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Published: February 13th 2011
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I arrived from the bus ex the Cambodian border with three nights accomodation booked, just around the corner from the bedlam of Kaosan road to the edge of central Bangkok, a main meeting point in Southeast Asia for mainly backpackers. If your on a big trip around Southeast Asia or just around Thailand, there is no doubt that you have to stop here for a night or two! However, I arrived late with a banging headache, hot, needing lots of water, totally tierd and not really in the mood for changing hotels. The hotel room was shocking, so I abandoned it and found a better place just around the corner at the other end of Kaosan road. Funnyly enough, in the same hotel as two Australians I met on the bamboo train just a day before! They were on the same bus as me to Bangkok because they couldn't get a ticket for the day before either.
Once I checked in and left my stuff in the new Kaosan road room, the banging headache and tierdness soon dissapeared as the three of us got some food and hit the area for some cocktails. It wasn't long before buckets of cocktails
were flowing and the headache was exchanged for the light headedness that you set out for when visiting this area. The area is full of bright lights, bars and resturants, market stalls, travel agencies, massages, street traders and everything you might want or need when your travelling and passing through. Everything goes on well into the early hours...
The next day, another headache in tow, I visited the National Museum just around the corner, before another night out in the Kaosan road area. This time, sat there with my Thai green curry and a beer, I ended up in a group and we hit the cocktails once again!
After two nights of getting to bed at about 530am (there wasn't much point in having a room afterall), I moved to Siam Square. Although the move was only 20 minutes away, the experience of the next two nights would be completely different.
Siam Square is central to Bangkok and seems to be the primary shopping area. The centre pieces being the MBK and Discovery plazas, which are both massive. From here the fairly new skytrain links to other central areas, like Lumphini for Thai boxing and Patpong for
'ping pong balls' :-) They seem to be working on their infrastucture and international image and this is an ultramodern area.
After a spot of shopping, I thought I would visit the museum of imaging technology, mainly out of curiosity of what it actually was. Even though I had a map, despite asking loads of people where it was, someone even wrote it down in Thai for me so I could just show people, I ended up wandering around the Chulalongkorn university campus. "Its around here somewhere". However, I eventually ended up in the national history museum, which was next door! Itself on the sixth floor of a university campus building. I found the imaging museum straight afterwards but I'd done all the museums I wanted for the day.
In the evening, someone from the dorm and me went for more cocktails. This time on the 83rd floor of the Beiyoke II tower, Thailands tallest building. The view at night from up there is spectacular and on a clear night you can see for miles, we hung a round for a while to soak up some of the view.
The next day, I had the night sleeper
train booked for Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand. So to make use of the time beforehand I went for a looooong walk round the city. The culmination of the day essentially ended up on the river bus along the river and a coffee by the open air pool on the Muzu (13th) floor of the State Tower.
Next stop, Chiang Mai in the far north for some cookery...
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