March 19th steaming in bangkok

Those of you familiar with bbc breakfast tv will be familiar with Carol Kirkwood. Ample bosoomed with blond tresses, she delivers the weather in a soft scottish burr that I'm sure sends many a gent off to work with a rapidly rising warm front.

Carol likes to talk about "wide temperature differentials"

" In golkilcuddy yesterday" she'll purr, bosooms heaving with excitement, "it was 8 degrees, whereas today I hope you wake up in your jim jams (naughty side ways glance) because it's zero........thats a temperature differential of 8 degrees!!"

Yesterday when we left London it was minus 2, when we got off the plane in bangkok it was 34° That's a temperature differential of exactly 1 shitload!!

We swelter through immigration having dressed appropriatley for sub-zero Britain in cardies, jackets and thermal elephant trunk posing pouch (for the ladies on the customs xray machine) and eventually track down our driver for the transfer.  There are many opportunities to save money when travelling in Asia but your arrival and 1st days in Bangkok are not one of them.

We have booked a transfer in a Mercedes.  When I say mercedes, you, like I, doubtless imagine a modern turbo charged comfort wagon perhaps driven by a liveried chaufer........ Tong wears jean shorts and a Heroin T shirt. The car looks as if it's held together with string and blows out warm air (their version of air con) as we race across the city. We try to make polite conversation but realise after 15 minutes that Tong has inserted earbuds and nods along to whatever he has playing for the entire 40 minute journey, from his driving technique I assume it's the theme to whacky races .

Check in is fautlessly courteous and our room has a spectacular view up the river.....now, where's a bloody bar??

Ah yes! ..........here we are. The locale is suitably supplied with any number of drinkeries and eateries so we can get over the rigours of our "World traveller+, champagne lubricated flight. After some Thai food and a few beers we repair to the room, I kid you not it's midnight, weve missed an entire nights sleep, I've had a couple of beers and Kim wants me to "dim the alarm clock" You've got to love her!

In the end I just threw a pillow over it...................the clock!!!!

Dinner cruises set off from River City Pier next door and we watch a procession of boats set out with their captives and "unload"  a couple of hours later. This is our favourite, a neon pink confection complete with Elvis act (he's alive I tell you!!). We can hear him coming from about a mile away as he karate poses his way through "Jay Ha Lock" and "Wuv me endair" absolutely priceless.

Kim and I decide to check out a past happy hunting ground and revisit China Town where we stayed in 2007. The hotel guest book says "leave the hotel, turn left and in 5 minutes you'll see the China Town gates. They neglect to say 5 minutes BY HARLEY DAVIDSON! After an hour and a half of slogging through Bangkoks back streets, crammed with street food vendors selling chicken gizzard, monkey brains and god knows what, we eventually get to somewhere we recognise. We finish up by walking to the Grand Palace, Wat Pho and after a couple of cokes get a river boat taxi back to the hotel.  A swim is in order and we toddle down to the pool.....Oh! My! God!....... can it be?.....it is!......The three best words in the English language.......SWIM UP BAR!!! followed by the next best two......HAPPY HOUR!!!!

Asiatique Big Wheels!

A funny thing to find in South East Asia, Asiatique is a homogenised version of an Asian market complete with sterile versions of street food and all forms of western food in case you don't like Asia? They also have a big lit up wheel.

That said it's great fun and there are any number of bands playing in bars and restaurants most of which are really very good. We end the evening outside the kind of franchise opportunity I'd like to take up.  A Jack Daniels kiosk. It has two food stalls attached, one of which serves oysters, crab, lobster and shell fish and the other which deals in satay.  There's a very entertaning guitarist /singer who knocks out a great variety of songs while Kim and I argue over whether the JD is watered down.

Some proof it's not watered down is offered when Kim is enticed up to dance by a waitress.  The song is roughly the same length as Tales From Topographic Oceans (all four sides) by Yes (assuming the bloke made a cock up half way through side 3 and had to start again). Kim flopped back down on her plastic chair glowing profusely.

After several we decide the Jury's out but whichever, I'm so mellow I find myself singing along to a bloody Ed Sheeran song.....In my defence, I have absolutely no f*cking idea which one it was.  We arrive back at the River Taxi pier dead on time to be an hour and a half late to catch the last boat. 

