Bangkok

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Well we wanted different. Growing tired of beautiful city after beautiful city in Europe we were dying for a change. Something exciting. Something unlike home, unlike Europe. Well, we found it.

We arrived to the Narai Hotel on Silom Road thanks to our sponsor Blair Leslie. He had arranged a pick up from the airport and 4 nights in a good hotel. Unfortunately when we arrived at the airport, our pick up was no where to be seen. We searched everywhere for my name on a card and found nothing. We ended up on the other side of arrivals at an information stand who contacted the guy via radio. He arrived confused, saying he had been waiting for us where we should have been. I wasn't in the mood to argue with him so we followed him to our car. Though it wasn't really a car. It was a pimped out van with leather seats, fridge, a thousand speakers and whatever else you can fit in. We made it to our hotel alive, no thanks to the driver, who seemed to think he was in a rally car, not a van with two passengers in the back.

After a flight and a hectic drive there's nothing better than someone else taking your luggage for you and getting into your hotel room with air con and hot water. Backpacking had never been so easy. With the thought of not paying for accommodation for 4 whole nights we felt obliged to live it up. We went out for dinner and spontaneously got a foot massage on the way home. Not only that, but when we arrived to our hotel, we were greeted by a baby elephant and its mahooks offering us to buy a bag of something to feed it for 100 baht. We took the offer and the elephant, chained around the ankle, quickly scoffed our bag. We got a photo, being weary of our camera's and headed inside to relax.

Cable TV is great, especially after not watching TV for three months. We spent a lot of time just watching BBC, CNN, the movie channel and the Australia Network. Yeah they have The Australia Network, which is great. Totally Wild, Maclouds Daughters and a bunch of tourism based shows. We felt it our duty to spend as much time in the hotel as possible. This soon proved to be a wise decision.

One of our favourite places to go was the shopping malls, which we could get to by the Sky Train. On our second adventure we came across a rally outside one of the malls, though it wasn't part of the riots that had been on TV the night before. It was just a small rally. When we passed I pretended to be a photographer and got a couple of shots of the action. Once your inside the shopping malls a huge relief comes over you. It's called air conditioning. It's the main attraction inside the malls. The clothes are much the same price once you convert it and to get a deal you have to go to the dirt malls without air con. Kell wasn't impressed because the only way to get to the dirt malls was to walk the overcrowded, humid streets for twenty minutes and arrive to an overcrowded mall without air con. Though it was more a flea market than a mall.

Hence the hotel was looking good. Though we had to get a few things done first. Whilst in Bangkok we had to get our Vietnamese Visa. We found directions to the embassy and they had said that a lot of people walk right passed, so be on the lookout. We thought to ourselves, 'what idiots, how do you miss an embassy'. We soon understood though when we overshot the embassy by a hundred metres or so. Oh well, like the website said. It is poorly signed. When we got to the counter I somehow managed to get on the bad side of the clerk. She wanted to know if I wanted it done express (meaning paying a rather nasty fee), or leave it for the normal week or so. Originally I had thought I would just do it express but when I found out how much extra it was I started to wonder weather we could do it the slow way. What ensued was me changing my mind, twice, and her losing her temper and yelling at me. So for the rest of our time in Bangkok we were fretting about our Visa's.

After four days seeing not much of Bangkok we decided we absolutely must go and see the Royal Palace. Our options of getting there were taxi, tuk-tuk, motorbike taxi, walking, or ferry. We had decided to do a loop and get there by road and come home by ferry. The taxi drivers outside our hotel hung around there all day and we thought they must just wait for one stupid tourist to pay way too much for their ride and that's it for the day. We weren't going to fall for that one, so I somehow convinced Kell that a tuk-tuk would be fun, and hey, this is Thailand, we have to go in one at least once.

We knew all the stories of the tuk-tuk scams. Giving you a 'cheap cheap' ride and dropping you at a dodgey tailor or jeweler, so we weren't going to fall for that one either. We also knew that Silom Road is a hang out for all the mega dodgey tuk-tuk drivers so we walked for five or ten minutes away from Silom before negotiating with a tuk-tuk. The guy tried the usual scam and he wasn't happy with us not playing along. We ended up settling on 150 Baht for us to get to the Palace. Of course this is way to much but we didn't really know how else to go about it. Thinking if we make it there for the equivalent of seven bucks we're doing alright. During the hair raising ride through the streets of Bangkok the driver got increasingly agitated and was still trying to negotiate to either take us to his little pit stop or for us to pay more. I stood my ground for a while until Kell reasoned with me that if we are getting there for ten bucks thats still fine. So I offered the guy 200 Baht to calm him down. It kinda worked. He didn't say anything more but his driving was still erratic. We soon realised that it doesn't matter what side of the road you drive on, hell the footpath is free game also. I knew the basic direction we were heading and the driver didn't deviate so I saw this as a good sign. But when he pulled over prematurely I was a little confused. He pointed to a Wat and told us that this was the Royal Palace. That seemed fine for Kell and personally I was happy to be getting the hell out of that thing. I had a feeling that we weren't where we were meant to be. But from the direction and distance I knew we couldn't be far.

