One Night in Bangkok

One night in Bangkok!.. so the song goes. It kinda rings true for us; we’re in Bangkok for one night at this time. We need to recover a little from our twenty hours of travel. After “one night in Bangkok”, we do a half -day city tour with a guide then around dinnertime we’ll be on a train to Chiang Mai. That will be a 12 hour night trip. We’re exhausted already!
Anyways, I gotta tell you about our trip so far. First of all, I think the airline Cathay Pacific has a cloning farm located somewhere in the orient. I believe this because all of their Stewardes… I mean, Flight Attendants all look the same! They all are the perfect asian human specimen of the female gender. The ladies are young, attractive, and all have the same hair-do! I swear they MUST be cloning them.
Our travel here was 15 hours from Vancouver to Hong Kong. It’s the longest I’ve ever been on an airplane. We made sure we had some stretches to avoid “Deep Vein Thrombosis”. After that long haul, we had a 2 hour or so lay-over in Hong Kong. I must say that airport is massive compared to the few other airports that I have seen so far in my life. From Hong Kong, the connector flight was just over two hours. I gotta say, Cathay Pacific Flight Attendant clone farm must have had a bumper crop. The Flight Attendant on the second flight looked as ravishing as the first. This just re-affirms my belief in the secret clone farm hidden somewhere in the orient.
So, we finally arrive in Bangkok tired as all heck. Leo, our guide met us at the airport and had a car ready for us. However, we were stimulated with sensory overload. The traffic from the airport wasn’t too bad but when we got close to our hotel, which is located in the shopping district, we noticed the madness! It seems that cars honk when they pass another. Now imagine many vehicles passing each other. Chaos!
Our guide, Leo checked us into the hotel and we went over tomorrow’s arrangements. After settling into our room, we went on a little excursion to a mall across the street from our room. The mall is unusual by what we are used to. It is a “tall mall”. I mean, it’s built in an office tower. It has many floors and escalators. The designers were smart enough to add a parking level to each shopping level. We wa wandered around that mall for a bit and grabbed some dinner. The mall was interesting enough but not as interesting as the insane driving.
The drivers and traffic in this city are INSANE! There are many motorcycles and they use every inch they can find. They bring a new definition to the term “lane splitting”. I can’t really describe it any other way than “barely organized chaos”. Of course, let’s not forget the cars using the on-coming cars’ lane! I consider myself a good driver. I have an impeccable driving record but would I drive here?.. HELL NO!
Another interesting observation about Bangkok is how apparent that it is a Buddhist country. There are shrines on almost every street corner. The people will do what I call a “drive-by prayer”. People will do a quick pray as they walk by. I even saw a woman riding her bicycle by a shrine. She prayed as she rode by.
Today, we had our city tour of Bangkok. We seen several temples most of which I forget the names. They laying Buddha is one that sticks out. That Buddha was HUGE plus it was covered in gold flake. The temples are amazing. They are so colourful and filled with detail. Interior walls are filled with decoration. There is not a square inch that is not painted, carved, or tiled in some way.

We will be travelling to Chiang Mai later in the afternoon by train.  It’s an 11 hour ride. We will be in Chiang Mai in the early morning. It’s hard to say when I can get internet access again. There are several hotspots in Chiang Mai that we could access from.