The True View Journals

If we thought getting back to Bangkok felt strange, getting back to The Royal Princess in Lan Luang was even stranger. We had come a sort of Karmic full circle, back to where it all began, only this time everything was viewed through completely different eyes. Our last time here everything seemed so cheap – relatively…now everything seemed unbelievably expensive – relatively…see on our first time here we compared the price of everything here to everything at home…everything seems cheap…on this occasion we compared the price of everything to the price of everything everywhere else throughout Thailand and man was this place a rip off…Still though, it is a nice place but this time round it seems just like another hotel and could be in any country in the world…

the food is mediocre at best and the money required for each dish here would feed a person for at least a day anywhere else in thailand…The beer here is double the price of anywhere else and the service is simply to be expected everywhere in Thailand for whatever the price…So what happened? Nothing has changed in this place, its identical to when we last stayed but on that occasion all we could compare it to was service and style of the other hotels we had been in over the years…now we could compare it on a level with what Thailand has to offer and now it feels distinctly western in comparison…

For our last few days in Thailand we wanted to get in a bit of shopping possibly in MBK or Siam, hit Wat Po and Wat Arun, visit the weekend Market, possibly check out the Pingpong escapades of Patpong, get a suit for work in Oz and then hit the river for Lay Krathong festival. At this stage, it’s Friday, we leave Bangkok for Sydney on Sunday and all I have organized is a suit. At least I got that much done…(its not the hardest thing to do in Bangkok), we had planned on doing the Temples today but a few hours in MBK yesterday had us both to the point of near Hallucination so today turned into a chill out day…I get to type this up and Carina gets to hit the pool…(forgive any changes in tense or person over any entries in this blog…its hard to remember if I started off with I, Me, We, Did, Will, Got, Get or whatever so I take full license to change whenever)…A fair trade off

I think we will need to leave the Temples to when we get back to Bangkok, there are plenty of things that we want to see but now we are just getting ourselves together for moving onto Australia and we don’t have time to try fit in all the touristy adventures that we would like to. Tomorrow we plan to hit the Weekend Market…If I get some photos at that I will add them…After that, tomorrow is Lay Krathong…the river festival where floral candles are floated on the river to literally float away bad luck and feelings.

So that’s about it for Thailand, 2 of the best months of my life…A time I will never forget, people Ill never forget – I still have plenty to say about the country of sleeping dogs, of noisy tuk tuks, of great dinners and cheap beers, of great sunshine and terrible rain but all that can wait for another day…I’m off to enjoy my last day and a half in Thailand…