MV Gjoa: Bangkok by Night

Flying between the UK and Western Australia is a very tedious business. Best you can do is two flights, one 12-14 hours, the other maybe 8-9 hours (although I think it's Virgin, or, maybe BA who now offers a direct flight from Perth to London, for a big price of course). Elapsed time is 20-24 hours, or more, with a short layover in either Abu Dhabi, or, Doha. Both these hot, desert locations don't really appeal to us as a desirable stopover location, so, we try to just get through as fast as possible. This time though, we went for something different. We flew through Bangkok, Thailand with a nine hour layover between flights. We were hopeful that nine hours would be enough to take us out of the airport and maybe on a mini sightseeing tour. We weren't sure if it would be possible and what to expect, but, it all went really well and we had a short, but, densely-packed tour that was a really great first introduction to Bangkok.

We knew we were limited in what we could see because we didn't arrive until 3 p.m., after most of the major tourist attractions had closed and we only had until midnight. We pre-booked and paid for a Bangkok Night Lights Tuk Tuk Tour, with Expique. Are we glad we did, it was excellent! Of course, if we'd done all the work by ourselves, the price would probably have been a lot lower, but, for once, we paid the money along with some extra as well for a private tour as the regular group tour started too late for us. With our limited time and lack of Thai experience it was worth every penny. We've never been on such an easy tour, every detail was taken care of and we packed a lot into just four hours. All food, entrance fees and transport was included.

First, we got on the rail link train from the airport, inexpensive, clean and efficient and were met by our personal guide, Tom, who then shepherded us onto the skytrain to meet up with our Tuk Tuk and driver, Mr. Somtab.

From there we headed out and into the streets. In hindsight, it really was a good choice to travel after dark in Bangkok. It's cooler, there is less traffic, fewer people and the temples and monuments are absolutely beautifully lit after dark showing them to their best advantage. The photos don't really do it justice, but, I did my best. Here are some of the temples we visited.

At one of the smaller temples, there was an evening cremation service underway. The floral arrangements surrounding the cremation house were absolutely incredible.

All this temple touring was making us hungry. Our guide, Tom, had been feeding us delicious snacks along the way, purchased from street market vendors he made sure to tell us are hand chosen by the company to offer safe and clean food, like the delicious sausages from this stall.

Now we were heading for our main evening meal. It was to be Pad Thai. I'm sure maybe some of you are thinking, well, couldn't you have been a bit more inventive, after all there's a lot more to Thai Food, but, this tour was billed as a 'cultural tour with food', not a foodie tour, they had another tour just for those who wanted adventurous eating, but, that wasn't us. Anyway, this was different Pad Thai to anything we've had before. It was encased in an egg wrap (a skill which takes months to learn how to do) and it was delicious. It was accompanied by fat, sweet prawns as a garnish and the best fresh squeezed orange juice I think I've ever had.

The restaurant is called Thipsamai. You can read a BBC story on it here It doesn't take reservations and the queue when we arrived was very lengthy and snaked way down the sidewalk. Tom, our guide, had hired somebody to stand in line for us and he timed our arrival with military precision so that we only had a very short wait for a table! We had just enough time to watch the noodles being cooked in the sidewalk kitchen over open charcoal fires.