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Published: January 8th 2010
Bangkok II: Return to the Hustlers.
To all our avid readers, first of all I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year & secondly, I would like to apologise for the delay & subsequent back-log of our blogs. To keep you in the loop with where we have travelled to thus far & our epic adventures across South East Asia we have decided to list everywhere we have been so you can look forward to future blogs such as: Kanchanaburi, Sukhothai, Chiang Mai, Pai, Chiang Mai (Jungle Trek), Chiang Khong, Thailand - Laos boarder crossing & down the Mekong River, Luang Prabang, Vang Vien, Vientiane, Laos - Vietnam boarder crossing, Hanoi, Hoi An & Nah Trang. So as you can imagine, there's a lot to catch up with & much to look forward to...but for now, back to Bangkok.
Having learnt from our previous experience of staying on the Khao San Road, we wisely chose not to this time around. Instead, we chose to stay on the rather cool & certainly more chilled out Rambutri Road, which runs parallel to Khao San. We had scoped the road out on our last visit whilst on the hunt for
some decent food. The place we decided to check into was called Swadee Hotel, mainly due to the quality of the rooms, which were at the reasonable price of 550 Bhat per night. Once we had checked into our small, but clean & comfortable rooms (with Sky TV), we went down to the equally as nice restaurant & ordered & ate a rather disappointing American breakfast before using the shared bathroom facilities - getting a luke warm shower & heading back out into the Bangkok madness. Something that we didn't do in our first visit was revisit the stunning Grand Palace, so Sam, Elaine, Barry, Dean & I decided we would waste no time & started to make our way to the Palace - remembering that we had to be dressed in respectable attire, we made sure we all had on our long trousers, shirts/t-shirts & appropriate footwear.
Fed up with the tuk tuks, which were now proving to be more of a novelty than a necessity for getting around, we decided to walk to the Palace, which was no more than 15 minutes walk from where we were staying. Along the way we were followed, yelled at &
told that the Grand Palace was closed due to a national holiday, celebrating the Monks. Naturally this reliable information was served to us by a number of tuk tuk drivers, all of which were offering cheap, or even free tours around Bangkok, all in exchange for our time in a 'TAT' office, no doubt speaking to rip off merchants like our good friend Steve from Wales (ref our 2nd blog). Determined & wise to the antics of the ever pesky tuk tuk drivers, we carried on heading towards the Grand Palace before crossing paths with a rather nice & seemingly genuine chap. He advised us to ignore anyone that told us the Palace was shut, as it simply wasn't true, & their advice would often be associated with some form of scam. He also went onto recommend other sights we could visit, one of which was a long tail boat around Khlong Bangkok Yai - where we could see many temples along the route, before stopping off at Wat Arun, a beautiful mosaic temple crafted from broken ceramics discarded by Chinese merchant ships. He insisted that we should pay no more than 450 Baht per person for the boat, &
he was also good enough to recommend which pier to go from as well as how much we should pay in a tuk tuk to get there. This kind gesture filled us all with hope that there was still one decent person in Bangkok who had our interests at heart, after all he was donning an official Tourist Police t-shirt.
Happy with the advice we had received, we all decided that it would be a good alternative to seeing the Grand Palace, especially as we ideally needed a whole day to fully appreciate the Palace & it had now passed noon. So we flagged the nearest tuk tuk & crammed all 5 of us into it, confident & reassured in our ability to secure it for just 20 Baht. A short but uncomfortable while after, we arrived at our destination, the pier where we were to get the boat from. Given that there are masses of these boats tearing up & down Mae Nam Chao Phraya with just as many tourist's on board, we thought the pier was a little quiet, however were pleased when we were able to negotiate a better price than our Tourist Police friend had
recommended we pay. Happy & rather smug with the fact that we had saved ourselves an extra 50 baht each, we awkwardly boarded the boat & sat ourselves down enjoying the banter with the driver when he mumbled something about Crocodiles, which we assumed he must have meant in the water. We had paid for an hour, which included the ride around the canal & stop off at Wat Arun on the west bank of Mae Nam Chao Phraya, before being dropped off on the opposite side of the river. We sat back & started to enjoy the views of some of the temples, decaying riverside houses (some of which had definitely seen better days) & women in make-shift kayak's who were billing themselves as 'Bangkok's Floating Market', selling various bits of tat as well as over priced Chang amongst other things. Fifteen minutes in we became a little annoyed that our driver was whizzing by at full steam ahead, missing stunning photo opportunities of temples & the canal. Ten minutes later we realised why. He was rushing about to get us to some Crocodile Farm, which was obviously what he had been mumberling on about at the start of
the trip, & only after sternly insisting we did not want to see 'Crocodile Joe', or any of his Crocs, we got back underway. Not too long after, we rocked up at an Orchid Farm, & only after sternly insisting we had no interest in going into the Orchid farm did we finally get back on route & continue our tour.
