Shopping in Bangkok

Here is a picture taken of the interior of Hong Kong's airport. The gate sign you can see is for the gate I flew from yesterday and the business lounge is just up over the balcony. It is a very pleasant and efficient airport, the Cathay Pacific Business lounge (courtesy of my BA Silver card - I've stopped flying as often as I used to) has a great noodle bar, but I did not use it this time, just some nibbles.

Back to Bangkok - the city looks pretty much like cities around the world, although greener than some, there are things that stand out though when you look. I like the shapes of some of the roofs and the golden roof in this picture is eye-catching.

Time flies when you least expect it, by the time I had sorted out my business stuff it was the afternoon. Everyone I asked, Hotel Business Centre, Front Desk and last night's tour guide had all told me it would be straightforward getting hold of a Memory Card/USB interface. So this afternoon I set out to buy one. The advice was to take the Hotel Shuttle Boat across the river and I would find a suitable shopping mall - at least that's what I heard.

So I walked over the the hotel's pontoon, saw a boat about to leave and hopped on it. Then as we headed down the river I realised I was going the wrong way. There did seem to be a shopping area where we stopped so I hopped out to look around. It was slightly disconcerting to see quite a lot of soldiers and police cars around, one of the cars was labelled Bomb squad. There have been some violent protests in Bangkok and the UK Government warns travellers not to go to certain areas, but I am not sure anything was happening or was expected to happen, there was no tension in the air. I wandered around, but could only find touristy shops selling antiques and jewellery, so in the end I went back to the river and, very unusually since real men don't ask for directions, I asked how to catch the right boat.

Having gotten to the right place I followed the directions given to me using the hotel map, but I found the heat very intense. Even the dogs just lie around in the heat here. There seemed to be no sign of any IT shops or department stores that would have an IT department (according to the Business Centre). There were all manner of shops though, some selling fruit others fried dumplings, down one alley I saw a production line of ladies preparing flowers for the nearby flower stall. There were loads of tuk-tuks, a local motor-bike based taxi and most of their drivers asked me if I wanted to go somewhere. Clearly the sight of me, sweating uncomfortably whilst wandering up and down the street made me look like I needed some help. Here are two tuk-tuks parked in the street.

After quite a lot of pointless wandering I used the map to get my bearings, it helpfully labelled one or two hotels and city buildings that made good points of reference and I homed in on the area indicated by the hand-written circle on my map. I passed several Thai Massage shops and saw one chap getting his toe-nails done, I also passed a shop selling film but could barely see inside to work out whether they had yet moved into the digital age, most of the its signs offered Polaroid Passport pictures. A lot of the shop-keepers were "cheating" though, they had electric fans, although I am not sure how effective they were, they just seem to move the hot air around faster.

Eventually I saw a small shop down an even smaller street with a Digital FujiFilm sign on the pavement. I went in certain I would be disappointed, however there were a couple of young guys, who knew what I wanted straight away and to make sure I was happy took the interface out of its box to show me more clearly what cards it was compatible with. It cost 950Baht, (around £9) I was so pleased I did not attempt to bargain. Like good entrepreneurs, as I paid, one of them noticed that my camera had not got a lens cap and offered to sell me one. (It was in my pocket along with my Thai phrase book which would have been useless since it did not have an IT section!).

The wandering and heat had finished me off so I headed back to the hotel shuttle boat, the long boat in this picture is one of the type used to provide river tours and they seem to tear up and down the river.

Here is the local petrol/gas station for the river traffic, they must do good business judging from the amount of traffic moving to and fro.

Here is my hotel taken from the other side of the river, clouds were starting to loom and once I got back to my room I turned the air-con way too low, a natural reaction, but not good for acclimatising and very soon I was shivering.

It started to rain soon afterwards along with some lightening bolts, but it seemed to pass quite quickly, I guess that will be a feature of the cycle trip.