On the way home - Bangkok Day 2

So we tried to stay up for New Years but we were only partially successful.  We watched New Years on CNN as it occurred live in Australia.  That was 8 pm local time and we both fell asleep (in our defense, we were up at 5 that morning).

We were woken up by the fireworks at midnight and when we looked out the window we could see the fireworks from three different locations across,the city.  That was very cool and then we went back to sleep.

We did go to the Royal palace today.  Unfortunately, so did everyone else!  The good news is that today it was free, instead of $15/person.  The bad news is that it was so crowded we could hardly move and we certainly could not appreciate the scale and grandeur of the buildings and grounds.  The ferry was packed, too and on our return trip the ferry we were on ran out of disel fuel so we had to wait on a hot, packed boat until an empty one was in position for us to transfer.

After checking out of our lovely hotel, Bruce and I stopped at the closest mall and we each had hour long head/foot massages - they were $10 each.

We are at the airport now, waiting for the midnight departure of our flight to Brussels.  Our layover in Brussels is four hours.  I'll try to update from there.