The driver, now pissed that we hadn't gone to either farms, so no commission, decided he would take a nice steady pace along Khlong Bangkok Yai where we had passed all the Temples & there was nothing else to see other than the riverside houses. We finally arrived at Wat Arun, which quickly alleviated the frustrations of our pointless boat ride. We paid a 20 baht fee for getting off the boat, before being told by our driver that we had just 10 minutes to have a look around as our hour was nearly up - this was agreed with a one finger gesture.
After paying the 50 Baht entrance fee each into Wat Arun, Sam & I broke from the group & enjoyed the memories of our past visit to the marvelous temple. The intricate detail
of the mosaic made from broken porcelain made for an interesting picture, so whilst I messed about changing lenses, Sam decided to climb the steep steps up the one side of the Khmer-style praang. I then spent the next 10 minutes trying to find Sam, who had my other lense & only found her when I was at the top of the praang & she was at the bottom. After walking around the temple grounds & capturing some fantastic pictures, we met with the rest of the group & made our way to the pier at the front of the temple where we wasn't sure whether we would have a boat, as we'd easily been over 45 minutes. After 5 minutes of trying to flag the wrong boat over, we were relieved to find that our driver had indeed waited for us & so we boarded & made our way across the river to another pier. As we pulled up to the other pier, we quickly realised that it was the main one as it was heaving with tourists, getting on & off the boats. Call it curiosity, but the urge to ask a number of other long tail boat
passengers was over whelming, so we did. And only at that point did the penny drop. We had been well & truly hustled. We had walked right into an elaborate & well thought out scam; like lambs to the slaughter house. Everyone we spoke to had paid no more than 500 Baht for the boat, we had paid 400 Baht each. Then it dawned on us, the friendly & seemingly genuine chap we had earlier met had predefined the price, as well as sent us to another pier where to get the long tail boat from - the 'unofficial' pier.
The emotions that followed are probably best left unwritten, & so after 10 minutes had passed & we had calmed down, we walked through a small fish market, before walking round to Wat Po, the oldest & largest temple in Bangkok. The anger from being duped (again), soon gave way to the appreciation of the beauty & peacefulness of the temple. We walked around the temple in ore, paying visit to Thailand's largest reclining Buddha, as well as admiring the largest collection of Buddha images. The walk back to Swadee Hotel was a rewarding one too as we passed
the Grand Palace in the setting sun light, the Palace's out line was cast against the sky. After getting back Sam, Dean & I decided we would grab a taxi to go & quickly check out the MBK shopping mall as Dean was keen to buy a mobile phone & MP4 speakers & Sam & I was toying with the idea of buying a lap top (to aid us in keeping in touch & obviously up-to-date with the blog ). One of the real appealing things of going to a shopping mall such as MBK, is that you can still haggle, which is comparable to walking into a high street shop & bartering over a pair of Y front pants; for example - it's great. And after much walking around & negotiating Dean managed to bag himself the phone & the speakers. Sam & I left undecided on what lap top to buy, so we thought it best to sleep on it after enjoying some Bangkok street cuisine & a fair few Chang, but only after meeting back up with Barry & Elaine, plus it was Barry & Elaine's first time in the capital city, so what better excuse.
The following morning, around 11 o'clock, Sam & I got up, had breakfast & then headed back to where all the shopping malls were, bound for a specific mall that only specialised in electronic goods; Pantip Plaza. After about an hours walk in the sweltering Bangkok heat, we reached our destination, a massive, four storey mall full of just about every imaginable piece of electrical equipment you could think of, and perfect for getting a new lap top. We walked around the busy shopping mall, teeming with electrical gadgets of all sorts, including lat tops, & after an over whelming hour of gigga bites this, RAM that & 5 hours battery life, we decided to buy our lap top from the very first shop we enquired at - reminding me of Saturday shopping with my mom when I was a kid, 4 hours trapping around womens shops, before returning to the very first one to buy the first item of clothing she had tried on. There was no negotiating on the price, but we did get a bundle of free stuff & the lap top was a very reasonable price & so after another hour of waiting for it to
be set up, we finally made the transaction & left, heading back to the Rambutri. Later that night, we enjoyed cheap cocktails from a make-shift street bar & cheap Chang from a 7 eleven store conveniently sat right beside. After a number of Mojito's & a few bottles of Chang, we walked down to the Khao San Road, where amongst other things we had more 'street meat' & Barry had his first Chang Tower. Now fully in the swing of things we headed to Gulivers, which seemed to be the main place to be for both westerners & Thai prostitutes. It wasn't too long before Sam was having a dance off with a Thai prostitute called Phuki, needless to say Sam was the better dancer, and not too long after that, Barry was under Phuki's legs (the picture captured the moment). Sam & I decided to call it a night shortly after as we planned to travel to Ayuthaya the following day.
