Day 1 - Thailand Holiday

I spent the night packing my stuff for the trip. Looks like everytime we go for a holiday there are a host of electronic stuff to bring along - the digital camera {for picture taking}, computer notebook {to do these blog updates}, handphones {found a new use for them as automatic currency converters, just found that out on this trip after about 6 months with the phone, I finally realised you can set it up for auto conversion}, spare batteries, handphone charger, notebook power cables, foreign power adaptors. Lucky this round I decided not to bring along the video camera. Anyways had a really late night slept about 2am and was up at an ungodly 5.30am that morning. So final last minute stuff to add in and we were off to the airport, since it was only to Bangkok via SQ, we ended up at T2, had my first look at the new T3 in the cab as we approached the airport. Looks rather plain on the outside, probably will visit it one of these days just to see what is on the inside. Anyways just as we got out of the cab and this is like 6.30am in the morning I was greeted by this rather 'chirpy' young lady in an orange T-Shirt who came over even before we could get out of the cab and asked which flight we were taking as she was there to ensure we were at the right terminal. I was still a little sleepy so I mumbled someting and I think it was the correct answer as she said we were at the right terminal. Checked in the luggage and we went for coffee in the transit area. After clearing immigration via the new Passport/Thumbrint auto identification system. While waiting for the flight we walked around and even before we started our holiday we started contributing to the Singapore economy. Unbelievable !! Duty free shopping before the trip !! Flight was not full, departed on time, rather smooth 2 hrs flight to Bangkok where after clearing immigration and collecting our luggage, we met a very nice lady from the Banyan Tree Hotel who took us to the waiting Benz with an equally pleasant driver that was to take us to the Hotel. That's your typical Thai Hospitality, absolutely wonderful. It was about a 30 min trip to the Hotel. At the Hotel we were greeted by Pook, and she brought us up to the Club lounge to do our check in. They gave us these really cute hand garlands and the welcome drink was a very refreshing Lemongrass drink (pic below). We were on these sofa seats and she took our particulars while kneeling there, not sure why they do that, probably a custom I think. After the basics were done, Joe took over and gave us the run down of the Hotel, a very nice guy who kept going on about the Bath Salts that were part of the complimentary package. He showed us our room where our luggage was all neatly brought up.

The room was fantastic, here we are (below pic) in the living area of the room there was a separate bedroom and we were on the 58th floor just below the restaurants on the 59 floor. Great view of the river but Bangkok tends to be hazy.

It was around noon so we did some exploration of the Hotel, checked our the dinning and pool, the gym and of course the spa facilities and then we headed out to one of the local shopping centre where we had Japanese cuisine for lunch as well as 'investing' in the Thai economy. Evening we went to the Suan Lum Night Market which was within walking distance and just enough time to get back to write this in before turning in for the night, lots of stuff to write about but too tired to do it now. Uploaded some pictures to Flickr as well of the shots taken today. I'm just too tired to put a link, just follow the box at the right.