It took us all of three seconds to realise that we definitely were not at the Royal Palace. We were happy to have a look at whatever Wat we were at though. We got the map out and got our bearings, and as we were doing so a man approached us. At first we were suspicious but it turned out this guy was a teacher down the road and it just so happened to be a Buddhist holiday, so we couldn't go into that Wat, but he had a whole list of things that we could go and see. It didn't take us long to click. He was circling all the sites on our map and it just so happened he knew a tuk-tuk driver that could take us to all of them for 20 Baht. 'You like Thai Boxing?' Ahhh not really. He went on and on but we kept trying to tell him we just wanted to go to the Royal Palace and there was no way in hell that we were getting in another tuk-tuk. Enraged, our "Teacher" friend called us idiots, 'You buffalo, you stupid'. 'You, buffalo', he kept yelling as we slowly edged away from him. Wow, Asia is scary, we thought to ourselves, then each other. We knew the way to the Palace and walked some sketchy sketchy streets to get there. They probably weren't that sketchy, but to us they were.

Of course when we got there we found out that it actually was a Buddhist holiday. So the Palace was closed and then it started to rain. 'Man, why did we want to leave Europe again? I forget'. We got on the ferry, which is similar to the ferry's in Venice that cost 7 Euro a turn. The difference being the ones in Bangkok are older, faster and cost fifty cents. It was apparent that we should have used the ferry from the start. But hey, we wouldn't have such a wonderful story if we did.

That afternoon we had to go and collect our Visa's. We did so by the very fast and very reliable Sky Train. We nervously waited in the line for our Visa and were pleasantly surprised. No problem at all. We took our passports and headed back to the Narai.

It seemed to be just the right time to be in Bangkok. There was the excitement with the riots and the anti government protests, and Silom Road was converted into a parade for the Vegetarian Festival that night. People lined the streets and I went into my photographer mode and took in the atmosphere. One guy asked if I worked for a Newspaper. I should have, but I didn't have the heart to lie to him. The parade was great. The difference between it and say a parade in Sydney is the rules. There are none. People were jumping over barbed wire, myself included, all trying to get closer to the action. Some guys that were apparently in a trance walked down the street throwing some sort of dust all over the Thais who took it as a great great sign. Some of them were hysteric, like it was Jesus himself. The men in the trance had small skewer like swords pierced through their cheeks. Quite a sight. I noticed a few select people standing on the back of a truck. They seemed to have a great view and I told Kell I should get up there. Neither of us thought I'd be particularly welcome but sure enough i was helped up with smiles and all, so I took a few photos and basked in the slightly less humid air. It seemed anything goes. I went out again once the parade had finished and witnessed hundreds if not thousands of coconuts getting smashed onto the ground. Who knows why but everyone seemed to enjoy it immensely. Once they were all smashed, the broom people showed us what they were made of and swept the broken shells to the side. This meant there was room for more smashing. So away they went, again.

I saw a few people being possessed or something. Horrific screams would come from one person and everyone would crowd around watching them look freaky. Everyone seemed to love this also, the possessed person would then fall back into someones arms and regaining consciousness and awake disoriented but happy. It was after midnight now so i headed back to the room. The next night we would take the train to Chiang Mai.

This time we spoke to the Hotel Staff about how trustworthy the cab drivers were out the front of the hotel. The concierge showed me to one of them and said he was fine. So he would take us later that day to the station. We passed him a few times that day as we walked in and out of the hotel. He didn't seem to do much which had me concerned. But I trusted the concierge. The time came and we were on our way to the station. He did the old cabbie trick of taking the wrong street accidentally and having to back track. Load of crap but I let him have it. We got to the station and he claimed he had no change (looking for a tip). I felt sorry for him because i was actually going to give him a tip if he had change but since he said he didn't Kell and I had to scrounge through our coins and look for the right change. Turned out we had the exact amount to the Baht. Nothing more, nothing less. Poor guy, next time he'll have change.

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Photos

Dusty People
They love this dust, I donno what exactly it is.