Day Five - Royal Palace, Bangkok

I'm just about recovered from the surprise of the dinner cruise organised for my birthday. It was a wonderful outing and I had a great time. As Maggie said in her blog entry yesterday, seeing the temples and palaces lit up at night was a real treat. 

Today is our last day in Bangkok as we head to Chiang Mai in Thailand's Northern hills for a cooler, more sedate break. We're still not sure of our itinerary thereafter but we're in no rush to decide things.

Our proposed drive out to the floating market at Damnoen Saduak had to be postponed until a later date because of our taxi-driver turning up an hour late, so instead we made our way to the Grand Palace from whose gates we'd been turned away yesterday. It's the official residence of the King of Thailand and his family and is guarded by several of these monkey soldiers from Chinese mythology.
 

Once again, it's a spectacular array of temples, pavilions and coronation halls.


I was particularly impressed with this scale model of the temple complex at Angkor Wat.

 

So, tomorrow we fly to Chiang Mai. We have found Bangkok something of a full-on culture shock and although I'm a bit of an adrenalin junkie, it will be nice to relax in the countryside for a while. We're travelling with our host, Nhong and her friend and co-worker, Pew, who both have business in the town as they help set up a new branch of their restaurant chain, which is called S&P. I'll let you know about the philosophy and ethics of Thai businesses tomorrow but we have an early start tomorrow so I'll leave it there.