Bangkok, my favourite city in the world!!!

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Hello there. So last time I blogged we had just got to Bangkok on the train from Chang Mai. We have been here 9 nights now and have done soooo much so hopefully I can remember it all! Ofcourse the first night here we just had to have a night out on Khaosan road. Khaosan road is simply the best party ever (so far anyway) and it's on everynight! It's got the carnival atmosphere all the time, in the day with the market stalls selling mostly funny clothes, the knock off music places booming out hits, all the street food ladies selling Pad Thai, the tuk tuk drivers always asking where you want to go etc etc. And in the night time its all neon lights, Bucket bars (where you get a bucket of drink literally, of whiskey coke and redbull!) on the side of the road, bars and clubs booming out music, often this guy doing these amazing footy tricks on the street, it amazing! We met a girl here on our stop off in Bangkok back in September that worked at one of the bucket bars on the side of the road and so it was really cool to be walking down and her recognising us. Her name is Jam, she's the coolest girl ever! She's the ultimate party girl, she literally goes to Uni in the day, then works at the bucket bar, after she's done her shift she goes out on the town...everynight, she crazy but awesome. So we saw her everytime we went out and had a few really good nights with her, got a picture of me with her so I'll get that on here. We had about 3 good nights out on Khaosan road, there are some great places to go and everytime you go out you meat some really cool people from all over the world. Most of the bars close around 2am then you go to one of the clubs around which are open till dawn, one never actually closes...really they never do! So we had some great nights there, one where Jay and I had a dance off with a bunch of Thai students in this club, they got served ha! Also we had a night out with Clark and Megan and a couple of their friends who were there from New Zealand so that was really good. Other than Khaosan road we also had a night in Patpong, now Patpong can be pretty scummy but it can also be rather fun! There are the go go bars which are rather fun! We went into this one where we knew they were lady boys for a laugh, it was freakin hilarious, but the disturbing thing was there were quite a few guys there that were there for other reasons...yeeeeew! And yes we did go to a Ping pong show (sorry mum) but it wasn't as seedy as a lot of people think, atleast the one we went to anyway. I mean there were couples there, and it really was just funny and I think you gotta do it when you're in Bangkok, come on! So thats was our nights out anyway which are amazing in Bangkok but there are loads of other things to do too!

One thing we really wanted to do was go to a Muay Thai fight and we knew the place to do it was Bangkok so we checked out some things and got a tuk tuk to the stadium where it was. It was pretty expensive, 1000 baht which is almost 20 pounds, but it was well worth it. The fights were great and the crowd below us all frantically betting and cheering every kick, knee and hit, gave the place an amazing atmosphere. There were also a few guys with something like 20 odd mobiles stuck to a board and they were talking into them, we assumed he was relaying or taking bets, it was incredible! We watched about 5 fights that were all really good, saw a couple knock outs as well. I've got a good video of one fight so hopefully get that on here. The only down side was that me and Jay started betting beers on some fights, just at random really, but I lost every single one and owed him 3 beers! The Muay Thai experience was really cool.

Another day we dedicated the day to seeing all the important temples around the city, we didn't want to go on any tours so we just took a map and went on our way. The 'Grand Palace' which is the main thing so see really as it houses the King sometimes, several temples and also the famous Emerald Buddha (which I was a tad dissaponted to find out it wasn't actually made of emerald!). Here you have to wear long sleeves and long trousers. We were told before by Clark and Megan that you can just wear shorts and a t-shirt there but you rent out long sleaves and trousers at the temple for free so thats what we did. It's good they told us that though because outside the Grand Palace there are these guys trying their luck selling clothes to wear inside the temple, swearing on their lives that they won't let us in unless we pay for their clothes to wear haha! Anyway once we got in it was incredible, the temples were like nothing we've seen before. Like I've said before you can really get 'templed out' in Asia but these were amazing and different so it was really cool. Some of the architecture and wall art were really special. It took a really long time to see everything but the highlight for me was the Emerald Buddha. It is housed in a smallish temple where you cannot take pictures and you have to be silent. I expected the Buddha to be really big but infact it was really small and on a massive gold plated throne. It has different costumes it get's put on it everytime the season changes (wet, hot, and cold season) and that get's done by the King. There was a really special atmosphere in that place, I sat there for ages. Next we went to the building the King resides in which was nice and then to a Museum of the Emerald Buddha. After this it was time to go to the famous relcinding Buddha which is 46 meters long. It was amazing to see in real life but really hard to take a good pictures of because of all the pllars around it and the small building it's in compares to the size of the Buddha. After the reclining Buddha we took the River taxi across the river to the Khmer temple which is in the same mould as the Cambodian ones. It was great and fun to scale up to the top of it and see the views of Bangkok from up there. After this we went down and had some lunch and we had a coke in a bag...yes a coke in a plastic bag. It saves them money and they charge you less than if you take the bottle plus it's kind of fun. So after this there was only one temple we wanted to go to, the Lingam Shrine which is a shrine where there are loads of wooden and concrete penis' where woman pray when they want to get pregnant...ofcourse we just wanted some cheap laughs really ha!

