Thailand in 24 hrs

Continuing on from Vienna, I had a 24 hr layover in Bangkok, Thailand. It was actually quite amazing the amount of tourism one can fit in a short period of time!

Bangkok has a new-ish freeway, a lot of construction is currently happening. The airport has thai, chinese and english on most signs. On the ride from the airport, I see lots of american ads, companies, slumberger, for profit universities - stamford international school. The air berlin flight was 80% german/austrian, with only a few thai, asian. this is apparently a favorite vacation spot for germans and scandinavians.

The traffic lights are equipped with countdown timers that show how many seconds are left before the lights change!

Bangkok Taxi

 

The taxi cabs are a nifty mixture of hot pink, contruction orange, super bright blue, and yellow.  At night - the rickshaw cabs are sometimes so brightly lit up they look like they could fit in at an electric disneyland parade.

It feels like a sauna outside (and its only September). Once you get inside the airtrain its really cold, with the A/C blowing the sweat off of your face.

Outside Wat Po

The shopping malls are huge here, a lot like hong kong. The food market was really exotic, I don't recognize half of the foods there,  the rest were some kind of chinese food variation. the coconut ice cream with nuts was most excellent. Lots of chinese live here; they cannot tell I am foreigner at all. Its quite nice not to be harassed for once. I watch some Germans get hassled by street vendors, while I pass undetected. Some of the downtown shopping is more expensive than I had imagined, and are definitely similar to US prices.

Most of the people in the city are asian, but you do see some arabs wearing hijabs, indians,

various other kinds of middle eastern, white people. the biggest minority is black.

Many Buddhas