I started the day with breakfast on the terrace at my hotel. It's hot, just how I like it. The river teems with ferries, longtail boats and the noisy tugs dragging their trains of massive barges up and down the river. After breakfast, I take the hotel ferry to nearby Saphan Taksin where a short walk gets me to the overhead 'Skytrain'. I ride the 'Skytain' to Sala Daeng. Here an overhead walkway leads a few hundred yards to Silom where I go underground to catch the mass transit to Hua Lumphong.
This, gentle reader, is the location of Bangkok's main railway station. My firm was involved in the supply of a lot of equipment to GEC for use on the railways throughout Thailand so I can rarely resist the instinct to visit this station when I'm in Bangkok. After watching the operation of this busy terminus for a while, I retraced my route to Saphan Taksin.
I had determined to take a trip on the river and ended up on the 11:00 a.m. express tourist boat which I took upstream past Wat Pho and Grand Palace to the terminus, returning on the same boat. The express tourist boat seems to make conditional stops as required and appears to be used by quite a few Thais. I indicated my desire to alight at the 'Oriental' Public Landing Stage and was amused when the deck hand pushed a bell push once to alert the captain. The public landing stage leads to a street lined with the makeshift street restaurants used by Thais which is just a few minutes walk from the hotel. The public landing stage is used by various river taxi services and a well-patronised public cross-river ferry - the hotel's private ferries use a private landing stage on hotel land. At 11:50 a.m. I was back on dry land and soon back in my room, preparing to check-out (oh, and uploading a few more photographs). At 2.15 p.m. I left the hotel by car for transfer to the airport. The journey was much quicker than in the opposite direction yesterday morning (was it only yesterday morning? It seems much longer to me!). Check-in and passport control was very fast then I walked to the Thai lounge nearest my departure gate. I was ready for a light snack and a drink but I was also delighted that my computer immediately connected to the Thai 'Wi-Fi' so that I could post this whilst waiting for my flight to Yangon.
My pictures of Bangkok (taken on various visits) are here.
