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Published: November 24th 2009
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Cate
Ready for the off Hello everybody, and sawadee from Thailand!!! Apologies for the delay in getting some blog-action on the go, it’s actually a lot harder than we expected to get some down time to do little admin jobs like sort out blogs/laundry/money etc as there’s so much to do all of the time!
So we arrived safe and sound with a few minor transport hiccups along the way, unexpectedly though all the problems were in England rather than Thailand ... as our train from Birmingham to London came to a grinding halt at Watford Junction
and we learnt that there had not only been a fatality on the line, but it was also being treated as a crime scene, thus all trains had stopped. Did we have a plane to catch? Yes. So without losing our cool, we took a taxi to the nearest tube station and managed to make our way to Heathrow from there without much trouble. Just a little thankyou to TfL Transport Guru Birtill for helping aid our journey from crime-scene central to Heathrow - all those years of public transport geekery finally paid off eh?
We breezed through check-in at Heathrow, mooched around the terminal for a
Matt
Also ready. while and before we knew it we were being shepherded onto the plane for 11 hours of films, music, food and snoring. I managed mostly films out of those options, Cate concentrated on the snoring.
We both know Matt is the snorer, so i’ll ignore that comment.
When we arrived in Bangkok, it was about 5pm local time, (10am GMT). We had to walk past a camera checking us for Swine Flu, were checked by immigration and then collected our bags. Thankfully they had made it to Thailand too. The taxi proved to be an ‘interesting’ ride in a red, old sports type of car with no seat belts or indicator action, along many many freeways.
We had reserved accommodation for our first night in Bangkok at Happy house Guest House so we made our way there from the taxi drop off. The small sois (lanes, a bit like the Shambles in York) were very busy with lots of tourists walking up and down, tuk-tuk drivers asking us where we were going to, girls in small groups sitting with bare feet outside their shops calling out “massaaaaaaaage” and men trying to pull us into their suit shops, “I’ll make something for you”. We took it in our stride and checked in, allowing us to experience our first sight of £12 a night Bangkok guesthouse rooms. Ben, I can recommend it for your trip in February (we’ve found some cheaper places since, but this one’s the nicest, bargain for 580 baht!)
After getting sorted we sauntered around soi Rambuttri and Koh San Road, Bangkok is so much fun ... similar enough to home to feel comfortable, but different enough to be an assault on the senses. We sat down at a bar on Koh San Road for our first beer (i’ve so far managed to keep up a daily diet of at least one beer a day, tough life) as it was on Koh San it was quite expensive but still only 90 baht for a 640ml bottle of beer. Something told me I was going to like this country. It wasn’t till after we’d had our second drink we noticed that the beer here is 6.4%!s(MISSING)trong ... that went part of the way to explaining how/why we were both spannered after two drinks (Cate was even considering taking up one of the constant offers of tuk tuk
Cheeky monkey
Some character that we picked up along the way drivers taking us to see a ping pong show - Mum/Dad/Mike/Col, don’t ask what a ping pong show is!)
At least I have to be drunk to consider this, unlike Matt who would take that option in an instant, any time of the day or night, drunk or sober.
Something that really amused me that night (less so in the sober light of day) was that a young child, maybe 8 years old came around trying to sell roses to us, completely alone, first requesting “Buy flower?” then going into some sort of spiel, then retorting to pretty much demanding us to buy flowers from him and putting an incredibly grumpy, sulky face, before turning his back on us and leaving us alone! We have seen the flower boy around the Koh San Road since but haven’t had the pleasure of his company again.
I struggled to sleep that night, not wanting to sit/lie on the bedsheets that were in the hostel without having my bright pink silk sleeping bag liner in between me and the bed sheets and having had my first experience of Thai red bull. I woke in the middle of the night and felt P1000149
He followed us onto the plane too like it was the daytime (still my body adjusting to the time difference I think) but felt refreshed enough the next day. Thankfully, I have overcome my fear of strange bed sheets and now plonk myself down when I reach a guest house to rest after carrying that heavy lump of a rucksack around.
This has turned into somewhat of an essay, so to cut a long story short we spent the next day doing pretty much the same thing - wandering around our local area eating,
(we had a nice cheap Thai lunch in a bar/restaurant and then went straight in for the even cheaper street food in the evening - yes I know, Matt will eat anything but it’s quite an achievement for me to eat from these places and to be constantly eating rice and noodles - I am somewhat surprising both myself and Matt...I miss spuds a bit but am coping very well and I think Matt misses bread but it’s all good!) drinking and taking everything in, culminating in getting a fish foot massage where you dip feet into a pool of water filled with these little fish that gently nibble away at you,
Toilet
Title says it all really. At least it's not a squatter! ticklish at first but actually felt quite nice! We then decided that we’d head to Kanchanaburi on our third day (Saturday) to visit a few bits and bobs to the west of Bangkok. More of that to follow in the next blog i’m sure.
Hope you're all well,
Matt &
Cate x
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