Bangkok - Acclimatisation

First day in a new city always means acclimatisation.  Especially Bangkok, it’s, well it’s foreign – very foreign – starting with the Thai script, which has no correlation with a western alphabet – and the sounds of the language give you no help either.  Like any big city it’s crowded, people milling about, scooters everywhere weaving between the traffic precariously, the tuk-tuks (imagine a Vespa with a roof and two side by side rear seats, painted garishly) vying for custom with the shocking pink taxis.

Having picked a hotel with easy access to the Skytrain (like the underground but above, not below!) we are in a side road, almost next door to the phenomenally expensive Four Seasons, from where the Rotary courtesy shuttle buses will operate.  It is, though, a short walk to not one but two Skytrain stations so access to the Convention Center some 30kms out of the city should not be a problem for us.

We venture out in search of some local colour and head for the neighbouring Central World mall.  En route we pass more street food sellers than you can shake a stick at – it’s clearly a feature of the city.  Arriving we find a mall, could be absolutely anywhere, not Watford, the Harlequin is smaller, but maybe Westfield?  A local man we met while finding it told us it was “not for Thais, too much expensive” – we could see why, it’s all designer stuff with expensive import tax additions.  Regrouping over tea at Whittards of Chelsea (they’d run out of coffee!) we decided to head for the Thai Products Export Center, recommended by our Thai friend.

Taking a taxi was easy – making it clear where we wanted to go, less so.  We ended up in the general area of where we had expected to be but not at the Thai Products Export Center, rather at a jewellery workshop.  Luckily Joan had a need for a new pair of earrings and found a pair she liked, but for pierced ears rather than clips – no problem – the earrings were modified including adding extra gold and delivered to our hotel later in the afternoon at no extra charge.  While we sorting this out we also found out where the Thai people do their shopping – and off we went to MBK, home to eight floors of pandemonium selling everything under the sun, all at extremely reasonable prices.  From our jaunt around it’s pretty clear that the copyright laws in Thailand are considerably less stringent, or at least, not enforced.  DVDs, bags, watches, fashion items, all with designer labels at considerably less than we would have expected.

So, an interesting day’s acclimatisation and set us up nicely for our full day’s tour of Bangkok on Friday.  More soon…..