Night in Bangkok

The Bangkok airport is beautiful. It beats all the airports I've seen so far.No running up and down on stairs, no convoluted pathways.It is also expensive. Beginning with a simple coffee and ending with the Internet cafe. The mandatory Starbucks isn't missing here either.

"Taste of Thailand" is offering everything from Toblerone to Godiva chocolate. Toy stores offer lots and lots of souvenir elephant toys of various sizes and colours.
None, however, in orange. I should complain about it :-)

I didn't have time to explore much of the city, but things went very smooth - passport control, leaving luggage, getting bus tickets. So much easier than
getting out of Heathrow and to the fast train.

As a general conclusion people are extremely friendly and helpful. The city is big and bigger and brighter than Mumbai, for example. Bustling at any time of the day.

I only manage to go see the Royal Palace and the Golden Mount. Most attractions/temples close before 4 or 5 pm and I only got into the city around 2 pm. I prefer the more sober style of the Buddhist caves in Ajanta or Ellora, though. There is too much shine and glitz here for my taste. Nevertheless, impressive.

Out of 3 maps I have, none seems very accurate, they aren't even properly overlapping and so I have to rely more on my gut feeling and sense of orientation. I also ask around to make sure.

At 7 pm it is dark already. Alone in a foreign city with all my valuables on me (money, traveler cheques, camera and camera accessories) I don't feel totally comfortable, though at no point I felt unsafe so far.
I traverse the lively, loud and picturesque Chinatown to reach the main railway station. However, there I find out that there is no bus to the airport, contrary to the information I got at the airport.
The workaround is to take 2 local buses - an experience in itself. The buses are old and rusty, with wooden floors and no handholds. The driver opens the doors long before stopping and leaves in a rush with people still getting on the bus. No time to waste!
Next to the driver is a bucket of water. Every now and then at a stop he takes the lid off the bucket, fetches water in a cup and drinks it. Then, with a similar mechanical series of gestures he puts back the lid and the cup on top. He doesn't even look down. No time to waste.
I fall asleep on the bus but somebody wakes me up at the airport. Nice and helpful people, no doubt!

The rest of the night I spend mostly awake. Only for about 2-3 hours I manage to sleep streched out on 3 seats with the bag serving as a hard and uncomfortable pillow.

I took some pictures mostly for documenting.I caught some warm sunset light at the temple, but I was too tired to focus more on pictures. What I'm not sure about is how and where I'll be able to upload some of these pictures. I'll try in Kathmandu.