Day 68 - Monday March 6 - Bangkok, Thailand Day 1

Bangkok Day 1 photos

We were up before dawn with a loudspeaker from the street blaring music for over 15 minutes. Of course, there were a couple of dogfights out there that we could hear too during the night. A courtyard room would hopefully be much quieter. Our bed had sheets and a blanket again, so Clay was pleased. It also had a ceiling fan which made him happy. The bad news was that while the bed was very big and made up to our preference, it was a plank. It was very firm. Oh, well. We still were very tired and slept through to morning with only the noise waking us from time to time. Morning came far too soon anyway, this is a tough pace to keep up. Breakfast started serving at 6am and we were out of the room with our luggage before then. We met the guys who were coming around the hotel to collect our groups luggage and they took our bag, got our room number and name and checked us off their list. We went on to the restaurant and were there by 6:05am and we were the first one there. It was another very extensive buffet. They had chocolate croissants, that once again were not as good as the ones on Voyager. They had a lot of Chinese food but only one dim sum selection. We both ordered eggs cooked to order, but apparently they only did 2 eggs over hard or scrambled and you got one or the other no matter what you ordered. OK. We had plenty to eat in any event.

The buses were a little late to leave again. Again, mostly because the times had been changed more than once and people just did not know or were following the written itinerary from the ship. We drove a different route to the airport, but it was still mostly by roads we had already traveled with not much to see and an uneventful drive. We arrived to a mostly deserted airport. The trouble started again. We were left with the one guide that we started with on the flight to Phnom Penh and he just walked off and all the local ground staff left and our checked luggage was just dropped off on carts in the road in front of the airport. Passengers started pushing the carts in and not knowing what to do with it starting feeding it through the x-ray machine with our purses and carry-ons etc. Well, chaos ensued as the bags poured out the other end at some poor woman. People were grabbing up their own things and letting stranger's bags go past. No one was claiming them and the woman was just screaming at passing people to take the bags. We explained to her that we did not know who the bags belonged to that we were a large group and had been separated from our luggage earlier. Debbie went off to find the tour guide and told him what was happening. He told her to go take care of the bags. She told him that was what he was hired for and to either get over there and handle it or call someone from his company to come and take care of it. He asked another passenger couple to hold his carry-on bag and take care of all our passports until he returned. Another passenger told Debbie that he was inside and had gotten all our boarding passes while we were out there in the luggage/security snafu and that he could not be two places at once. Debbie told her that she only expected the tour to be properly staffed and the logistics of it should not be left to the passengers to work out onsite. We stood in this hot open concrete-floored area for over an hour. After we all got rematched up with our bags and toted them over to the check-in counter with some help from Manuela and Patrick, we stood and waited. Clearly, the guide had not abandoned us all and our luggage to get our boarding passes because we did not get back our passports until an hour after we arrived and another 15 minutes before boarding passes were handed out. After we passed the final security and immigration check to leave Cambodia, we had about 20 minutes to kill at the shop and coffee bar and restrooms as well as seats for everyone. Hooray! Just when we were wondering if we had gotten through too late and had actually missed the flight since it should have been boarding when we were getting our boarding passes, they called the flight and we all walked across the tarmac to a waiting Bangkok Air Airbus A320. This was the same as the last flight. Really, like it. We got wet wipes. Then, we got box meals again. This time with ham and cheese sandwiches, a chocolate cookie, apple juice and water. But, here is the kicker. Every person was also given a small school-lunch sized ice cream! It was cookies and cream. Once again, as soon as the boxes were handed out, the pilot announced that we would land in 15 minutes. So, they came back around and collected the mostly uneaten meals. This is so weird, you can barely get a bag of peanuts on an hour flight in the USA.

