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Well it’s been an absolute blast, but today we’re heading home!  Good news is, flight isn’t until around 8pm local time, so plenty of time to cram in a few last minute things.

We had a bit of a lie in, and dad indulged himself in the buffet breakfast with plenty of time (making up for lost time yesterday).

Just before 11am we called a taxi from the front of the hotel and headed into the city.  I did promise mum some shops today, so we went to Siam Paragon.  

Siam Paragon opened in December 2005 at a cost of $450 million.  There are 10 floors crammed full of luxury stores like Gucci, Chanel, Zara etc.  

There is parking for 4,000 cars, and that’s not including the cars parked in the car dealer stores on the second floor – BMW, Porsche, Aston Martin, Bentley, Jaguar & Maserati… nice!  

Also on the second floor is the Lego store, which has its walls adorned with a lovely arty picture of the Bangkok skyline.  That would look nice on my office wall!

Ok so everything was way out of my price range 😢 

It turns out that all of the big shopping centres are beside each other on the same street.  Next door to Siam Paragon is Siam Centre, down the road is Siam Discovery.  Across the road is Siam Square One, and the MBK centre we were in yesterday.  I tell you though, if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all!

We had discussed long and hard about what we should do today.  Possible options were visit the Grand Palace Temple complex, or a river cruise on the Chao Phraya River, but in the end plumped for Lumphini Park – and I’m very glad we did!

The walk there took us through a road lined with murals, and through another road going through a hospital.  Interestingly, the hospital building had a big portrait of the King – it looks like the last king opened this building in 2013.

Lumphini Park is a lovely city park, with high rise buildings reflecting on the water below. 

The lake is totally artificial, and there are pedalos for the full tourist experience, but I’m not going near the water.  What the heck is this lurking in the water?  The Loch Ness Monster?

Upon further investigation, these are water monitor lizards?  No, not some invention by the local water company to check the quality’s good, but rather a real living animal.  After the Komodo Dragon, this is the second largest lizard species and specifically native to Southern Asia.  

These are so named, because their heads peep out of the water and scan from side to side as they swim. 

I’ll be honest, I did think that was a crocodile lurking in the water – not the sort of thing you’d expect to see in a popular city centre park.

We looked for a restaurant / bar to stop for refreshments in the warm winter sun (strange words I know), but aside from a guy selling some home brew from a bench (which we weren’t interested in obviously) it was slim pickings.

Backup plan was back to the hotel rooftop bar (via 7-Eleven to stock up on snacks for the plane ride home).  I picked up a green tea flavoured kitkat for dad and a kinder bueno for mum.

The rooftop bar was a lovely way to close out our time in Thailand.  

The Taxi came to pick us up at 3pm and away we went headed once more for the airport.  Like every other pickup, everything was prompt and on time to the second.  Dad waved to the 7-Eleven as we left…

…then swiftly nodded off.

At the airport, everything was also pretty smooth, but there was one thing I’d been hoping to do before we hopped into the plane.

Back when I was about 3, we went to Australia, and had a short layover at Bangkok airport.  We have some camcorder footage of me on a kids climbing frame, saying “help, I can’t get down” in a really squeaky voice.  This story has gone into Hull Family legend, and I thought it would be cool to try and recreate.  So we make it  through, buy some gifts at duty free (it would be rude not to!) and are waiting in the departures lounge at the gate.  I head off and find a kids play area at gate S107 – it consisted of nothing more than a few miniature rocky seesaws.  Anyway, by the time we had made it back to the gate, we were ready for boarding.  

The flight was smooth, and was roughly 7 hours to Hamad International Airport in Doha, Qatar.  HIA has been recently voted top airport in the world, and everything is super modern and clean.  It only opened in 2014, so has recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, there are a few displays marking this around the concourse.  

The centre of the main terminal has a statue of a large teddy bear with its head stuck in a lamp.  It’s bizarre but certainly iconic!

They’re even selling miniature stuffed replicas in the gift shop!  Sure why not?  

At one end of the airport is an area known as ‘The Orchard’.  No apples grown here, so County Armagh need not worry, but it’s like an enchanted indoor garden, looking straight outta Narnia – except with a big glass roof over the top!

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t particularly hungry, (and we were due to eat on the flight) but when you walk past a Greek restaurant, you never know how long it’ll be before you see another one, so I unashamedly got Gyros and Tzatziki to go, then waited half an hour to get on the plane, and wolfed it down before anyone could tell me not to!

It doesn’t look great, but let me tell you that was one good meal.  Just regret not going for the Greek salad with it.  Was missing  bitta feta!

There were some pretty class views flying in and out of Doha.  It’s not a place I’ve ever considered visiting, and I know they’ve spent a lot of money to whitewash what goes on here, but maybe one day I’ll make it back and properly look round the place.

The second leg was around 9 hours, and for the first time on this entire trip, the time dragged in so bad.  I always have trouble getting to sleep in the air, and there’s only so many episodes of The Office one can watch!

Eventually we arrived back into Dublin and sleep deprived, wondered if the last 2 and a half weeks had been one big long dream.  But it was real, and the memories will last a lifetime.

Thanks all for following along.  Who knows where I’ll be next year, but might do this again if anyone’s interested!