggars but not as much as I had anticipated. On our street, beggars consisted mainly of young girls cradling babies, a sad sight but a reasonably effective strategy when applied to the herds of western tourists I would imagine.
I had hours of absorbing Thai roadside vibes which I did not tire of. Dozing along the way I spotted a smattering of egrets, another night heron and a team of orange shirted engineers who appeared to be searching a jungle of wires for a fault, who knows how long they had been there…..possibly weeks.
After just over 3 hrs in an air conditioned car (just long enough for me to completely forget about the outside temperature…..again!) we arrived at our destination and were greeted by Emma’s Dad and his wife who I met for the first time. After some hugs we were given the tour of the beautiful home complete with superb veranda, pool, palms (with coconuts), peacock and elephant topiaries. A little piece of heaven.
After catching up we cooled off in the pool before heading off for a walk around the local lake and a look at the local beach. A long stretch of white sand with a few small islands peppered offshore they were quiet at this time of day. The point at one end of the beach was covered in green jungle with a giant golden Buddha strikingly sat on top of the hill.
There was a little shack of aquariums stocked with fish and frogs resembling a UK pet shop although these would no doubt end up on a plate not as a pet.
We returned home for some more conversation before being treated to a lovely Thai meal which included my first taste of black rice with a tofu and Thai eggplant curry and mixed veg and tofu stir fry. Delicious. As night fell photo shy geckos appeared on the walls, tiredness gripped us and we headed to bed for an early night.
Leave a Reply