A day too far

Sunday February 3rd

It rained quite heavily first thing this morning. As such I didn't really bother getting out of bed for a while. As it was my last day in Bangkok I decided to have a fairly lazy day and not do too much. In fact I think I had overstayed my time in Bangkok, I originally didn't book the Siem Reap trip for today because I didn't want to be travelling after a night out watching the football, but in the end I could have travelled today.

As I still had a ticket for the Viamanmek Mansion from a bundle you get when you buy the Grand Palace tickets I decided to go up there and look at it. I walked, as usual, but made the mistake of following the signs instead of following my own sense of direction. The result was a 45 minute detour around 3 sides of a very large block, instead of going the way I wanted. On the other hand I did get to see a few other sights, including the old and new parliments and the zoo. For some reason it amused me that the zoo and the new parliment are across the road from each other.

Eventually I got to the mansion. It is a massive 72 room mansion all made out of teak wood. It is totally Victorian in style, and was built around 1900 after one of the Kings trips to Europe. It was beautiful, and they had all the gifts he receieved on these trips displayed as well. The only problem was you had to go on a guided tour, and the guides rushed around too quickly. It was 45 minutes, you could have used an extra 15 or even 30 minutes. I think everyone else on the tour felt it.

Of course no photos were allowed, so I had to content myself with some photos of the Kings carriages, and the royal tuk-tuk. I wouldn't have believed it but there is one, and I'll post a photo of it at some time.

After that it was just back to the hotel to pack for the next big part of the trip.