Bangkok

It's not often I have praise for an airline, but our Cathy pacific flight from Singapore to Bangkok was superb. Ok, I'll admit I was more than a little alarmed when the wing of our plane was the same size as the planes we usually travel on, but after a three course meal, glass of wine,a Hagen diaz and 30 different TV channels I was very content. All this on a two hour flight!

Our first introduction to Bangkok, was probably seeing bangkok at it's craziest. We arrived mid afternoon so we went on a walk to acclimatise. Unintentionally ( I swear!) we ended up on Patpong road, home to ladys or were they boys?...ah lady boys. Patpong is also home to a good night market, selling knock off versions of everything you can imagine- Ipods, watches, handbags, computer games and programmes! Haggling had obviously got to us, as on the way home we were adamant on bargaining down the tuk-tuk fare from 1.60 euro to 80 cent!

The next morning we took a river boat up to see the Grand Palace and What Pho. The Grand Palace is an amazing place.... or an incredibly gaudy place-I'm not quite sure. Every surface is covered with cut glass, bright paint or gold. Either way its pretty impressive, true to our usual form of visiting important building in scorching midday heat, we nearly melted. However at midday a really cool thing happened above the palace. A halo of light appeared above the temple. I'm assuming caused by reflections from all the glass, but it was an impressive sight. From the palace we walked to What Pho home to the 46m reclining Buddha. on route we passed a couple of markets which seemed to be more a place to reclaim your goods stolen the night before. Anyway, I've never been one for understanding the scale of things until actually seen it so I was pretty surprised to find the reclining Buddha was the size of the entire temple! We left the temple to a chorus of "hello! hello! hello!" from some very excitable school children being ushered by a poor monk trying to control them with a loud speaker!

From the temple we flagged a tuk tuk to Khao San Road, we easily could have walked but we were very cantankerous from the heat. Khao San Road is Bangkok's back packer haven. Its a completely unrealistic Bangkok experience but a lot of fun at the same time. The markets are totally geared for the backpackers needs- backpacks, guidebooks and general krusty wear. I dallied with the idea of buying a fake degree, after all Dr Merrigan has quite the ring to it, but I settled for photocopied guidebooks.

The following day we took it very easy and strolled around the shopping district of Thanon Siam. It was quite an eclectic journey from the electronic markets in the MBK to the posh Gucci, Dior brigade in the Paragon. Amazingly on the fourth floor was to home to Lamborgini and Ferrari- I've no idea how they got them up there! The boys were eager to watch The Dark Knight so we purchased tickets for the Imax in the Paragon centre. Even the cinema was a Thai experience- before the film we had to stand for the king!

After a lazy day of window shopping and cinema we had a busy day out to Kanchanaburi region, home to the river Kwai. We stopped at the war cemetery. I was an odd tourist attraction - quite the sight to see Japanese tourists doing their bright smile, peace sign poses outside a cemetery! We stopped at the JEATH museum, which housed a collection of newspaper articles and photographs depicting the building of the bridge over the river Kwai and death railway. There were some really harrowing stories. It was a simple yet poignant display. The bridge itself...well what can I say it's a bridge. The middle section which was blown up has been replaced by a square shaped structure as opposed to the original curved. We boarded the train which runs mainly for tourist purposes for about half and hour, the scenery was absolutely fantastic.

Ok I'm going to apologise in advance to our animal loving friends, as the following was not the finest example of eco-tourism. With our tour to the River Kwai we had an option to visit the Tiger temples or sit in a van for two hours... so we choose the temple. We had heard some rumours that there may be some mistreatment of the animals in the temple, but the place is run by monks so we figured - how bad can it be? I can't say for sure but something definitely was not right there. We queued up to have a photo taken with a tiger, we were kept towards the back of the tiger and the handlers seemed to be cautious. But after we had the photos taken, we spotted some of the tigers being pulled into better positions for photographs and the animals didn't seem to react at all to being pulled and prodded. They were a little too placid as if they were drugged... Definitely not a place I'd recommend visiting.

On our final day in Bangkok we rented a boat for a khlong tour through the Thornburi area- a chance to see old style Bangkok. I wanted to rescue all the children we saw splashing about in the suspiciously murky water...yuck. Our tour even included a floating market...well if you can call one woman in a boat selling Buddha statues shouting "floating market, floating market"!We stopped at a snake farm, yet another questionable tourist attraction in Thailand! The farm milks snakes to supply anti-venom to all the regional hospitals which is all well and good, but the show where a man danced in front in cobras seemed unnecessary. I'm not going to even get into the moment where they swung a snake towards us!


From Bangkok we went to Chiang Mai, I'll update as soon as I find another decent interent connection!

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