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Published: November 28th 2009
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As christmassy as Bangkok gets We needed to go back to Bangkok before heading north, so thought we’d stop in Bangkok again on the way and get some culture down us. This of course led us to spending the first day back undertaking every woman’s favourite pastime - shopping. Before you can head from Koh San Road to the commercial district you have to deal with bartering with tuk-tuk drivers and taxi drivers, all intent on prising as much money out of your wallet at possible. Every tuk-tuk driver (and I do mean every single one of them) would only take us if we made a stop at a tailor or gem store on the way - so that they can try and pressure you into buying cheap tat for high prices. Being the street-savvy kind of people that we are (yeah, right) we’ve managed to avoid this ... so far.
Bangkok is home to the MBK centre, an absolutely massive centre crammed full of hundreds of stalls selling everything you could imagine - and lots of things you wouldn’t imagine. But after shopping for hours without actually buying anything we headed to an area called Sukhumvit for dinner at a restaurant called Cabbage &
Condoms that’s recommended in the Lonely Planet, by one of Cate’s friends, and (perhaps most importantly, Louis Theroux went there when in Bangkok).
Given the budget nature of our existence thus far, the prices were steep, but we’d been very good all day so it was a well deserved reward. After walking down a dark back-street for a few hundred yards we were beginning to wonder if the restaurant was going to be a bit dodgy, but when we arrived it was pretty beautiful, lots of fairy lights and condoms (an intriguing ensemble). Tasty food, live Thai music, comedy photo opportunities with Captain Condom: happy Matt & Cate.
After getting another 400 baht night’s sleep under our belts, we headed out the next day to see some wats - wat is Thai for temple. We’d read in the guidebooks about the people trying to scam you outside temples; claiming it was a special Thai holiday and the temple was closed to foreigners, but let me take you on my tuk-tuk to this other temple that’s free today, oh and on the way lets stop at a tailor/gem store etc. However, after experiencing it on our way to Wat
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Matt and a couple of characters Pho we found the attempts (at the beginning) worryingly convincing and ultimately highly frustrating. First off, we were walking the 20 minute walk to Wat Pho because once again all the tuk-tuk drivers wanted to take us via tailors and gem stores ... then on the way (bear in mind we’re still a good ten minutes away from Wat Pho) a friendly chap comes up to us and starts talking to us as we walk along, tells us he’s in Bangkok from Phuket to show his respects to the King, who’s ill at the moment (the Thai’s absolutely LOVE their royal family), asks us where we’re from, where we’ve been in Thailand - all the usual chit-chat - before telling us that we won’t be able to get into Wat Pho as i’m wearing flip-flops and shorts. Well, we were half way there so decided to chance our arm anyway, said goodbye and went on. Then 200 metres down the road, another guy starts talking to us, same chit-chat as before, suggesting that as we wouldn’t get into Wat Pho, it would be a good idea for us to go and see some sitting Buddha somewhere, an emerald Buddha somewhere
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Cate's mate Terrance else, oh, and a tourist office where we could buy our tickets to northern Thailand for the next day. Well, how lucky were we?! What a nice helpful man. He even happened to have a tuk-tuk that he could use to take us to these places. I guess it must’ve been our lucky day. Oh, except he was talking complete garbage, and probably would’ve driven us around a few gem stores first before ultimately charging us a lot of money for tuk-tukking us around sights that we didn’t really want to see. So we took our guidebook back off him and sauntered off towards Wat Pho, a little bit miffed and very hot and bothered. Just as we reached the corner of the street near Wat Pho, a man, apparently dressed in uniform comes out of what is apparently a tourist information stand and gives us the same spiel about the fact that we won’t be able to get into Wat Pho as we weren’t dressed appropriately. This is the point where if we’re being honest we nearly threw in the towel, but after walking 20 minutes in the baking heat i’d be buggered if I was going to turn
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In no way mocking the main religion of this country. We took this photo very quickly. back without at least trying to get in, so we walked up to the gates and walked in ... and low and behold the place was crawling with tourists in flip-flops and shorts ... blooming scammers!
I’ve got to have a little rant here too. Thailand is known as the land of smiles and on the whole, it seems to be true -everyone gives you lovely smiles. That is of course when they want something from you. As soon as you say ‘no thankyou’ or go to walk away, they immediately hate you and are really grumpy! The scammers really annoyed me on the way to Wat Pho. I can honestly say that I thought that if that was what Thailand was all about, then actually, I didn’t really like it. But I guess they are only trying to drum up business for themselves. Tuk Tuk divers really are a nuisance in Bangkok though. The whole scamming thing makes you really cynical when someone offers some advice as you immediately think they must have some ulterior motive. We are trying hard to find a balance between being polite to people, being sensible and listening out for clues that Broccoli pie?!
Who needs apple pie when you can have this? they are trying to scam us, and listening to and accepting advice people when it will genuinely be helpful to us! It’s a bit of a mission to get it right all of the time!
Wat Pho was worth making the effort though, stunning buildings, beautiful sculptures and a 45m, golden reclining Buddha. Cate also made mates with a group of Thai school girls who insisted on having their picture taken with the funny pale people (us), and it gave Cate a chance to use her teacher voice that she hasn’t had the chance to use for nearly two weeks “delicious, yes, well done”.
Actually they came up to me, said hello and shoved an exercise book under my nose. In broken English, they had written a question - did I have 5 mins to spare for an interview? Of course I said yes and quickly they flipped the page to a short list of written questions. Their English wasn’t very good and my Thai is practically non-existent so it was fun trying to work out exactly what they wanted and when one kid came out with ‘delicious’, I thought that was a really good ambitious word, so yes my teacher voice did come out and was unfortunately captured on film. To try and avoid the tuk-tuk scammers we took the river taxi on the way back, with a driver/sailor/captain who if his driving/sailing skills are anything to go by must’ve spent a lot of time recently playing Mario Kart and watching rallying.
After one last night drinking in the area around Koh-San Road (fruit shakes, my first beer-less day) we’d definitely had our fill of Bangkok and we’re looking forward to heading north, with our first two stops being Ayutthaya and Lopburi (temples and monkeys respectively, i’m sure you can guess which one my wife is looking forward to more!).
Matt and Cate x
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Siobhan
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Sounds like your having a fab time, keep the blog up its really funny missing you both loads xxxx