Sunday was a free day. First appointment with the dentist is 1000 Monday.
So we go for a look around.
This hotel is attached to Central World, the largest shopping centre in Bangkok. It's a bit of a process to find, but we made it. Down to the foyer of the hotel, which is on the 23rd floor, then through the doors to the Convention Centre, then down the lift to the 7th floor, out into the carpark and the entrance is right there. A little convoluted, but I guess it'll have to do.
I don't know if I mentioned, but Sarah's mum is with us again. She comes to BKK for her medical checkups, so booked herself one, seeing we would be here. She got herself sorted out on Saturday, before we got here, so she has the week free.
The ladies were talking about the number of lifts here. There was the bank of lifts from the ground floor up to the reception floor. Then there were the bank of lifts up to the rooms. Then there were the lifts on the convention centre side of the door, which seem to service just the many floors of carparks.
I tried to explain the way lifts work in big buildings. I was told about this when we visited the Empire State building in New York. This process was best demonstrated in the twin towers there.
There is a formula for how many lifts you need in a building. The more offices per floor, or the more floors you have, the more lifts you need.
You need enough lifts, so that people can get on and off on all floors, without waiting too long.
If you have 10 floors, you might get away with perhaps 4 lifts, so that all people can reach their floor, without waiting for more than a minute for a free lift.
However, simple mathematics dictates that doubling the number of floors perhaps triples the number of lifts required. So, if you have a building 200 floors high, then the number of lifts required would take up the entire building, without any space left for offices or people.
The designers of these buildings came up with a cunning plan; Using the above example numbers, a 10 story building requires 4 lifts, but a 20 story building requires 12 lifts, and so on. Their solution was to put 4 lifts on the bottom 10 floors, and 4 lifts on the top 10 lifts. Total 8. Each lift only needs to service 10 floors. So, if you want to go to the top floor, you take 2 lift rides. This is what happens in the Empire State Building. Go part way up, change lift and carry on up. Works a treat.
So that's enough about lift design. We went for a visit to the shopping centre. Being a circular building, the layout is a bit odd. This is not an open plan mall, it has been cut up into lots of nooks and crannies. Easy to get lost, and hard to see how big it is.
I saw something in the food court that entertained me. Fresh Ice Cream. Nothing surprising there, but by fresh they mean literally. You actually watch your ice-cream made in front of you. Not scooped out and popped into a cone, but actually made in front of you.
The 'cook' standing in front of a metal bowl with a flat bottom. Imagine watching pancakes or an omelet being built. The cook stirs, folds and scrapes the mix from the bottom as it cooks. This is like that, but the flat bottom of the bowl is freezing cold, so the 'cook' is actually making an ice cream omelet. Cool!
More entertaining, people not only want to buy this, they want to be photographed buying it. They take their own photos, but there is actually a staffmember whose job is to take a photo of you enjoying your creation. Odd!
So we go for a look around.
This hotel is attached to Central World, the largest shopping centre in Bangkok. It's a bit of a process to find, but we made it. Down to the foyer of the hotel, which is on the 23rd floor, then through the doors to the Convention Centre, then down the lift to the 7th floor, out into the carpark and the entrance is right there. A little convoluted, but I guess it'll have to do.
I don't know if I mentioned, but Sarah's mum is with us again. She comes to BKK for her medical checkups, so booked herself one, seeing we would be here. She got herself sorted out on Saturday, before we got here, so she has the week free.
The ladies were talking about the number of lifts here. There was the bank of lifts from the ground floor up to the reception floor. Then there were the bank of lifts up to the rooms. Then there were the lifts on the convention centre side of the door, which seem to service just the many floors of carparks.
I tried to explain the way lifts work in big buildings. I was told about this when we visited the Empire State building in New York. This process was best demonstrated in the twin towers there.
There is a formula for how many lifts you need in a building. The more offices per floor, or the more floors you have, the more lifts you need.
You need enough lifts, so that people can get on and off on all floors, without waiting too long.
If you have 10 floors, you might get away with perhaps 4 lifts, so that all people can reach their floor, without waiting for more than a minute for a free lift.
However, simple mathematics dictates that doubling the number of floors perhaps triples the number of lifts required. So, if you have a building 200 floors high, then the number of lifts required would take up the entire building, without any space left for offices or people.
The designers of these buildings came up with a cunning plan; Using the above example numbers, a 10 story building requires 4 lifts, but a 20 story building requires 12 lifts, and so on. Their solution was to put 4 lifts on the bottom 10 floors, and 4 lifts on the top 10 lifts. Total 8. Each lift only needs to service 10 floors. So, if you want to go to the top floor, you take 2 lift rides. This is what happens in the Empire State Building. Go part way up, change lift and carry on up. Works a treat.
So that's enough about lift design. We went for a visit to the shopping centre. Being a circular building, the layout is a bit odd. This is not an open plan mall, it has been cut up into lots of nooks and crannies. Easy to get lost, and hard to see how big it is.
I saw something in the food court that entertained me. Fresh Ice Cream. Nothing surprising there, but by fresh they mean literally. You actually watch your ice-cream made in front of you. Not scooped out and popped into a cone, but actually made in front of you.
More entertaining, people not only want to buy this, they want to be photographed buying it. They take their own photos, but there is actually a staffmember whose job is to take a photo of you enjoying your creation. Odd!
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