Day 76 - The Family Reunion in Thailand

First impressions of Thailand's metropolitan region:
Lots of green, long rows of identical houses, lots of traffic.

Wow! After long seven weeks the plan was to meet the rest of the family in Bangkok. We wanted to arrive an hour earlier than my mother and sister so that we could welcome them at the arrival gate.

So we had to take a really early flight out of Singapore, set the alarm clock to 04:30 and, after a nice breakfast at the KrisGold lounge, were mostly snoozing on our two-hour flight. Funny situation that I never had before: I was so tired that I was almost sleeping. I was listening to "Cool Kids" and exactly knew about the lyrics and so on, but didn't feel anyone raising the window shutters above me. Because my seat wasn't upright at all, the flight attendant had to wake me, and he did as gently as nobody ever did. As I first thought "oh dad, whaddayawunt", I didn't directly react, so that it was even more embarrassing for me in the end...

Since my mother's and sister's flight from Switzerland was 40 mins late, we had to wait for about one a half hours. Fortunately our transfer service showed up and we were brought to our hotel with on a one-hour shuttle trip. Quite chaotic traffic here in Bangkok, but I've seen worse in Southern Italy. Our hotel is located right next to the Chao Phraya river and we have a extraordinary view to watch the illuminated dinner cruise boats pass by - and also the heavly (over)loaded freight vessels and, last not least, the tourist longboats and the water taxis / express boats.

This picture shows the sunset after our "short walk" to a restaurant recommended on Trip Advisor. The short walk was: we walked four times past the same shops and same people like tailors or masseurs that wanted us to buy something. FOUR TIMES. In the end the restaurant wasn't where we expected it to be, and not even somewhere in the area. Gosh, how embarrassing :'D Since the other restaurants in the area either were completely empty or full of strange-looking permanent backpacker tourists, we ended up in the hotel restaurant which was not only a good way to use our coupon, but which also was a nice surprise regarding food quality. Not to forget the outdoor seating on the riverfront and live music.