Heading home, and another day to explore Bangkok en route. Weather forecast for 34-36°C – quite a change from Sweden. Arrival in Suvarnabhumi Airport was a bit tedious – Thai-air check in staff in Stockholm had been unable to give us our boarding pass for the on-flight, so we spent an hour bouncing from one place to another, no-one seemed able to give us a boarding pass. We finally decided the only option was an online checkin – that worked, once we had mastered the arcane, identity stealing, free wifi system (note: it demanded your name, passport number, email address, mobile phone number, shoe size … (ok, maybe not the shoe size). However entering random data in the fields also seemed to work, so if you are ever faced with this privacy dilemma, try random data first.

Sweden is largely a cash-free society. Transactions are processed by card, or for individuals there is a system called Swish that allows people to transfer money from ones account to someone else’s at the wave of a mobile phone. In contrast, Bangkok is almost entirely a cash society. One cannot use credit card to buy train tickets, entry to tourist venues, taxis, ferries, groceries (we did find a Tesco supermarket that took credit card, but it was the only place). Fortunately the money changers at the airport (and in town) give fair rates – there was only 1-2 % difference between the buy and sell rates, so the translation was better than one gets with credit card anyway. We changed our UK 5 pound and 10 pound notes. The latter is being replaced by new plastic notes and the old ones become valueless early in 2017; the 10 pound notes will be replaced early 2018. Offloading them in Bangkok was a bonus.

Airport train (45 Baht (under AU$2))  and a couple of local train connections got us to a ferry termial where we took the local ferry (15 Baht ~ $0.60) up-river to the Grand Palace. We found the entry, bought our tickets (cash only) and explored the amazing murals (probably they told stories, but we aren’t up on the local mythology – very interesting nonetheless). There were quite a lot of people there at 9 am when we arrived; by noon it was getting crowded. We noted a huge tented area outside, equipped with chairs and fans. We presume this is where the people wait to be admitted to pay their respects to the late king who is lying in state in a room in the palace. We were told that people wait from about 4AM and if you aren’t there by 7am you are unlikely to get in that day!. A visit to the Queen’s textile museum at the end was very interesting too.

We then headed downriver to the Chinatown terminal where we explored the streets. We ended up in an amazing market – it went on for block after block with vast numbers of tiny shops squeezed in along all the tiny alleyways, with trolleys, motorbikes etc dodging pedestrians to deliver goods … a splendid cultural experience.

By then we were getting a little weary and so we explored a Tesco supermarket we happened to pass. In the associated food court we decided on the omlette on rice with green curry. We got enough food to feed a large family. The “medium” curry was on the warmish side to our taste, but ver tasty (not complaining, just noting that “medium” ius a relative term that clearly means something different to Thais than it is to we Aussies). The cost was about AU$2 each. Not bad value!

Filled with rice, omlette and curry, we waddled north and east towards the railway, detouring to the Bangok Art and Cultural centre, which turned out to be very interesting. There was a nice display of photography from a competition they had run, and some interesting artworks (interactive), all packaged in some interesting architecture.

Another detour took us through some huge shopping centres. Amazing, though at first glance you would be challenged to state which country you were in (posters of the late king were a give-away for those in the know).

Then on to the airport train and a few hours in the cool air conditioned airport before our flight.

As usual, there is a gallery of larger images: https://goo.gl/photos/3JgkrGnwsFGYSW8q9

That’s all for this trip. Stay tuned for our next trip …