So to get there we got on the river taxi down the river to the Skytrain station. The river taxi is great to get around, its only 14 baht so go anywhere along the river and a good way to see things along the way. So we got off the river taxi and up to the sky train and we bought a day pass for the sky train. We got the Sky train to the Lingam Shrine and took some pics and off we went back to the skytain as we had the rest of the day to go on the sky train to explore. We went to a station called National Stadium because we knew Thailand were playing in a semi final against Indonesia soon and wanted to know if it was there. We met some lads playing Sepak Takraw which is this great game where you kind of play volleyball with your feet and other footy skills with a light rattan ball. We tried it and asked them about the Thailand game, they said it was somewhere else a bit out of town so we were abit dissapointed but it was great playing Sepak Takraw with them. Next we went off the Patpong night market in search of Thailand football kits. We found some really good ones which we bought a few days later for 250 baht so not even 5 pounds, their great. So that concluded our day of sight seeing, it was really great but also very tiring.

Another afternoon we went to China town which was quite hard to find as the Taxi driver dropped us off somewhere and said the way to walk but it ended up being total crap! But we found our way through crowded markets and went through little India too. In the market onthe way I took a pic of the fattest dog ever! I think it must just live in the market and get fed by everyone ha. When we finally got to China town, we went on a tasting frenzy. We had been there briefly before and there was so much interesting and really nice smelling food about that we had decided to come back and sample a bunch of it. Some of it I still don't know what it was so can't really tell you but we had some great stuff including these delicious deep fried crab rolls, some fish thingies that were really good but also this horrible chewy pork but I guess we were bound to try something nasty. But best of all was this doughy kind of big dumpling with what we think had a chinese style BBQ pork filling, it was amazing and really hope to see them again China town was really hectic and great. We got the river taxi back and met up with Clark and Megan for dinner because they were off to Japan the next morning, definately will miss them, they're really good fun and some of my favourite people we've met all trip.

The only other thing left to do was the floating market which after seeing it on TV at home was one of the things I most wanted to see whilst travelling. We read that it could get really touristy throughout the day so we decided to get a bus to the town it is in, which is a 2 hour bus ride, and stay there for the night and then go to the floatinf market at 7am. Earlier that day though we got the sky train to Chatuchak weekend market which is one of the biggest markets in the world. Although it was huge it was a bit of a let down really, it was soooo touristy and instead of crazy things being sold like snakes and chickens it was more clothes and souviners for tourists, oh well. The night we were in Damnoen Saduak which is where the floating market is, we went about searching for a TV to watch the 2nd leg of the semi final between Thailand and Indonesia, thank god we did because it a proper ghost town! We watched it with our newly aquired Thaialnd kits on with a couple guys that work at our hotel, we won 3-1 get in! So we woke up bright and early for the floating market and after we negotiated out price for the boat to take us around we got in and off we went. There were boats with motors and boats with just a guy rowing, we were glad we were in a non motor boat as it was really peaceful. We got into the main bit of the floating market and already I was really glad we stayed the night and came early as there wasn't a white person with a camera in sight. The market was amazing, it's a maze of water ways with people (mostly older women) in boats or in the side of the water selling a variation of things from Buddha's to noodle soup, from coconut drinks to fruit and vegetables for locals and tourists alike. When were were feeling hungry we asked our driver guy if there were any noodle soup boats around, he took us to this great one. We had it served to us floated backwards a bit and when we were finished we floated back to give back our bowls and pay, it was a cool experience. After more of going through the floating market we stopped for about 20 minutes and we got this snack that was like a wrap full of coconut, cream and something that sounds like duck egg or nutmeg...anyway it was sooo good! We got back into the boat and back to the start. It's hard to descibe the floating market it's so different from anything else but hopefully my pictures will fill you in better.

So we got on the bus back to Bangkok and luckily met some Chinese-Thai girls that told us when to get off, and we checked back in at our hotel for one more night. We watched all the great footy last night, including Man Utd winning the Club world championship...yes, and here I am now writing the blog. Tonight we get on the overnight bus to Surat Thani and then in the morning get the boat to Ko Phangan where we'll be for xmas and new years. It doesn't feel anything like xmas here though which I'm quite happy about because I think if it did I'd be missing home a lot more!

So Bangkok has been incredible, definately the best city I've ever been to. It has everything from amazing culture to incredible partying and everything inbetween. I am ready to leave now as all the hecticness can get get to you sometimes but I know in a day or two I will really miss it and I really hope I will come back...maybe on the way back to England...who knows! Anyway the next time I'll do a blog will be in the new year so have a good xmas and new years. Speak soon x

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