Bangkok

We spent the final day of our holiday in bustling Bangkok, a far cry from quaint Chiang Mai. It has an advertised population of over 8 million people but many believe the actual figure is double that amount. It is big and congested and smoggy and ugly and nasty to the eye, but at the street level there is an electricity and buzz to the city that is unmatched in much of Asia. There is something for everyone, for better or worse (mostly worse), and you want to go back but you can't quite put your finger on the reason why.



Some advanced scouting led us to score an awesome room at a cheap hotel with a big deck overlooking the Chao Phraya River with a direct shot view of the magnificent Wat Arun. The setting was like something out of a Bourne movie, a place where I'd be trying to meld into the scenery only to have my handler at the CIA ring my cell phone asking me to do just one more job. "How did you find me here? I thought I told you I was retired," I'd say.



It rained most of the time we were in town which worked out perfectly because we had a nice deck from which to observe the weather while tipping back a few Singha beers. The clouds did break long enough for us to take a private twilight buzz in one of the many chartered long boats that run up and down the river. We hit the docks and brokered a smokin' deal for a 30 minute ride along the river. The rain had clearly double pumped our boat captain who'd used the weather as an opportunity to start his night of boozing, abundantly clear as he ambled down the pier with puffy face and beer in hand to shuttle us away. We lived.


Bangkok traffic is among the world's worst, so much so that all traffic officer's are trained in midwifery and deliver hundred of traffic jam babies each year. So with a mid-morning flight we made certain to get up and out early, yet we were still stuck in terrible traffic and frequently detoured at odd points. Our driver seemed agitated. Looking out the window Lizzie and I both noticed a heavy police presence. And there were yellow shirted Thai youths all over the place. It wasn't until we'd returned to Hong Kong that we realized that Bangkok was in full scale anti-government pro-democracy riots that had claimed the lives of several people. Wild times on our trip to Thailand!