Bangkok and a tuk tuk or two

We arrived at Bangkok station early in the morning. Well 8 ish. Negotiating the ranks of taxi's and tuk tuk drivers we hopped aboard the Thai metro system and headed over to the Sukhamvit area. This is where our friends over for a wedding were staying and as we were invited to the stag and hen do's this was easier to organise than commutes between here and the usual backpacker ghetto of the Koi San road.

We opted to spend our first night at the Atlanta hotel situated on Sukhamvit Soi 2. Sukhamvit, Bangkok's longest street, has a huge number of smaller streets or Sois branching off. With the wedding party situated on Soi 11 a 10 minute walk away. The Atlanta is largely unchanged

since the 50's and features a nice pool, well priced restaurant and somewhat surly staff. The next day we moved to the Grand President where the others stayed, nice enough but a bit over budget for more than a couple of days for us.

The main focus of our Bangkok stay was of course pre wedding celebrations, won't go into too much on that! In order to look a bit more the part we whipped over to Platinum fashion mall. Jumping aboard our first tuk tuk of the trip we sped through Bangkok's busy streets weaving between cars and benefitting from the diminutive size of the tuk tuk. Our driver trying the usual patter of offering a discount for taking a pit stop at a friendly tailor, which we politely rebuffed.

Platinum mall is a sprawling place, full to brim of small shops peddling clothes of all shapes sizes for wholesale or retail at keen prices. The rub is many of the stores do not allow you to try on the clothes or return them, which made Em and Jo's task of sourcing hen do clothes more tricky. However they successfully negotiated some suitable purchases, as did I.

The next day we navigated the usual hen and stag shenanigans in one piece, with avoidance of ladyboys, facial tattoes and other potential disasters successfully achieved! Some images I may never successfully erase from my mind however.

The other highlight of our stay was meeting up with Em's dads old university friend Chai. Chai kindly fed us lots of food and took us on a tour of the city with his driver and travel companion Tong, as well as regaling us with interesting stories about David's university days and travels. We are of course tremendously grateful to Chai for charting us a successful course through the swelling tide of Chinese tourists and adding essential insight to our tour. And of course it was a lot of fun as well just relaxing with a cold beer and chatting to Chai and also one evening with Oak, Chai's son, who Em last saw a good 15 years ago.

As well as enjoying such sights as the spectacular reclining Buddha at Wat Po, the Emerald Buddha and the Grand Palace we also visited a fascinating exhibition showcasing Royal Thrones and other works commissioned for Royal Jubilees. One of the most striking features was the extensive use of irradescent green beetles wings, delicately inlaid into wood and gold panels with painstaking precision. One of the queens projects to grow traditional craftsmenship the works were impressive and help maintain traditional skills albeit posed the question of "blimey how much did this all cost?"

Chai also treated us to some time in the Royal Bangkok Sports Club, with it's racecourse, golf course, and polo fields, complete with veritable condiminiums for the horses a perfect place to escape the maddening hordes. The club is somewhat of a closed shop, membership being hereditory, so not something usually available for tourists.

We had now had invites kindly extended to Sam and Nina's wedding so hitching a lift with West Virginian expat and Sam's friend Mark, we all sped off down to Koh Chang for the wedding, as luck would have it en route for us for our next country Cambodia.

Tuk tuk fact for our disgruntled home counties readers: The name tuk tuk is onamatapeic, deriving from the sound of the two stroke engines originally used.