Failed to make Parade!

Today, dear reader, is supposed to have been a full day excursion first to the floating market and secondly to the bridge over the River Kwai. I’m afraid, that hasn’t happened. I awoke in the early hours of this morning with more than a little rumble in the lower regions. In fact, without wishing to bring matters to too low a level, it was more of a volcano! I spent the hours from 2am to 4am in, what the Lao and Cambodian people call, the ‘Happy Room’. I can assure you that there was nothing ‘happy’ about it! I managed to read almost an entire book but that wasn’t the intent at 2 o’clock in the morning! Because our excursion was due to start at 7 o’clock, we had set the alarm for 5.45 am anyway. Just before the alarm went off, Captain Clarke arose and visited the facilities. He too returned and reported problems of the lower order. It was after his second visit, (and my eleventh of the night), that we took the difficult decision that we would be unable to go on the excursion as planned. Our first stop was due to be one hour’s drive from the hotel and, after this, we would be sitting on a boat without facilities for an hour and a half. I hadn’t succeeded in avoiding a visit for more than 30 minutes since the first occasion at 2 o’clock!

We had arranged to meet Madame Cholet and Great Uncle Bulgaria in the Horizon Lounge for a quick breakfast at 6.30 am, so it was decided that I would dress and go and deliver the news. It appeared that something had been lost in translation because when they arrived at 6.50am they thought we were meeting for a quick cup of tea at that time, rather than earlier for breakfast. However, when they arrived it had given me an opportunity to try out the club lounge facilities … twice! I delivered the news and learned that they too, particularly Madame Cholet, were also suffering in this respect but, stoically, they decided that they would proceed with the trip. Both Captain Clarke and myself were very disappointed in our decision, but we felt it was the right one and stayed behind. Apparently we missed one of the best trips of the holiday!

On the Skytrain in Bangkok

As time went on we began to recover a little. Captain Clarke felt well enough for a light breakfast at about 10 o’clock, although I was still making far too regular visits to the facilities for this. At around 11:30 we decided to risk leaving the hotel for a short while. We asked the concierge how to get the Skytrain and visited a recommended, (by our tailor!), large shopping mall. This was for two reasons – we wanted to have a look at the kind of electronics that might be coming to our market in the near future and there are also facilities in these malls!

We travel 6,000 miles and find a very English shop!

What we found was a huge shopping mall with hundreds and hundreds of stalls all selling the same things! To be honest, it was a little disappointing as there wasn’t much new around – although we did buy a couple of ‘power packs’ which are something that pretty much everyone has here in Thailand and will charge your iPhone up to 7 times before they need charging again. These were pretty good value, but otherwise we didn’t see much to part us with our cash! We did discover in the middle of it all, a rather well known chemist! Where does one have to go in the world to avoid coming across these household names?!!

After a short while we decided to return to our hotel. Captain Clarke felt up to a little light lunch which we took on the deck by the river. He had a bowl of ‘Tom Yum Gai’ which was served with a plate of sticky rice. Apparently it was a little on the hot side, but otherwise OK. During the afternoon, Captain Clarke nipped out for a pedicure and foot massage, (who’s he trying to kid?), and I took to my room for a short snooze. Madame Cholet and Great Uncle Bulgaria returned to the hotel at about 6pm having had a fantastic day, (see Captain’s Log for details), but by now Madame Cholet was feeling decidedly under the weather and took to her bed.

Having a small libation in the Horizon Lounge!

Great Uncle Bulgaria, Captain Clarke and I met in the Horizon Lounge for a small libation. For my part this was purely for medicinal purposes, although I did feel that a good doctor would have prescribed three, so I followed this advice! When the free drinks dried up, we had finished our drinks, Great Uncle Bulgaria retired to his room to comfort Madame Cholet and Captain Clarke and I decided to take some night air. We strolled past our very rich tailor’s and, without particularly meaning to, we ended up back near to Patpong market. It transpires that I was wrong in my earlier report – this isn’t a nation of cat lovers, but certainly there are a couple of streets around, and including, Patpong where they seem to have many bars dedicated to the little darlings and to this very popular sport of ping pong!

Taking a Tuk Tuk back to the hotel.

We walked a little further and discovered that there is also a street that seems dedicated to providing customers with an insight into the way of life here in Thailand.There were lots of places offering ‘Bangkok Boys Review’ and ‘Thai Boys Massage’, plus a few more that offered ‘Very Special Price for Extra Service’. As we felt we had got to know Bangkok reasonably well without the aid of these services, we decided not to stop and returned to our hotel. We decided to procure the services of a Tuk Tuk to take us back as we had walked quite some distance from the hotel. It was an interesting journey – our driver was unable to complete the u-turn that he would clearly liked to have done but the traffic was too heavy and there was a large concrete central barrier he would have had to negotiate somehow, so he took us on a quite circuitous route. This didn’t matter to us as we had negotiated the price in advance, but it did give him the opportunity to practice his driving skills as he clearly has ambitions of competing in the F1 championships and currently has the idea that he is Lewis Hamilton!

Updating the orchids in the hotel lobby

On arrival back at our hotel we decided that we needed a stiff one, (drink!), so we made a quick trip to the ‘Long Bar’ – so called because it is … long! We ordered a whisky each which helped to calm the nerves after our drive back to the hotel. Before we retired to be we walked through the hotel lobby and discovered a small army of people updating the beautiful orchids in the lobby that I have referred to in earlier reports. These flowers are truly stunning and I have the pleasure of being in possession of a number of photographs of these beautiful flowers. We stopped and admired them for a few minutes before finally retiring to bed at around 10pm. All in all it hasn’t been a bad day, but it was a shame we missed out on that trip to the floating market and the bridge over the River Kwai – what was most disappointing was that, apparently, during their excursion, Madame Cholet and Great Uncle Bulgaria made an unscheduled visit to a tiger reserve where they were able to bottle feed some very young tigers! Oh well, it clearly wasn’t meant to be for us on this trip! It’s RudyMenTerry!

View the photo gallery for this post here