Bangkok, the hub of South East Asia

As I embarked on my nine hour flight from Melbourne to Bangkok, I kept visualizing Bangkok, the Bangkok from popular culture and the mass media. It's not entirely unusual to draw early conclusions based on what one has heard of a city before travelling there.

Hence, in my mind, the words that kept on cropping my mind were: massage, nice beaches, friendly people and shopping. Our plane touched down at precisely 5:40am on a Sunday morning, right on schedule.