Again Ethiad airways have come up trumps with a fantastic service (it does help having a bed to sleep in and a few brandy's - to help me sleep) despite cleres blanket falling onto my side!

Travel tip - don't get behind a large group of travellers coming in from the Indian sub continent at immigration ( it takes ages and ages and ages, to the extent our poor travel guide was convinced we were not coming.

She met us with great relief and soon had us wisked away on their new "sky train" with one change and we were in central Banhkock - also we new her entire family history and she was a devout monarchist " really" in fact we soon discovered that everybody really loves Their royal family,

Later that day on visiting the golden buddher and the old royal palace we saw many groups of people who were paying respects to their queen mother who had recently died and would lay in state for six months to allow as many people to visit from around the country
(clare got into a conversation with the taxi driver who was picking us up from Phuket airport even carried a photo of the prime minister on his mobile phone)

Back to the guides tour of Bangkok - we noticed that many parts of the city had water everywhere after recent floods - she said that the level of rain fall was even unusual for them.

We lept on a boat to take us to the old royal palace which splashed and bounced along the river with many people joining and leaving the boat but unlike at home appeared to have a serenity about it.

We arrived at the old royal palace's and temples which were incredible in their splender with the amount of gold leave used, and with the many bhudist inmates everywhere plus a splash of chinese statues made the whole experience exotic.

We made a visit the the golden bhudder which was made from 5 1/2 tons of gold and was a laying down posture was magnificent

Quick visit to a local museum And back to the airport for the next flight