Mark Smalley

Sunday, 27 Feb - Bangkok
The BA Airbus 321 to London was only a few months old and still smelled of leather. Seats a bit narrow, though. The face of my watch manages to fall off but at Heathrow helpful Eve from the Chocolate Box gives me an inch of Sellotape to stick it back on with. I promise her a fake Rolex from Bangkok as her reward and we both have a laugh.
The 747-400 to BKK is pretty full. We've got seats D+E on a ABC-DEFG-HIJ arrangement, which is quite good really: not having to get up to let anybody else out provides a little bit more rest. Theoretically at least. 11 hours is still a long haul but we survive. Food OK, sausages+mash; Aussie Chardonay better. Heard recently of Aussies using the abbreviation ABC to order wine: anything but Chardonay; but we're not that far yet.
32c when we touch down at 1540. It's an hour later when we've picked up the cases, 18kg (hers) and 14kg (his), ATM'd 12500 Baht (approx 250 euro) plus 361 changed from 5 GBP by accident (I won't go into that). 50B for a couple of bottles of water breaks a 500B note. Limo @ 700B takes us to the Christian Guesthouse in Silom www.bcgh.org in hardly more than 30 min, although the driver hadn't been there before and needed the map I'd brought along. I notice Anna's Cafe close to the Guesthouse, a place that is reputed to do good deserts, and make a mental note to visit later on.
BCGH comes up to expectations, clean and basic. They have a notice I'd like to see more, forbidding clients not to tip the staff.
Feel like collapsing but venture out for a couple of blocks recognicance. The second block takes us past plenty of hairdressers, which is good to know, as I've been saving up my hair for a cheap yet exotic haircut, to Silom Road, where plenty of stalls are being set up for Patpong night market.
We work our way back to Anna's Cafe and have plenty to eat: Tom Yam soup, chicken fried rice, Thai noodles, beef green curry, fried bananas in coconut cream, cheesecake, 4 Singha beers and chinatown tea (don't recommend this, it seems like an odd combination of tea, coffee and hot chocolate) for just over 1000B. More than the 500B I'd roughly and meanly budgetted for, forgetting the possibility of having more than one beer each. Lively, friendly place: mix of young and old. Couple of times "Happy Birthday to You" was heard being sung, feeling a bit out of place.
2100 sees us back in our room, lights out at 2200.

posted by Mark Smalley @ 4:03 PM