The second round in Bangkok

The view from our hotel room

The craziest exit ever!

This was a good spot to be reading a book.

A typical Thai woman.

A typical Thai man.

Somewhere along the way.

Bird's nest soup.

The minibus ride to Bangkok on Wednesday was quite bumpy but luckily it did not take too long. The highways were occasionally in such a bad shape that a motion sick person would probably have thrown up several times during the way. Thank God nobody got sick on the bus. :)

A funny thing happened to us when we checked in to the Baiyoke hotel. The girl at the reception gave us a room that was already occupied. It was obviously by accident but to compensate for the pain and suffering she upgraded our room into a junior suite! Sweet! The "room" was bigger than our apartment in Finland and it was in the 25th floor so the view was quite amazing. The bathroom was twice the size of our finnish kitchen and it contained both a shower and a bath. Oh my, what a difference to the Yellow Mango bungalows!

Baiyoke sky-hotel is definitely a must-see if you visit Bangkok. It is a really good hotel too, but all the other tourists coming to visit the obsevation deck makes it quite restless, even a bit stressfull. But considering how much we paid for the room it was definitely worth it (and more)! Also, there is a really cool shopping mall downstairs. It is more for whole-sales but you can buy individual pieces as well. We recommend the highest and the lowest floor of this mall because you can find all kinds of cool street- and pop-fashion there. If you are looking for Dior & co. you should go for example to the fashion mall called Gaysorn.

Now we are in Check Inn Chinatown and this hotel is quite nice too. The room is small but very clean and it includes free wifi, a bathroom and a little kitchenette. Chinatown in Bangkok is just as crowded and full of everything as it is anywhere in the world and also the general atmosphere here is rather cool. And what about all the food! Yesterday we had a taste of the bird's nest soup which is a delicacy in the Chinese cuisine. Apparently they make the soup from the saliva the bird has used when building its nest. The soup is served with boiled eggs and it really does not taste too much of anything, it just tastes a bit sweet.

We will be heading to the north and to Chiang Mai tomorrow morning. We will take a bus since the train was fully booked already. The bus is actually a bit more expensive than the train but it takes only nine hours to get to Chiang Mai (the train takes at least 12hrs and today they were approximately 5hrs delayed), that is, if everything goes according to the plan. :) We have the Millenium-trilogy by Stieg Larsen in Joni's E-reader so I actually am looking forward to those nine hours in the bus. :)