After blagging our way onto a courtesy boat we still have a bit of a schlep to get back to the hotel. It's ok, we'll walk. 

It's around 23:30 and still 30 degrees and so humid my shorts are wetter than a wrestlers jock strap. Kim's sense of direction isn't what it could be and seems to be suggesting the Chaophraya river has reversed it's course such that we're walking in the opposite direction to the one we want and on the wrong side of the river.

We're still grumbling with each other when she insists we stop and ask some national guard soldiers for directions.  I've never heard Sheraton pronounced that many ways, and the guys after a fairly heated group discussion and taking our photographs seem to be suggesting we need to retrace our steps and get a taxi to the airport when Kim notices the Hotel right behind them.

From Arun pier it's just a 40 baht ferry ride to Maharaj pier and the stunning Wat Pho. No travel blog to Bangkok is complete without a photo of the magnificent palace of the emporers of Siam glistening in the sun.........

On the boat back we meet an American chap.  He's roughly the size of a terrace of English houses, arms up on the seat rest ......

" where ya from" he bawls.  Hmm let's find out if we like you before we give you our address,

"How about you?" We ask.

"Miami, how's brexit workin' out for ya"?

" Not so bad, not noticing much difference really"

" Well your gonna, my company's pulling all it's banking out of london"

"Who do you work for?"

........Dramatic pause..........

"BMW"

"Hmmmm moving their banking is hardly the worst thing the Germans ever did to london".

The guy opposite is American and has owned 11 BMWs 

"Oh man! The new whatever series is just awesome..... it cost 50 billion to develop"

Wow! you could have used that money to buy Uzis for school teachers, nothing protects a child better than creating a crossfire!!

We left them comparing penises.

We took a boat up the river looking for some din dins. We ended up in a Thai Puppet Theatre Restaurant.  I had no idea such a thing as a Thai Puppet Theatre Restaurant existed but I'm glad it does. We had some lovely Thai food while being entertained by puppets, each operated by 3 puppeteers while they performed some thai classical tales. The most interesting involves a prince trying to seduce a mermaid.  I'm not sure but I think it ends in the same way as a Futurama episode which dealt with a similar theme.  Come the time for nooky our mermaid herion simply wants to lay some eggs upon which our hero is expected to ejaculate....It's pretty much all over from there.

If you're interested the Thai Puppet Theatre restaurant is easy to find. Get off the Orange flag express boat the stop before Asiatique, walk directly back from the pier until you get to "The Unidentified Corpse" depository, here you can make a contribution toward an unidentified corpse or a tile for the temple roof.....turn right and you can't miss it.

For our final day in bangkok we invest 30 baht in taking an express boat to the last stop on the river.  It's staggering value and an amazing (if somewhat cramped) trip. As you get toward the less sparkly end of the river tourist influences grow less and we grab some lunch at a waterside spot that serves Fish Bladder soup and fried pig stomach.

We stuck with Tom Yum Goong and Satay, all delicious. The temperature here still hasn't dropped below 30 degrees day or night and it makes travel whether by boat or shank's difficult.  At every pier there's a "conductor" to call in the boats, make sure they get tied off and that no more than a dozen or so people fall in the river everyday (Pressure on the unidentified corpse depository).  They have a wonderfully direct communication style.  There's no "I say old chap this may be your boat arriving now, where do you wish to go?"  Rather  it's YOU.........GETONBOAT!!!.........NOW!!!!!!

In the evening the Hotel celebrates Earth Day. We're all supposed to switch off power for one hour.  They turn off a couple of lights in reception and light approximately 100 thousand candles.  The air conditioning is roaring with the effort to dispel the additional heat caused by the candles drowning out the efforts of some girly singers/dancers.

Tonite 4.5 baht gets us across the river to the Millenium Hilton. They have an open air bar on the 32nd floor.  They serve Hendricks Gin.  It is wonderful. We end the evening as we have most so far.  Flip the pillows onto the floor and sit, our backs to the bed, our feet to the wall to wall, floor to ceiling window and enjoy a nightcap while Bangkok and the river sparkles.