Summer Palace

Despite our puzzled driver we arrived there before opening hours. Well, it has been planned so... A guard let us into gardens where we could wait and explore at the same time. Better than waiting outside.

It was cloudy, something I usually hate when holding my camera in hand, but it saved us a few litres of sweat :-)

Finally, the Vimanmek Mansion is open. Unfortunately it is not possible to take photos of it. Everything has to stay in lockers. So I cannot show any photos, but whole palace was fantastic (Google can help you to find some photos). Built from teak, European style, huge. I would not expect such a building in Thailand.

We had guided tour in English. It took me about 10-15 minutes to start to understand funny language our guide has been using. It was really funny, unable to comprehend anything, I could not stop laughing. A thought she will think I am laughing on her explanation or even worse from The King and she gets me arrested did not help a bit. Then Peter noticed I am laughing and realized why. So now, we were laughing both. But we learned her "language" quickly enough, before we could cause any harm to us.

Collections were very nice too, there were even a few gifts from former Czechoslovakia (a piano, crystal set).

And then it happened again, we got to part with toys. Out of many I noticed small white things similar to pills. Toy pills! I imagined how toy pills were probably played with and how they were recycled... fortunately I started to control myself sooner this time.

Leaving Bangkok

It was easier for driver to find his way to centre, obviously. We bought tickets to airport. Woman working at agency was really happy to see us, because she wanted to persuade us yesterday we have to buy our tickets ahead (and from her), but we resisted then.

Ride to airport was terrible. It was awfully hot in micro bus and it left me drained. Then we had to wait quite a long at airport, check-in staff had plenty of time.

But the flight compensated for experience during check-in. We flew with the same crew we had on flight to Bangkok (stopover, remember?) and one of them noticed Peter and me are twins even we sat about 30 rows apart on different sides of plane. So he was glad he could prove his claim to his colleague. And they handled us like celebrities: "more whisky, boys?". Simply said, our favourite cabin crew from whole Qantas.