Sam & I were up early the next morning, ready to catch our train to Ayuthaya, the former Thai capital. The 4 hour standard train journey from Bangkok to Ayuthaya was an uncomfortable, but bearing one, especially
as the standard carriages only had wooden seats & a fan. We spent most of the journey not too sure exactly what station we were at or had gone passed as all the stations were written in Thai & none of them corresponded to that Thai written on our train scheduled. The train came to a stop at what we thought was Ayuthaya train station, but we wasn't certain. The train started gradually moving & in a panic we were about to jump off, but thanks to an old Thai lady shouting at us & a fellow Thai passenger reassuring us that we needed the next stop we didn't & rode to the next station hanging out of the open door. Ten minutes later, we had reached our destination - Ayuthaya. We jumped off the train & sat on a bench to get our bearings, making reference to our Lonely Planet, before being approached by an official tuk tuk driver who had an official id card pinned to his shirt pocket, that corresponded to his picture on an official tuk tuk driver chart. He came across friendly, informative & non-aggressive so we entered negotiation with him, well Sam did, I
went to the toilet. When I returned Sam had got the tuk tuk driver down from 900 to 700 Baht - a valid effort, so much so, we hired our tuk tuk driver to show us the splendid world heritages of Ayuthaya's historical temple ruins. The 9 temples that we visited were:
Wat Yai Chai Mongkhon, Wat Maha That, Wat Phra Si Sanphet, Wat Lokayasutharam, Wat Chaiwatthanaram, Wat Ph Khao Thong (King Naresuan Monument), Wihan Phra Mongkhon Bophit, Wat Ratchaburana, Chedi Sri Suriyothai. After seeing the wonders of the acient city our tuk tuk driver returned us to the train station where we crossed the tracks to board our train, bound for Bangkok.
After showering & meeting up with the rest of the gang, now including Kate & Kieran who had just returned from their travels to Kanchanaburi we went out for some great food at the opposite end of the Ranbutri, now celebrating the arrival of Kate & Kieran. After food, we went down the Khoa San to drink, buy fake vintage, yet classic Casio watches & eat a Khoa San delicacy; deep fried Grass Hoppers & Cockroach. Only Dean & Barry had the stomach to eat the
massive Cockroaches, however the rest of us gladly tucked into the Grass Hoppers, which with a bit of soya source resembled the taste of salted peanuts. Apart from Elaine who went home early, we all headed to 'The Club', which turned out to be a great, underground club that you wouldn't expect from the outside. One o'clock came around pretty quickly, now tired from our earlier travels & a little worse for wear, Sam & I called it a night.
Not much happened the following day other than a few hangovers being nursed better & a lot of lounging about at Chi Chi Village swimming pool & sauna. A combination of hair of the dog, the ice cold pool & the steamy sauna helped accelerate the recovery process. With pretty much the whole of the day wasted, we later packed our back packs ready to leave for Kanchanaburi the following day, before meeting with everyone for a welcomed quiet night of good food & only a few Chang.
The next morning, Sam, Dean & I flagged a taxi & made our way to the southern bus terminal where we just made the 11:20 am bus to Kanchanaburi which
would take 6 hours.
P.S. please be sure to view all of the photo's, 51 in total, as we have some fantastic pictures... until next time.
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The Seatons
non-member comment
Happy New Year
Hi there guys, great to have the blog up and running again to see what mischief you and your mates are getting up to. Hope you had a good christmas and new year, we did here, it was quiet though. Lovely photos Dan , its great to see you guys and talk to you both on the skype, Jazzy just gets so excited if she is in the computer and you call. The snow here is bringing the country to a standstill, temperatures of -21 recorded last night so just think of us all back home when you are lying on a beach somewhere. Kids have been sledging a couple of times but fed up of the cold now so we just want it to go so we can get back to a normal winter! time for me to go now, speak soon on the skype,take care, love you both. x x The Seatons.