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Published: March 23rd 2009
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One Night in Bangkok…is too many!
We have said goodbye to Cambodia and are in Thailand relaxing at Pattaya on the coast. We were very sad to leave Cambodia but really hope that we will be back there in the not too distant future.
We managed to get through our first border crossing from Cambodia to Thailand at Poipet, also apparently known as the ‘arm pit’ of Asia. We got a lift to the border with Seng and his wife, the eight of us in a hatch back. Nice and cosy, but a good trip and we were so lucky to have Seng to drive us and assist us at the border. I was looking forward to this crossing thinking that it would make us fully fledged, ridgy-didge travellers. We did do it but had a little help from Seng which might be considered cheating?
Not sure about the armpit analogy but we were certainly not inspired to spend much time there. All of our luggage (and the children intermittently) were taken over the border by a young guy pulling a huge wooden cart held together by bits of string in the heat and the dust. It makes
a hard day at the office in Oz look like a holiday. There is a no-mans land in between the borders which has a few casinos, none which looked like the country club although one was called the Crown Casino (those damn Packers are everywhere).
We were met at the Thai border by a friend of Seng and his wife, “Auntie Nood” in a very flash van and were taken to Bangkok via the scenic route to visit the beach near Rayong. The scenic route was beautiful but did mean that the trip from Battembang to Bangkok, (usually about six hours) took thirteen hours with a twenty minute stop at the beach!
We got to Bangkok at 9.30pm after almost an hour of driving around the centre of the city while our driver tried to work out how to get into the road to the hotel, only to find that the hotel had no rooms! The kids and women waited on the cases outside the hotel while the men folk went hunting for another hotel. Grace’s major concern was that it looked like we had been kicked out of the hotel!
We woke to find ourselves in
the heart of the wholesale area of Bangkok, a great big melting pot of cultures all coming in to buy clothes and goods to package and take back with them to their own countries. If ever you need a hotel in a wholesale district they will have a packing room and a lift with in built scales that buzz when the load is too heavy to prevent you taking kilos of goods to your room. Mitchy got in with four very voluptuous African women and set the lift buzzer off! He felt very disheartened when he was the one who had to get out! Generally the hotel would be great for someone who had just finished a prison term but we managed to survive three days there. It was called the DD House, not sure what this stood for but you could put together any of the following: dindgy, drab, dirty, dreary, dodgy, and the list could go on!
We spent some time wandering the wholesale markets and shops some of which would be great if you were after 10, 20 or 100 of each item. We imagine that you would need to have your wits about you when
shopping here as prices do seem to vary, sometimes within seconds!
I was treated to a brand new bright pink, waterproof, drop proof Olympus camera which was a lovely surprise especially as I dropped our camera in Siem Reap very nearly rendering it unusable!
We managed to take in a couple of Bangkok’s Shopping Centre’s using the sky train (although taxi is really the cheaper option if you have a bit of time on your hands) but this will probably be more enjoyable, if not a lot more expensive with the kids in a few more years. Our highlight was visiting Lumphini Park and we went twice. The park is central, huge and lovely and the playground is great but the highlight was definitely a paddle around the lake on a paddle boat. We saw huge monitor lizards just swimming around the lake edges and fed fish (mostly lots of fabulously ugly cat fish) over the side of the paddle boats. Not all of the bread went over side and we aren’t sure if the bit that Mac ate was the reason he spent the next day with a tummy bug just in time for our trip to the
beach.
We also took on the street food stalls in Bangkok and had some great food which makes us more confident about doing this in the future and more wary of eating old bread!
We went for a night visit to the tallest building in Thailand, The Sky Hotel just a couple of blocks from our hotel, you do get an amazing view over the city although it is an inside observatory and the price is fairly steep.
We are all for having the authentic travel experience as far as possible but after experiencing the authentic side of the wholesale district we have escaped for a few days to the Mecure in Pattaya. As Pattaya is known for go-go bars (I’m not even sure what this is), girls bars, boys bars and ‘walking street’ we are not really looking for the authentic experience here. The hotel is great with a fabulous pool (they are all saltwater on our trip so far), lovely staff and a kids corner in our room complete with play station! We have ventured out of the hotel to the supermarket, a quick trip to the beach and out for lunch.
The trip
out for lunch involved a walk through town to catch our shuttle bus back to the hotel. Using the beach as our landmark we turned down a street from our restaurant realizing soon after that this was perhaps not the best street for a family wander! Children generally oblivious (luckily) and on return to the hotel we realized that this is the street in Pattaya! The Lonely Planet did warn that parents should be prepared for awkward questions but we didn’t realize that this would be the case in the middle of the day! We realized that it was time to leave Pattaya when Grace could spot those with ‘gender identity issues’ before us!
So, it is off to the River Kwai at Kanchanaburi tomorrow (it is the site of a railway built by Allied Force POW’s in WW2, I had never heard of this but will stop admitting this as people say ‘hmmm, really?’). We are looking forward to this next part of the trip and learning some more about the history of Thailand.
Love to all from the Mitchells and a huge thank you to those of you who send the occasional email, we all love hearing
from you!!
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