Well so much for the visit to the National Park! The trip was supposed to take two hours according to the Guide. However at the three hour mark and still another forty-five minutes to go and with the rain getting worse the passengers in the van took a vote and decided to go back to the City and find an inside shopping experience.

But the ride did give us a couple of things to think about; firstly the City of Bangkok appears never to end and secondly the idea of driving into the Countryside never existed for us. Route 1, the main road out of Bangkok to the North is one strip of industrial development. Also the idea of industrial renewal doesn’t exist in this area. Old facilities still live on as crumbling deserted relics and new facilities arise side by side. Very strange! The daily pics show the images gathered today especially the ones from the drive. As you can see there are a lot of heavy equipment sales places and the same number of auto dealers. It seemed that nearly all of the brand names one can think of had a shop here.

Arriving back in the City we disembarked at the Chatuchak Weekend Market (wiki-ref here) which is a bit of a misnomer considering it is open every day. As the wiki-ref tells you this place is huuuge and that is only the market. The adjacent Mall is three stories of the same stuff but more civilised. Getting lost in here is a way of life but it has its lighter side – note the pic on the right. What was going on in the washroom to make this sign necessary?

Impressions of Bangkok so far:

• Very clean
• Very Western in its approaches to traffic and infrastructure
• Has its own architectural style
• Clean streets, but when do they sweep – no workers present during the day
• Little or no Police presence, few cruisers seen on the highway
• Few speeders on the roads, which are impressive, lots of three lane highways and elevated toll roads
• Much congestion on the roads, with motorcycles/scooters cutting in all the time.
• Compared to Japan very few umbrellas

Just one last pic – an advanced (for us) road sign on the highway, the blue sign on the right is the minimum speed allowed in that lane:

Day done