Arriving in Bangkok for the very first time we experienced very quickly what I termed BSO, Bangkok Sensory Overload.  Visually Bangkok is “busy” with a lot of people 8 million in fact, wearing between them a lot of smiles.

Traffic is congested being a built-up and enormous sprawling city, with life being lived on the streets themselves.  The colors are vibrant, patterns ornate, and the colour gold in abundance.  The noise is just loud, your hearing is cluttered with general city life, overhead sky trains and a heavy dose of 24 hour building construction.

The smells are from one extreme to the other with pollution as a backdrop.  You can almost taste the food before you eat it with the powerful Thai spices and fragrances intermingling.  Outside you can feel the place on your skin, sweat droplets formed by the heat and humidity trickling down you, until you step indoors.  That is into one of the numerous cavernous and vacuous shopping malls, and experience arctic air-conditioning, for which, we are very thankful.