First Impressions

Bangkok Airport is one of those new types; all airy and moving stairways, lacking the claustrophobic feel of Terminal 3. Just follow the signs and you are led past the shops, the eateries and places to spend money. Too tired and hot to bother we first went up then went down and moving stairways and pavements until at last we reached the train; called the Skytrain. Which is odd since it begins underground.

Its smooth and simple and relatively cheap and takes you into the middle of Bangkok. The route is an interesting revelation of the city. You pass what seems to be luxury housing in a new, separate enclosure. The type of multi level housing that cost 0.5 million pounds in expensive locations in England. You also see nearby what looks like the squalor or poverty of other 'houses' with tiny rooms and little privacy, surrounded by lying green water, probably caused by the daily heavy rains here.

The city is bustling although arriving on Sunday afternoon there is not a lot of traffic on the main roads leading into Bangkok. However, once we hit the middle, we are at Siam Square, all changes and we meet the locals whose approach to travellers is to take money and over charge eg the TukTuk ride to the Hotel started at 200 baht but fell rapidly to 100 baht- even that was expensive, I think!

Having survived the day without extra sleep we had a disturbed night but managed to get up for breakfast.