Impressions of Bangkok! It's a very difficult city to describe, it would be hackneyed to say organised chaos. There is chaos but in more in terms of an understated anarchy against the system. Very untidy, very dirty, huge amounts of poverty and conditions we would not tolerate. Traffic is horrendous, perhaps the worst I have ever seen. They are going to have major problems in years to come. Take London's traffic problems and multiply by five and you might have some idea.
We travelled to the Grand Palace by taxi and were totally unprepared for what we saw. The magnificence of the design and the quality of the work defy description. It is a spectacle like no other a technicolor extravaganza which does not allow the eye to settle on one particular aspect, so your eyes begin to drift and you suddenly find it hard to concentrate on one aspect for more than a minute. We were very lucky because as we were leaving they shut it for the afternoon for a ceremony.
We had our first bad experience of the trip when trying to get a taxi back to the railway station we got in a meter taxi to be told by the driver he would not use the meter as traffic was so bad. As a Londoner I should have got out immediately but accepted the fare of four pounds to go the station. He then tried to take us to a travel agent and when we refused to get out of the cab stating that we told him that we had wanted to go to the station he lost his temper and said we should have told him before. He took us to the station with bad grace.
It is not so much that we were conned for two pounds, the fare would probably have been two rather than four but it is the principle that hurts.
We booked our train tickets successfully and caught a fully legal taxi back to the hotel. We spent another happy hour in the Internet cafe and then wandered off to a street market where interestingly we bought nothing.