The (very) Grand Palace

Bangkok at 6.30am from my hotel room

I think I said that I was going to visit a floating market today but it only floats at weekends so I went to the Grand Palace that I missed out on last night. It was ridiculous to imagine it was open till 8pm, the whole tour is outdoors. But, when I am away, I make mistakes not because I am being more thick than usual but because I am relaxed and tend to adjust to the mood of where I am (or maybe you would call it lazy!) It often involves not thinking very much at all - just go with the flow. I did that once and it was almost a major disaster. I still think about nearly being stranded in the middle of nowhere with two small children after visiting Parque del Café in Colombia. And all because I was being laid-back and in Colombian mode rather than with my British way of thinking. In the latter case, saying that maybe it would be terribly sensible if we left before the park closed, when everyone else was doing the same thing. That would have been about at the point where they decided to go back to the log flume again. My name would have been "Mud". You can read about it in this blog, just do a search for Parque del, or just click here. But make sure you come back here!

The Skytrain is all above ground....
a long way above ground!

Anyway.... I finally made it to the palace and that was to take the BTR Skytrain down to the river and buy a step-on, step-off boat ticket. I expect my ears to pop due to the height of the tracks above the road, I'm not quite sure why they've done that. At interchanges it does the same as the MTR in Hong-Kong, it brings the two different lines together on either side of the platform so, often, when changing lines, providing you are going in roughly the same direction, there is no need to go up or down one floor. At major stations, there are closing doors on the platform too. 

Later, I had a quick lunch in one of the shopping malls by Siam and then walked back to the hotel. The yoga was cancelled because the teacher phoned in to say she was unwell but I suspect she found out there were only two of us who had signed up (I am joking, I hope I am not that cynical. Er.... sometimes, yes!) The hotel didn't tell me so I spent about 10 minutes wandering around the hotel looking for it.
I've put some photos below which are self-explanatory I think. The palace is not very ancient, it dates back to the late 18th Century.

I wish I could get that number of people to my art exhibitions! I would say that westerners are outnumbered about 1 to 40 here. I think I could hear a lot of Chinese spoken. Below are two photos of Wat Arun which I stopped over at on the return boat trip. There was bizarre little photo-shoot with two Thai girls wearing beautiful long dresses, gold head gear, with long fingernails but, hey, they look suspiciously western to me! Later on my way back, a European guy was all dressed up with a suitably arty pose. Boy, did he look a prat!! As I'm sure you guessed, there was a little stall renting out the gear to westerners who wanted to make fools of themselves. I suppose it's safer that taking selfies on crumbling cliff-tops.
I wrote about hearing Chinese and, although I have no hope of learning Thai, I bought two books which explained it. Some accents flow like a song (I think Colombian Spanish rises and falls in pitch far more than peninsular Spanish) but it's not necessary in order for the person to be understood. In the case of Thai, the tones are an integral part of the language and it's fascinating to hear it spoken. More text after the photos.....

After writing up to this point, it was time for a beer so I went back to Patpong and went to see my friend Mon. We both got very sad that we lived so far apart. She is 42 with two daughters and I found her very attractive, much more so than the girls dancing, and she seemed genuinely attracted to me. She thought I was in my early 50s which is pushing credibility, but it was dark. She invited me to stay with her next time I was in Bangkok ("No boom-boom," she said which we both found very funny. More so because I wasn't totally sure about what work she did in addition to selling food and drinks. This time she was showing an awful lot of leg.). For sure, it was her job to get business for the bar where she worked, but even allowing for that, we were like two friends because I'd made it clear that I wasn't looking for sex. Being there and chatting to her was all I wanted and it was lots of fun. But we live a very great distance apart. She gave me her phone number and I gave her my website. She even bought me a beer which is very unusual, normally it the is the guy who buys the girl a drink (and it costs more). And of course I did that. And across the road, all part of the same company, girls were dancing on a stage wearing very little. 
Maybe you are shocked that I was there at all but Patpong is also a vibrant night market and there was a happy atmosphere, not dark and threatening - under the surface, who knows? But it is all regulated under the law. Bad things happen when they are outside the law, this is often the point made about legalising drugs. But that is a subject I know nothing about.
These things (in Patpong and Nana, districts of Bangkok) go on and my staying away won't change it one iota. And I had a great evening. And I didn't hurt anyone. I just hope I don't hurt my friends who knew me in my earlier life where I took more attention to convention. Now I feel liberated. I hope that's allowed!
By the way, the other thing that made the evening enjoyable was going out simply wearing skinny jeans, my new Lacoste white shoes and a long tee shirt as if I was just walking into another room in a house. It is so warm in the evenings that nothing more is necessary, I carried no bag, my money and plastic card for the Skytrain was in a bum bag around my waist. It was a lovely free feeling!