Thailand

After the train journey from Brussels and the flight from Amsterdam, I landed in Bangkok and met up with Jan and his son Finn. We caught a taxi and rode through to our Hotel, Sena Place. As he drives, the driver of the taxi asks you if you would like to take the highway, which means paying extra at toll booths, but quite literally is an elevated road. I headed out onto the street, and bought an ice cold coconut (with plastic straw to drink from – they seem to give you a straw with anything that isn’t beer). I wandered down the street taking in the new and pungent smells from a myrid of street stalls cooking all sorts of things.

The next morning I left for the meeting venue. We arrived and after a quick swim had a couple of hours pre-meeting. I then took the couple of free hours I had for a Thai massage which was fabulous! The next three days were consumed by meetings, with me pulling off some less than good facilitation. On the Tuesday we escaped the good food of the venue and took a short boat trip across the river to a restaurant on stilts. The food there as with everywhere else in Thailand was fantastic, subtle flavours and hot spices - nice!

After the meeting I headed back to Bangkok and spent the rest of Thursday afternoon in the Bangkok office. We went out for supper at Sam Sen train station with Ply, and ate more good food served by good looking waitresses. The Friday and Saturday were set aside for sight seeing and we took advantage of them! On Friday Wen Jing and I traveled up to Ayuttaha and took a boat ride around the island. We stopped at three Wat's (Temples) and stayed only long enough to get super heated and dive back into the boat which was a lot cooler.

Afterwards we went for lunch at a lonely planet recommended restaurant which wasn't very good. It did have a tamarind tree (which Wen Jing pointed out to me and Gopi told me what it was in English) growing near by and this led us to search for more Tamarind trees amongst the ruins of Ayuttaha (the old Siamese capital). We found one that was loaded with Tamarind fruit and I was determined to bring one back, so after throwing a stick up after them, I tried to throw my water bottle up, but as I did my shoe came off and I landed with my right foot hard on a sharp piece of concrete. Wen Jing shepherded me off to hospital (in another tuk tuk) and I got a crash course in the excellent Thai health care system. Once I was stitched up we took another tuk tuk to the bus station and caught the bus back home. We met Gopi and Rajesh for supper and ate loads (again!).

On Saturday Natwipha met the four of us at the Charuchak market in Bangkok (15 000 stalls!)and we shopped until we dropped, including a nice lunch where the chef's sang and danced in between cooking up some pretty amazing dishes.

Later Wen Jing and I road the Skytrain to the river and sat and people watched and she helped to augment my grossly lacking knowledge of China! We road the train back to the hotel and I said good bye to my Thailand travelling friends and headed for the airport.

Thanks to Nat for helping me out with all the logistics for the meeting, being the best travel guide and never even looking remotely concerned that I was asking her for yet another hotel booking change even after a whole day of meetings. Thanks to all the people I travelled some of Thailand with, Jan and Finn (auch fuer der Lonely Planet!), Maciej, Rajesh (great barganing!), Gopi (it was a VERY dangerous looking baby tiger!) and Wen Jing (for taking care of me and traveling at a great pace around Ayuttaha and Bangkok).

Back in the 'dam and back to work tomorrow!