Bangkok 2007

My first visit to Asia, Thailand Bangkok.
The flight from Amsterdam, Netherlands took 10 1/2 hours combined with a local time difference of 6 hours (GT +1 versus GT +7).

With respect to the Time difference: did I have trouble adjusting? Let's put it this way, To Bangkok you loose and to Amsterdam you gain time. But nevertheless it is a strange experience and it takes some time to adjust. The best experience that I have is to immediately follow up to the local time of your destination with respect to your usual sleep behavior.

The first shock was the temperature which is around 30+ degrees, the airport was air-conditioned so when I finally walked out site after the long flight it felled like a big impact because the air is anything except dry.

Both times when I visited Bangkok had to do with my job. The first time I stayed for a week and was able to have one day off. This day me and a colleague from the project bought a round trip to visit as much as possible in one day.

The tour took us to some temples which was a nice experience but lets be honest if you have seen one you have seen them all.

After the temple visits the tour brought us to the canal for a long tail boat trip (these boats where used in the James Bond movie "The man with the golden gun". The engine on the back of the boat is huge and impressive. The so called captain uses a long stick, engine and rotor which seem to be all attached in one way to steer and throttle the boat. Now somehow, I don't know why (must be my own movie influenced mind) it looks like the engine that they displayed in the Star Wars movie Part I when young Darth Vader was doing his races.

After the Longtail boat trip we where asked to visit a tailored clothing shop and a Gemstone ruby shop. Now somehow this has nothing to do with Bangkok but it is in every country the same, trying to sell more :).Eventually this ended up positive because I bought a tailored suite, which I thought was no longer possible due to the remaining time we had in Bangkok. The tailored suite was measured at 12:30 midday and delivered to the hotel that evening 19:00 hr. And of course I bought a gemstone Sapphire ring after they guided and asked us a 1000 times to buy.

Until that last Friday I was only able to see some of the night life after work. One of the evenings a Thai colleague took us to a traditional Thai restaurant. I must admit that this was wonderful spicy food. One time I have eaten Thai food in the Netherlands but that is no where near to actually eating in Thailand. My favorite dishes are the coconut soup with chicken , chili and lemon grass, Thai omelet and the deep fried Fish which I can't remember the name. Overall I have not eaten anything that I didn't like. One Indian restaurant provided water pipe for smoking. Since I never had tried before I asked for one and tried which was an interesting experience

One evening we had a karaoke evening in the hotel. A private room was booked which enables groups of people to have their own singing party. Now where I come from they don't take this too seriously but we where there with people from different countries in Asia which actually do. I was really surprised of the singing quality which made me less confident to sing, but after some drinks and people convincing me I finally did. Especially people from the Philippines can sign up for Idols.


To be continued.......