June 18. Bangkok and home again
After breakfast, we cleared our room, stuffed everything into the girls' room and caught a taxi to the MBK mall. The taxi was smooth, cheap and air conditioned. Only 41 Baht for the trip for all four of us. We spent the morning there, found the good camera shop that I was seeking (wonderful stock but NZ prices) and a supermarket.
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This had some wonderful food displays and also sold delicacies like HP sauce. We returned home by tuk tuk - bumpy, fume ridden and expensive. 150 baht for each pair. It was agreed, however, that it was a more exciting form of transport.
After another brief rest we spilt up and went our several ways. I actually did some serious shopping, buying a wallet, two watches and a shirt. Feeling that a congratulatory beer was in order, I had one of those as well.
We re-convened in the girls' room and watched the thunder, lightning and torrential rain outside with an amount of excitement (apprehension in my case). Half an hour later, we went downstairs to meet our mini bus and discovered that the road outside the hotel was under several inches of water.
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Cars were struggling, motor bikes were struggling even more and one poor chap was standing in the flood looking very confused. Our mini bus driver had to roll up his trouser legs in order to load our bags into the back of the van - a service for which he was well tipped afterwards. We managed to climb aboard from the safety of the pavement without getting our feet wet. |
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There was less water on the main road and by the time we reached the airport, there was no sign of rain at all. Check-in was reasonably simple although the strange BA regulations on baggage caused us to do some major re-packing in the middle of the airport. We seemed to be able to take more in the cabin than we were allowed to put in the hold.
Suvarnabhumi Airport opened last year and, almost immediately, had to dig up one of the runways as it was rougher than a cobbled street and several airlines were refusing to use it. Inside, however, it is magnificent. One entertaining feature is the line of umbrellas covering the immigration officers on the exit desks. It would appear that the sun shining through the glazed roof is far too bright to enable them to see their computer screens. Quite an entertaining problem in a hi-tec new building! As taking photographs of immigration officials tends to be frowned upon, I was unable to illustrate this little problem.
We wandered around the shops and I had a very good lunch - the sort of food that I had been waiting for since I entered the country. After that, we took off on time but had to dawdle for the entire trip so as not to arrive at Sydney before the early morning curfew was lifted. The party then split up, with Cory heading off into Sydney and the remainder of us catching another flight to Wellington. The holiday was over.