Bye, bye Bangkok – what an amazing city. Probably one of the testing grounds for the metropolitan cities in the world of the future. Excellent technological infrastructure, mixed with cultural life, food and interesting people from all over the world. But Bangkok still reminds you that it is not your world – it‘s theirs…

For the Germans: read/listen to „Bangkok Noir“ by Roger Willemsen.

Off by train to Kanchanaburi – „The Bridge on the River Kwai“. One of my childhood memories – my father whistling the theme tune („Colonel Bogey March“) and talking about that film about the bridge and a war – both too far to imagine that it was real. Had I said to him in those years (going back almost 50 years…) „I‘m going there some day, I‘ll be standing on that bridge“, he would have smiled, only half – but somehow half – believing…

 

So there we were. Stayed at VN Guesthouse in a raft on the river and spoke to fellow travelers and listened to their stories: the Australien lady who had worked in finance and now owns a sailing ship on the Nile, the young britisch woman („I work for one of the big law firms in the city“) and is now travelling Asia and Australia („Sidney at New Years Eve“).

 

The conversations you have when sit on trains:

„The apparition of these faces in a crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough“

Ezra Pound, 1913

 

 

 

Got a driver to take us to Ayutthaya – next chapter