Mayan Prophecy Countdown

I had a lazy morning, managed to post a blog update and get some photos uploaded, I am way behind on the blog as usual but decided I would leave the blog where it is for the moment. Until my bike arrived in Bangkok, I did not want to say anything too bad about the shipper, just in case eh! My flight did not leave until 6.30pm this evening, so I had plenty of time. I left my big bag here after checking out of my shoebox, I did not find a cat to swing in here, lucky really cos it would not have survived!! I will pick up my bag again around 3pm, which should give me heaps of time to get to the airport and check in. I had decided on a harbour cruise today, I had the schedule and the first one was at 11.55, by the time I got down there, it was too early and the window was closed. I had time for a quick lunch and got back to find the window closed again, with a sign up saying back in 10. Bummer, I did not read the fine print, the cut off for each cruise was 10 minutes prior to boarding! It was nearly midday and I saw quite a few TV camera crews around, so I asked one of them what was going on. It turns out at midday there will be a 3 minute vigil for the ferry tragedy the other day and all the boats on the harbour will sound their horns, it was a moving experience, even though I was not involved. After that I had the time and opportunity to go and find a Geocache 🙂 The closest one was right at the main intersection of Nathan Road, I had to wait for a while until the area was muggle free, but grabbed it, signed it and returned it with only about 50 car drivers seeing, so maybe it is still safe 🙂

Here is a famous landmark, I can remember having a treat here many times as a kid, a 7Up with ice cream, yummy 🙂

I managed to get on the next cruise and this went for an hour, just a loop around the harbour, stopping at a few places both here on the mainland and the island. You can get hop on/off tickets that last all day, but I did not have the time.

As it was it was a nice relaxing tour with some history coming from a tape piped through the speakers.

While loading at Central Pier, I spotted all these macho guys doing their midday runs, they looked super fit and reminded me of me a bit 😉 They are probably all martial arts chappies.

Once we got towards the western side of the harbour we started to see some more traditional boats including those local fishers out plying their trade.

At one stage we were passed by a very fast police RHIB, or Rigid Hull Inflatable Boat, lots of guns and helmets on board!

After the tour I saw the local exhibition was a less crowded than the other day where my photos were all blurred, so here are a few other shots of this chaps work, very strange.

So, I now had some time to kill. I had thought about going up to Waterloo Road where I also used to live, but the logistics were a bit tough and I had lost that extra hour down at the harbour. So, instead I just wandered up and down Nathan Road for an hour, ignoring anyone who wanted to sell me a suit, a watch or anything at all and kept myself focused on where I was going. One thing of interest was a tree lopping job that was happening, I was amazed to see all the safety gear being worn, the first time I have seen any concern for anyone’s safety in the past month!

After that little interlude I grabbed my bag and headed to the airport, this involved taking the metro to the island, transferring to the airport express then going back under the harbour to the other island where the airport now is. I remember vividly living in Kowloon as a kid and seeing the jumbos landing at the old airport, I think it may be closed, Kai Tak Airport from memory, not sure, but at that time, the planes would be right over head and sometimes if you went to the top floor, they would be lower than you and real close. You can get an idea of what it was like by watching this footage, some of the landings looked scary and the low flyovers start around the 2.30min mark.
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So I was now at the brand new airport, I was checked in and way too early, but better early than late. I had time for a quick late lunch as I knew it would be hours before we were served plane food. But, it all went to plan, we took off we flew and landed. I had been trying to get in contact with the hotel about a shuttle bus but couldn’t. It was no big issue in the end, when I landed the first thing I did was buy a SIM for the phone and asked at info where the shuttles were and was soon delivered to my hotel, the Siam Place Airport Hotel, about 10 minutes from the airport. Beers downstairs at the bar was the first thing I was interested in 🙂 Some good news today, Lorraine had posted on Facebook that her bike was now hers, she had done the paperwork herself and picked up the bike and she had seen mine there as well, so that looked all good for the morning 🙂

Cheers from Bangkok, Thailand
TravellingStrom