For our last night

Dancer at the Salathip Restaurant
Originally uploaded by richardinsale

we went to our favourite restaurant - The Salathip at the Shangri La Hotel. The restaurant is in the hotel gardens and is in a series of teak houses right down by the river. We always pick a table next to the river so we can see the city's skyline and illuminated boats on the river itself. You most definitely know that you're in the orient when you look out at Bangkok's river and see the boats with their gold and funny little oriental roofs (see the pictures of the Wats in Luang Prabang for an idea of what the roofs of the boats look like!). But just in case you are in any doubt, there are beautiful dancers and a live orchestra (local wooden xylaphone and metal tingaling drums) all evening. Magical.
So this was our last evening of the holiday , in fact, 3 hours after this photo was taken, we were on our way to the airport in a taxi.
We got home safely and strangely enough, the weather has been quite sunny (not the same bright sun of the far east or its radiant warmth) although cold. The coldest temperature we had experienced since we went away was about 18C in the mountains at Vang Vieng, but here in Manchester, it was about 5C on arrival!
The warmest temperature we experienced was probably around 40C for much of our stay in Cambodia and Vietnam - phew!

Thanks for reading - I'll add a further entry as a retrospective in a few days once the dust has settled, but just to let you know that we are well, haven't run out of money and the house is fine. Many thanks to our wonderful neighbours (Diana and Mike) and to Charlie's sister (Jenny) for looking after the home in our absence!

Rules for crossing the road in Bangkok

Skytrain above, then Pedestrians, then Cars
Originally uploaded by richardinsale

Use a bridge! The roads are enormous and there are bridges everywhere - in fact in whole parts of the downtown area, as a pedestrian, you simply walk everywhere on elevated walkways. The skytrain track is above the pedestrian walkway.

Model of Angkor Wat in the Royal Palace

Model of Angkor Wat in the Royal Palace
Originally uploaded by richardinsale

So here we are again in Bangkok, a city we have visited several times on previous holidays. Almost a home from home!
We arrived from Laos both nursing dodgy tummies which isn't very surprising consider how poor the country is. Fortunately, Bangkok has lots of branches of Boots the Chemist (identical to the ones in England) and as you don't need a prescription for anything, that was the first place we headed to in Bangkok!
Bangkok really is quite an amazing city. Every time we come, there are new skyscrapers and there is lots of evidence of construction for the new extensions to the wonderful Skytrain. Yet despite all this very stylish ultra-modernity, Bangkok is still very much an ancient city with the Thai Court and Chinese Trade at its heart.
Everywhere you go, there are shrines (no skyscraper would be built without consecrating a shrine first and then maintaining for the full life of the building) and you are never far away from the heady scents of incense and flower gardlands.
Rather poignant for our trip is this intricately carved model of Angkor Wat in the Grand Palace (Wat Phra Kaew). As a model, its enormous and is at least 7m x 7m and about 3m high. So having been to the real thing - how well does it match up? Well it is very big even as a model and strangely enough, you do feel that the model dwarfs you which is another similarity with the real thing. But, if the model of Angkor were to truly convey the size of the real thing, including Angkor Thom and the other temples such as Ta Prohm and so on, the model would have to be expanded to cover the entire city centre of Bangkok!