So, we arrived in Bangkok. We went down the stairs at the front of the jet and walked a little ways across the tarmac to a bus for the ride to the terminal building. At the terminal building we had to go through a maze to arrive at customs/immigration and get our passports checked and our immigration cards torn in half. We have to keep the other half to leave the country at Laem Chabang. The group got pretty strung out trying to get through here and then we had to go downstairs to get our luggage from carousel 9. Debbie spotted our bag coming around as we approached and ran to the end and caught it before it went around the corner. We had time to use the restrooms before the rest of the group caught up and got their bags. Then we went through some more busy maze of a building to get out to 2 buses. We are in red group going to The Peninsula hotel on the west bank of the Chao Praya river. The blue group is at the Shangri-La on the east bank where central Bangkok is. It was about a half-hour ride from the airport. We got there in time for lunch and were told to make our dinner reservations as soon as we arrived. We were also told that our rooms would not be ready and to be prepared for that. We walked up to the welcome table and got cold wet cloths and flower garlands. Then Debbie walked up to the A-B sign and got our room keys. Our room was ready! We went ahead and made our dinner reservation for INSIDE dining at Mei Jiang, the Chinese restaurant. There were no reservations available for the Thai restaurant, but it was outdoor dining anyway and we have had our fill of that for a long while. Then we went into the ballroom that was set up for RSSC Voyager's buffet lunch. It was an extensive selection of Thai and Chinese food. We had some really delicious BBQ pork buns. Then we went up to our room, 1808. Our suitcase was already there! It was a really large suite almost. You entered a marble foyer with an enormous marble bathroom to the left and a dressing room and closet on the right. Then, a door to a carpet room with a sofa and coffee table in front of a desk in a window niche with all of Bangkok visible across the river. Looking to the right from here was the bed with an upholstered bench at the foot and an armoire with TV. Oh, in the foyer area as you passed through was the bar and fridge. On the bedside tables, walls, over the bathtub and maybe a few other places were consoles that worked the TV in the bedroom and the one at the foot of the bathtub, the lights and the drapes! This is just the greatest room ever. Debbie has found the place she wants to stay forever. There is a little door below a bench in the dressing room. It has a corresponding little locking door in the hall. You can put your shoes in there to be shined and press a button to let them know your shoes are waiting. And, they can deliver your newspaper there and press a button to light up in the room to let you know that the paper is in there waiting. Imagine what all you could get delivered through there and never leave! Debbie was very sad that she did not have time for a bubblebath in that enormous tub to watch TV. But, life is full of choices and we had complimentary wired internet at the desk and Clay wanted to go ahead and get the Cambodia days posted which meant that someone had to stay up and type up the entries.

So, here it is after lunch and we are already exhausted from 2 long days hard sweaty walking and early mornings and a flight a day. We were sorely tempted to just take a nap or Clay would have just sat at the desk chair and watched the river traffic. So, Debbie will have to return one day for a nap. She hates to miss a good nap in far city. But, Debbie whipped us on and out. She knew that she could get us to the Jim Thompson house. It closes at 5:30pm so we had time. The Grand Palace closes at 3:30pm so there was no reason to head in that direction this afternoon. We will have to save that for tomorrow morning. We went down to the ground operator, Sea Tours, hospitality desk and got some maps and checked with one of them about our plans and they confirmed that we could do what we wanted. Clay converted $40USD to Thai baht and we were off. We took the complimentary Peninsula shuttle boat over to Taksin Pier and the Skytrain Station. We got 30Baht tickets each from the ticket machines, that were like the ones in the subway in Hong Kong. This station is the end of the Silom line and we got off at the other end of the line at the National Stadium. We followed the signs to the exit for the Jim Thompson House. There was a lot of construction at the street level, but Clay spotted several clusters of obvious western tourists and we just followed them. As we turned the corner there were lots of people coming down that street with Jim Thompson plastic bags so we knew we were headed in the right direction. It was about a 10 minute walk. We bought our tickets and had to wait 15 minutes for the next tour. That gave us time to use the restrooms and take some outside photos. You cannot wear shoes or carry bags or cameras inside.

This was a very interesting house museum and full of beautiful things. Jim Thompson must have invented junk shop chic. He had reused old drums inverted to be wired into lamps. He had salvaged an old Chinese pawn shop door to separate living spaces, mah jong tables put together became a dining table, etc. It was intimate and impressive. We spent way too much money in the gift shop, but the design and quality were just too appealing. Then back out for the walk to the SkyTrain. We were back to the Peninsula by 5:45pm and had time to shower and change for our 6:30pm dinner reservation.

Dinner was an amazing amount of food with more or less a fixed menu at the Mei Jiang Chinese restaurant in the Peninsula Hotel. The only choice we had was our drinks and either hot & sour soup or lobster Wonton soup. We had a couple of complimentary appetizers that were not listed on the menu. The menu listed 8 courses: 1) Crispy Crab claw and vegetable roll appetizer 2) soup 3) Peking Duck 4) stir fried beef in Szechwan pepper oil 5) steamed black cod and eggplant in a miso soy sauce 6) fried rice with barbequed pork 7) baked sago pudding with chestnut paste and 8) petits fours. It was way too much food. We skipped the black cod course (and probably should have skipped others too). The food was all very good but it was just too much. We left the restaurant about 15 to 9 which was a little too late for us to go out shopping again. So, we went back to the room and worked on our journal entry, uploading two of them on the very fast, very free connection, finally getting to bed after 11. During dinner, we laid out a strategy for tomorrow morning. The goal is to catch a boat up to the Royal Palace compound and visit that and a couple of the wats (Wat Po and Wat Arun) in the same area. We will see how it goes tomorrow.

The Peninsula Hotel may be the very best hotel we have ever stayed in.

Bangkok Day 1 photos