Saturday, March 13- Back to Bangkok

 We got up at at a leisurely 5:45 in order to pack and meet near our cabins for our last meal from our great cooks. After fruit, yogurt, omelets and coffee we set off for Bangkok at 8 AM.

 We passed lovely rice paddies and cattle, before joining the main north-south highway north towards Bangkok. We stopped at several checkpoints manned by polite and smiling police and soldiers but got through easily. The “red-shirt’ supports of the previous prime minister, Thaksin, are supposed to rally and march tomorrow and the authorities are bracing for it. The last time this happened, the airport was shut down and they are going to try and prevent that this time.

We got onto the ring road around the south of the city, passing a great multi-headed elephant statue and arrived at the Novotel Hotel at 10:30AM. As a lot of people are trying to get out of Bangkok right now, the hotel was full and we had to wait a while for rooms to become available. As we read the newspapers, our crew of cooks and drivers came into the lobby and David and Dion thanked them for their wonderful service and gave them gratuity envelopes, we all applauded and had a group photo taken.

We then went into the restaurant for Novotel’s amazing buffet: RR had roast beef and I had sushi and spicy Tom Kha soup, followed by chocolate cake with candles to celebrate Jean’s 4000th life bird!

We napped, shopped, blogged until seven when we got together for our farewell dinner. This time the buffet was featuring a fish buffet with oysters, crab, whole salmon, sushi, etc, etc.

David wasn’t there as he had managed to get an earlier flight so he could spend two nights at home instead of only one, before he leaves to help guide a wonderful cruise up the west coast of Africa that starts Tuesday! What a life! We said goodbye to all our friends - a great group - and returned to our room to pack for our 12:30PM flight to Taipei and LAX tomorrow.