As you can see time has got away from me and it is already day 4 of the trip and this is my first post. So let me give you a quick catch up.

Feb 18th we flew from Sydney to Bangkoks Suvarnbhumi Airport. The flight was nothing more than a test of patience wheres as the taxi ride to our Hotel (The Riva Surya) was an extended re-introduction to the vast size and terrible traffic of Bangkok. It was already late in the day by the time we got to the hotel so the day ended with dinner in the hotel and bed.

Feb 19th, our first full day in Bangkok started with breakfast on the riverside terrace and was followed by a day of sporatic exploration of the local area broken with retreats to our airconditioned room to escape the heat, 35°C.

Feb 20th, was a little more adventurous. Despite the length of time we spent deciding what we needed to pack for this trip I managed to leave home without a crucial item (a razor handle to go with the large pack of blades I did bring). So this morning we ventured to a local shopping mall called PinkLoa Central. Uber does not operate in Bangkok but there is a local equivalent called Grab and it worked perfectly to get us to and from our hotel to Pinklao.

Picklao Central turned out to be an impressive mall, with many international brands, and in the food court a large supermarket which puts our local Coles and Woolies to shame. It even had a robot rolling around the store trying to sell us snacks.

All in all a successful first adventure.

Later in the day Nina walked to the nearby bridge over the Chao Phraya River to get a couple of photos of the hotels water front.

Feb 21st, the day we were scheduled to join our cruise ship at Laem Chabang Port. The port is approximately 132 km from the hotel and the hotel staff that booked a car for us recommended we allow 2.5 hours for the journey. To our surprise this trip turned into an Adventure that lasted well over 3 hours.

Why an adventure ? well it it turned out that the Laem Charbang port is really only a cargo port that is a messy mix of old roads and new highways that are not very well integrated (so very confusing) and also our driver had not been to the cruise ship dock (either recently or ever) so we got lost multiple times. At one point we had to drive back down a one way road the wrong way against heavy truck traffic. Ultimately Nina and I had to take over the navigation wth Brendon adding suggestions via Whatsapp from Germany. Regardless of the adventure we made it only 10minutes late for our 14:00 checkin.

So we are aboard the ship. The room seems very nice, we have done a little exploring and found most of the facilities we will use during the voyage.

Stay tuned .. tomorrow we will actually take part in a shore excursion.