Month: September 2019

Not an early start to our first full day today after the mammoth journey to get here. We didn’t leave the apartment till mid morning.

Initially planned to go to Camden Market from the closest station (Barbican) but it was closed (as were all stations on the circle line) so walked the opposite direction to St Paul’s station. Walking that way I was able to snap the picture above of St Pauls.

Somewhat a blessing in disguise having to detour as we passed “Postman’s Park” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postman%27s_Park which has lots of memorials dedicated to “heroic self sacrifice” where people died in the heroic act of saving someone else from death. Lots of interesting history in this tiny pocket of London, and we just stumbled across it (we had known it existed, thought it would be interesting, but hadn’t actually planned on visiting it)

Next stop was Camden Market. Normally I’d go out of my way to avoid “markets” but this one is well worth the visit. It has plenty of the normal market dross, but also lots of interesting stuff too. If you are after a T-shirt with witty comments, this is the place to come. There are also a lot of local photographers who sell their artwork, we picked up this awesome little picture that combines Lego with London photography.

Camden also has my favourite burger joint (Baba G’s Bhangra Burger), a fantastic Indian / western fusion. It’s amazing, if you come here seek them out. They used to operate out of a food truck but they now have a proper restaurant. They have other outlets in London too.

https://www.bhangraburger.com

I got my coffee fix out a Camden too. Initial reconnaissance of this coffee joint indicates it should be good, it had a queue and Italian barista. Was a little disappointed though, ended up too hot and slightly burnt. Might have more luck tomorrow.

All the rage out here at the moment are these “Bubble Waffles”, i expect we will try one sometime before we leave London.

If you come here to Camden on a weekend, expect crowds, the place is pumping, even on a slightly wet day. When we finished here we had to queue on the street for a few minutes to get back in the tube station

This particular weekend in London had “Open House London” where lots of interesting buildings are open to the public, and they only offer it once per year. Scotland Yard were open to tours but you has to submit a ballot entry since it was so popular. Unfortunately I misssd out on that one. The Gherkin, my favourite London building was not on the open list this year. Australia house, which would be cool to visit for obvious reasons, also has an ancient drinking well dating back to Roman times in its basement and an amazing marble floor that’s been featured in Harry Potter (Gringotts Bank). I also missed out on the ticket allocation to that. Check out their website here https://openhouselondon.org.uk

Central London was closed to traffic in some key areas today and bike rental was free. All in all a great day to be out and about in London.

In the afternoon we caught up with a friend of mine who now works out of the Bank’s London office. Josh took us to this great hotel in SoHo where we spent a few hours.

(http://www.deanstreettownhouse.com)

Dinner was at the Nags Head in Covent Garden. It’s becoming a tradition that we have Sunday dinner here when in London. The other great thing it’s that Covent Garden is on the Piccadilly Tube line, and my inner 14 year old never tires of the train to Cockfosters.

Sharon and Emma are coming here later in the week

Our flight leaving Bangkok was delayed about two hours due to torrential rain and electrical storms. It descended on the airport pretty quickly, one minute looking out the window over at the other side of the terminal and the next minute I looked up and couldn’t see anything because of the rain.

Got to see a lot of this

After the two hour delay we were off. Being an afternoon flight heading west we were treated to a sunset that lasted a few hours as we chased the sun into and across Europe. Thankfully the plane gave the Ukraine and other war zones a nice wide berth! Unfortunately no inflight wifi so I had an enforced digital detox for 12 hours. This was a nice 777-300 so much newer, quieter and more room than the old 747 we got on the way to Bangkok.

Once arrived in the UK we were through immigration and customs really quickly since we could now use the automatic entry gates, Aussies are now considered part of the cool kids club and we bypassed the long queues in the “others” line.

We got the Heathrow express to Paddington station and grabbed a quick bite to eat. Due to the delay we were much later than I expected, didn’t quite feel up to dragging luggage through the tube at 10pm so we grabbed a black cab to the apartment. Pretty impressive it was an all electric black cab.

I’d booked a one bedroom apartment down near monument station through the same company where we had stayed before when I was here with work, however they contacted me just before we left to offer us two bedroom apartment for the same price, but in a different building.

It’s right near the Barbican and Looks over the museum of London. It’s right near the Barbican Estate, now a grade 2 listed building since it’s a classic example of post WW2 brutalist architecture. That’s a nice way of saying it’s totally fugly.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbican_Estate

Bangkok, Oriental setting..

And the Scott don’t know what coffee he’s getting….

Flight here was good, as mentioned on last post nothing spectacular, old jet but enough room and it was a great price. Arrived Bangkok pretty much spot on time at 4:30pm in the local time

Bangkok Airport (Suvarnabhumi) is massive, according to Wikipedia it was built in 2006. Not sure what style you would call it, maybe modern brutalist, exposed concrete and steel everywhere. According to Wikipedia it was the most instagrammed place in 2012. That’s a lesson for the kiddies not to believe everything they read on the interwebs. If they had said it was the most unpronounceable airport in the world in 2012 I’d believe that one.

Wish our airport was like this, had bags, cleared immigration, customs and was on the shuttle bus to the hotel in around 20 minutes

Staying at the Novotel here at the airport. They apparently have a walkway to/from the airport but I couldn’t find that so we just too the free shuttle bus. It seemed to loop around the airport on the motorway a few times, if nothing else we got a good look at the place. At least it was a proper mini bus and not a tuk tuk death machine that seem to be the transport mode of choice in the city.

I had visions of us lounging around the pool in the evening sipping cocktails but we were all just shattered after the long day so had a quick dinner in the restaurant and went to bed.

Got to the airport just after 9am In the local time, it was super busy, people everywhere. Luckily I’d done an online checkin last night and was able to breeze straight past the lines to the bag drop.

After clearing security I was getting worried I wouldn’t find a decent coffee anywhere. If I’d been blogging about luxury handbags there wouldn’t have been an issue. That seems to be a big market here. Eventually found Dean and Deluca, they were a saving grace in Japan so I wasn’t going to hesitate. Not as good as Japan but still ok. Typical airport style pricing at $7.50. Thailand might be a cheaper holiday destination, but Bangkok airport certainly isn’t.

For connectivity here I pre-purchased a 3gig 8 day travel sim from sim corner. Just suck it in an old burner phone I bring as an emergency spare when travelling and hotspotted the three of us off that. Worked a treat.

Amazing pics from our free BKK motorway tour

Emma had a massive pizza last night. Some of it at least

Was impressed with the free water at the hotel, supplied in glass not plastic

Not sure if after visiting Bangkok the world really is my oyster, but I’ve got my Oyster card ready to navigate London’s tube system

Next stop London !