Bangkok

We arrived in Bangkok very early in the morning ....6am to be precise after a midnight flight out of Melbourne.   And the heat and humidity hit us immediately with Eloise declaring that she had never been so hot in her life and that she felt like she was on fire !   

After a long while settling (and I don't know why the airlines feel the need to serve a full dinner meal at midnight?!?!) the girls finally dozed off with both of them each using one side of mum's legs as a pillow ... hmmm.  

Despite the semi jet lag, we hit the sights straightaway with a cruise down the Chao Praya river.  We had barely been in the country for more than 3 hours when we were hit by our first scam.  Having read about the public boat that takes you down the river, we jumped into a taxi to get to the boat terminal, only to be taken by the taxi driver to a private boat jetty where there was a private boat operator offering to take us down to the river for over $200 US each ! Off course our taxi driver was still lurking as he was waiting for his commission from the boat operator and as we weren't born yesterday, we insisted that the taxi driver take us to our original destination.  That incident was the first of many, where we found that you can never get to where you want to go because all the taxi and tuk tuk drivers will try to take you to a place where they will get a commission and most of them are part of the "mafia".  Be aware if your driver tells you that the Grand Palace is closed that day and makes a suggestion for you to go elsewhere !



Eventually we got to the public boat terminal, after uncovering our first scam !



Cruising the Chao Praya river

Tuks tuks are still everywhere in Thailand but definitely not as many as there once was.

 

 

We found Bangkok very easy to navigate (with a pram) despite the traffic.  For a start there are foot paths (unlike many other large South East Asian cities) and lots of pedestrian overhead bridges to cross the road. And the overhead passes all take you to either a shopping mall or one of the train stations.  

         



    

The heat may have sent Eloise a little loopy !

We only had 2 nights in Bangkok initially, and our second day was spent at the weekend Chatuchak markets. This is apparently one of the world's largest market covering 27 acres with over 15,000 booths. We only managed to cover 1 aisle in the whole morning that we were there !

The Chatuchak markets sold everything imaginable from all sorts of food, electrical goods, jewellery, clothes, shoes, portable hand held sewing machines (...yes somebody got sucked into buying one ??) and knick knacks. 



Shopping at Chatuchak Markets

Eloise was in retail theraphy heaven !



Abbey found other forms of distraction whilst her sister shopped up a storm

The girls ended up buying these dresses (which they wanted to wear just about everyday whilst we were in Thailand) and off course felt the need to model their new dresses, hair accessories and necklace they had just bought that day at the market before heading off to dinner ....  



.... where the adults managed to squeeze in a Margarita whilst the kids ccupied themselves whilst waiting for their dinner.