With this last day on my own I decided to visit the Bangkok Art & Culture Centre. Map in hand, I headed out for the Centre which my (un)trustworthy iPhone map told me was 1.2 kilometres from my hotel.  I had stopped to check my map after a kilometre or so when a gentleman approached, identified himself as a policemen (in plain clothes!) and offered to help me find my destination.

On hearing my plan, he informed me that the Centre was closed for today’s Buddhist holiday, and that I should go instead to the Thai Trade Centre where there was a huge sale – 30% off everything!  In fact he himself had just bought his wife some jewelry there the other day.  And on the way I should take in The Oriental Gallery where I could purchase a length of silk and have a suit or dress made for myself or any member of my family.  The gentleman went so far as to negotiate a fare with a tuk tuk driver, but I, cunning traveler that I am, cannot so easily be duped!  I smelled a scam and finally broke away.  This man cannot be a happy one with all the lies he told me!  A couple of kilometres later I reached the Bangkok Art & Culture Centre.

Walking around Bangkok is at once fascinating and dangerous.  The sidewalks are lined with small shops, booths really, selling everything from clothing to books to over-the-counter pharmaceuticals to food.  Often three or four or more vendors in a row will be selling exactly the same thing, a perfectly competitive market at work!

Beyond the small shops are soaring towers housing offices, condominiums, hotels, and shopping malls – so many shopping malls! – many advertising high-end brands like Prada, Jimmy Choo, Louis Vuitton and TagHeuer.  Someone in Bangkok has money to burn, but not your average Thai – the per capita income in 2012 was $9,400 US (CIA Factbook).

Every two or three blocks there is a shrine, big or small, fancy or plain, all with offerings of food, many with sticks of incense burning at their bases.  I found one humble shrine in a back corner of a street market.  Apparently it has a sweet tooth!  Another is guarded by a ferocious lion who nevertheless was accommodating enough today to wear a brightly coloured scarf. The Erawan Shrine is by far the grandest I saw, and there may be something to the not-policeman’s story of a Buddhist holiday as people were leaving sticks of incense and a small band was playing within the shrine’s enclosure.

Older Caucasian men frequently pass by with younger Thai women on their arms.

Crossing streets can be dangerous!  Pedestrians most emphatically do NOT have the right of way in Bangkok (unlike Vancouver).  I took to waiting  for others to cross and joined them, thinking my chances of arriving at the other side were greater if a driver had to mow down three or four people instead of just me.

Pedestrians are not even allowed to cross the main streets but must use overpasses, sometimes built just for that particular street, and sometimes doing double duty as access to the – wait for it Vancouverites! – Skytrain (the Bangkok rapid transit system).  The more complicated overpasses include entrances to the shopping malls on either side of the street, the pedestrian equivalent of a roundabout with various onramps and exits.

The Bangkok Art & Culture Centre is a round building reminiscent of the Guggenheim in New York except that the floors do not spiral upwards but are separate.  The main exhibition this day was of Finnish lithographs, just what I came to see in Thailand!  The Centre also contains many small stores, but these are artisanal in nature.  Even the ice cream shop sells hand-made ice cream.  Over all, the lithographs were far less interesting than the building itself.

My tour group met for the first time this evening.  We are 22 plus our group leader plus any local experts who join us from time to time.  We should have been 23, but one of our number has injured her leg and must return home.  Once again, I am one of the three or four youngest, with the oldest of my tourmates in their early 80s.  Once again Gillian, there is a mother-daughter team (smiles).  Our group leader is Thuyen (pronounced Twin) who is Vietnamese and speaks beautiful English.  He will prove to be a demanding task master, I think, as he announced he is controlling our wake-up calls for the duration.

Dinner was at the hotel where Western and Thai food was available.  I refuse to eat Western.  Why come to Thailand to eat as though I’m at home?