Welsh David's Russia and Korea: 25 February to 6 March 2019

I spent one night in Beijing, picked up the luggage I had left at the hotel having only taken a 20 litre day bag to North Korea, and caught a flight to Bangkok arriving there at 22.00 hours. On arrival at the Indra Regent Hotel, one I had stayed at many times before, I was asked for a cash deposit of B3000 before being allowed to go to the room. I protested so vigorously that a manager had to be called, and I still protested. Eventually I was given the room key after telling them that the room was booked with a credit card and charges for damage etc could be be added to the card as they already had that information. When I asked for a room on a lower floor I was told that it was not possible and later found out that the lower floors were only used for Asian guests because of the food smell that they left everywhere. Wifi also had to be paid for but with the problems I had accessing wifi they cancelled the charge for almost all my stay there.

The stay in Bangkok was mainly to rest after the earlier travels and most of the time there was spent looking at temples I had not seen before, and some I had. There was a climb-on and climb-off bus to go round the sites only with the amount of traffic in the city I thought that it would not be of much use. There was also the same sort of canal boat that was one reasonable price for all day travel and that I used a couple of times as it was easy to move around, and cooler as well.

On 6 March I flew to Brunei (capital Bandar Seri Begawan) to visit my daughter and son-in-law who were both working there, a flight of about 4 hours.

Views of Bangkok