Not exactly our thought on the city but that of an English woman and her husband from said city. We'd previously met them in the jungle where they were bird watching so their feeling of being overwhelmed by the noise and frenetic pace is quite understandable. In fact most Asian cities have their noise factor and kinetic energy ramped up as high as possible, in China it was the hooters and music for shopping, Vietnam favoured the loud exhaust pipe and hooters whilst Bangkok is just loud from sheer volume of traffic. However Thailand has changed a lot in the past year, perhaps we are now immune to the taxi drivers and touts especially after Vietnam. It seems somehow cleaner and the people more friendly, although slightly more expensive. We even splashed out on some great Japanese food around Siam square.
Around Pat Pong we were of course approached by a number of dodgy characters attempting to get us into ping pong shows, if we weren't interested by this they had a whole menu of other delightful ideas, among them was "electric pussy" which we couldn't quite work out. However it's far less seedy than 14 years ago, now it's more of a parody of what it used to be, perhaps London's Soho suffered some of the same transformation.
For something more cultural we took a tour around the national museum which contains some fairly interesting history about the country. Thailand must have been pretty large before the 20th century and all the land concessions that they gave to the English (parts of Burma and Malaysia) and the French (Laos and Cambodia). There was also a lot of fantasy (something like tales of the Arabian Nights) mixed in with what was otherwise quite plausible. We bumped into a guy (Marcus) who we haven't seen since China jumping down some dunes, he's in Bangkok to meet his father after 18 months travelling. Anyway after this meeting we avoided Khao San and stayed around Siam square which is not just about Louis Vuitton and Gucci but has some cheaper market areas. We could have restocked our wardrobes but have not the space or the inclination. A mall stop was in order to catch a flick at the cinema, after standing for some kingly anthem with accompanying pictures we saw "Jumper", nothing to do with warm clothing (although this would have been nice in the air con) but ist's about a guy who can teleport (don't bother).
Although less people are wearing their yellow T-shirts this year there was evidence of royal fervour around, one of the royals recently died so her photo is all over the place (not as much as the king) and black and white ribbons decorate many of the government buildings. More thumbnails ...
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