Royal Palace Tour and tea at the Oriental Hotel

Bangkok

We managed to find the quiet part of the city where you could wander around the jazz playing coffee shops and market stalls without any traffic and suit sellers. Also the temples were't far away so we could do one and then nip back for a culture recovery or snooze. Took the skytrain to go into the city but had a huge deluge of rain for a couple of hours and got stuck in a shopping mall for luxury items. Found lots of couples with miserable blokes hanging around to keep out of the rain

Good things:

Museum tour, including the royal puppets that no-one knows how to use since the puppeteer died. Lack of planning there. Also they don't have queens on the chess board but have a deputy king instead.

Palace visit - lots of gold pointy bits on the roof and temples with Buddha statues that you can't point your socks at.

Whizzing along the river on the taxi boat trying to remember where your stop is.

Free upgrade to executive lounge for flight to Cambodia. Scoffed loads of cakes but made a bit of a prat of myself by eating the bamboo leaf packaging of one of the savoury numbers. Who would be a panda....?

Bad things
Monsoon season - splashing through puddles in sandals and smelly poncho to get to dinner. Expensive posh tea and cakes at the Oriental Hotel. Had to sneak in to avoid the flip flop police.

Chasing after cycling food vendors to get some chicken on a stick--