“No, Frank. It’s 2am. You’ve only been asleep a couple of hours.”

The look on his face was brilliant. Almost made up for the sleepless night. He still managed to get back to sleep while the rest of us just lay awake until morning.

When morning did finally arrive I was exhausted, and glad to get out of the room. I had some freebie Cornflakes for breakfast and then we headed for Lumphini Park.

We walked to the park. It was only a couple of centimetres on this map… It was actually a few miles away but a good walk, as we got to see some street food stalls and experience the endless lanes of traffic and congestion. An initiation of sorts.

The park was an oasis surrounded by high rise office blocks. There were pagodas and small buildings throughout the park, and a large lake with some sort of Komodo Dragon sentries patrolling the waters edge. The pagodas provided a handy resting stop when an impromptu thunderstorm stopped us walking for an hour.

After the park we headed for the train station via Tesco Lotus and a Chinese cafe.

At the train station a kindly lady with official looking name badge helped us with train times, and ushered us into a T.A.T (or TAT, I can’t remember) tour office. We thought we would see what they had to offer, and ended up going for a package to get us up to Chiang Mai by train via Ayutthaya and Lop Buri (Monkey Town). The trip also included accommodation in Ayutthaya and Chiang Mai, and a jungle trek for 3 days at the end. We had the next 10 days all planned out and sorted for £100.

Maybe we were naive, but this seemed like a great deal.

Referring back to our map, we saw that our hostel was only round the corner.

—–

3 hours later, we took a short cut and were wading through a flooded street, trying desperately to find the canal to get our bearings. Then a thunderstorm started again. Nic nearly lost a flip flop as it floated down the road. We found the canal eventually and followed it through tiny alleyways and houses on the edge of the water. Occasionally a local would pop their head out the door and point us in the right direction. Helpful Thai people.

As we crossed a bridge, Chick slipped and got down one one knee to propose to Frank. She cut her leg a bit.

We did eventually find the hostel, and although exhausted, we were glad to have seen such a hidden side of Bangkok. If we hadn’t got lost, we would have never met those locals, and never known about their little houses along the canal.

Scrap Green Traffic Lights

A quick search suggests there are around 25,000 sets of traffic lights in the UK, with each set containing multiple lights. One estimate says 420,000 lights in total.

If we were to scrap the green light from all these junctions, we could cut the number of bulbs by 33%. Also, as it is the green light that stays on when idle, the energy saved would potentially be much more than 33%. The red and amber lights would only be illuminated when required.

There is the potential problem that you would have less time to react to a traffic signal if you hadn’t seen the green light, but we could just make the amber display slightly longer to compensate for this.

The energy savings could be massive, and it could also help contribute to darker skies at night, and reduced light pollution.

Maybe I have missed something glaringly obvious with my logic here so hit me up with some comments if you don’t agree.

Long Bay Night - Coromandel, New Zealand

Alley - Byron Bay, Australia

Oversize Vehicle - Byron Bay, Australia

Outback

Amed Hen Night

Munduk Night

Sanur Car

Melaka Night