Bangkok - oh buckets I have missed you


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Asia » Thailand » Central Thailand » Bangkok
March 23rd 2011
Published: May 19th 2011
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.....and 4 years later I'm back in Bangkok. And my god have I missed it! Things have changed quite a bit though - the streets are so much more westernised and my skanky old hostel that I stayed in last time is now some funky guest house with a restaurant, bar, internet cafe and live music playing all night. From backpacker to flashpacker in less than 4 years – forget some crazy Asian experience – all you’ll get from Khao San Road that is vaguely Asian is some Pad Thai and a couple of Lady Boys at around 3 am. Mental!

The other change since I was last here is that apparently people no longer haggle. This came as a bit of a shock after 6 weeks of constant battles over everything from Ali Barbaar pants to a bottle of water in India. All of a sudden people were asking for a price and expecting me to just pay it! Crazy behaviour! And when I tried my well practiced walk-off routine - they just LET me! No calling me back for further haggle-ment – just a cold as ice ‘they’ll be more of you’ knowing look of a vendor that knows there a million other idiots who will happily overpay them for their knock off Ray Bans and fake Havainias. The rudeness!
On a plus side the clothes markets have gone mental and although you can't haggle it's still a third of the price of home and the whole of Khao San road looks like Republic and Topshop threw up on it. Brilliant. So in case you were wondering about the budget - its now 100% gone - I will be clothes shopping before I fly home in April which means I will be not eating in my 12 days back in England but will be looking beautiful! Chins and badgers.....

The other thing I forgot I love about Bangkok is the constant 'paup paup' sound that follows you down the street from the guys trying to sell you ping pong show tickets. They hand out lists entitled "pussy does...."and then there is a whole choice from "pussy does chopsticks"down to "pussy does water into pepsi". The mind boggles....
After the million and one forts and palaces we visited in India we have come to the joint decision that we all need a bit of smoking vaginas to widen our cultural view of south east Asia! I think I summed it up when I said "sometimes culture isn't just about forts and temples, sometimes it's about minge". True story.
Unfortunately we never got to go though due to the fact that as much as the thought of a woman pulling razor blades out of her fanny is an alluring way to pass the evening, getting drunk on 200 baht buckets in an Irish bar with a live singer wailing out 'so salmon can wait' (aka Oasis's 'don't look back in anger' for those of you not familiar with Thai lyrics) is equally a thrilling cultural experience and involves far less mental scarring.

We ended up meeting a brother and sister called Billy and Natalie at the airport so within an hour of checking in to our guesthouse we decided it would be rude to not go out and immediately consume a lot of local Bangkok 'culture' with them - also known as the Samsung whiskey bucket. We ended up having a brilliant night and I must say Billy might have the best outlook on life of anyone I've ever met. He's had some great times and a right shitter of some times but has exactly the same attitude to both - which is pretty much that you start with nothing so you've got nothing to loose. In my drunken stupor he was DEFINITELY a better philosopher than Aristotle and Plato combined. Who needs the bed / chair / table theory when you got "life's too short"?!
Anyway, we ended up in some random bar with a sign on the stairs saying "please respect the noise levels on the stairs or we will have to fine you 1000 baht or break your legs". Apparently no one was fussed by this as everyone was being VERY LOUD. Turned out to be an amazing bar though, packed out with drunken westerners belting out Jason Mraz in time to the live singer. We stayed there for the majority of the evening continuing to sip in the ‘culture’ until it had all been sipped.

After that we decided we should probably do something actually cultural so plodded down to the Golden Temple and the reclining Buddha in the rain. Since being in Thailand it's rained a bloody lot. I'm a bit worried I jinxed it as was was bitching about how hot Bangkok gets to the others on the plane before we arrived and now its rained every day since - if you're reading this God, the jokes over, I get the point - bring back the sunshine before I sue your ass for Asian weather misconceptions! England's the dumping ground you made for rain you bastard! Anyway, back to temples: Reclining Buddha is pretty awesome. I've seen it before but you can't really get bored of it - its a massive, massive 100 foot Buddha laying on its side covered in gold in a room that is literally about a meter wider than the Buddha so you walk around the outside trying to get a shot fitting it all in but its physically impossible. Really awesome statue.

The palace is also pretty impressive, almost as impressive as the million and one local Thais that kept trying to tell us it was closed on the way! Apparently its a scam so they can send you to their mates temple in an overpriced tuktuk instead. Luckily we weren't completely retarded though so we persevered. and surprisingly enough - the temple was open - shock horror! Little shits. Another local decided that she'd try to force some pigeon feed upon us and when we kindly declined she broke the bag and chucked it all over Billy and demanded he pay her. She then got really aggressive when he refused and chased us down the street screaming like a banshee to the point that Natalie had to spin on her heels, shove her finger in her face and shout 'NO!' as if she was telling off a misbehaved dog. Seems like the people are starting to get a bit etchy with the tourists nowadays....guess we'll see how that goes...

Anyway, culture day ticked off the list it was back to drinking. We were going to get an early night but then this crazy thai lady in a travel agents, who we loved, but clearly liked a drink, kindly informed us it was St Paddys day - clearly not an opportunity to miss! Turned out not to be many Irish in Khao San road, either that or we were too drunk to notice, but we had a killer of a night none the less :p most of it was spent outside an Irish club smoking ciggys and chatting to a million and one different people. Matt had a local women try and latch on to him as a Thai Bride who got VERY upset every time matt paid me or Dodds any attention WHATSOVEVER, but I think eventually she picked up on the gay vibe and cut her losses. It was probably the Lady Gaga dancing. Me and Dodds made friends with a guy in a Mr Handsome tshirt, who we mocked sufficiently, but as it turned out it was a 'lads thing' and when his other mates turned up at the end of the night they all had matching t's on. Bless. Nothing like an English man abroad. We then headed back to the bar opposite our hotel to wait for matt as he'd wandered off and i spent the next hour staring un-relentlessly at the guy opposites face as he'd told me there were loads of massive black rats running about the bar so I was too scared to move or look anywhere else in the room. Seriously - I hate the fuckers! Eventually we finished our beers and matt hadn't turned up so a drunken Dodds tottered off to find him whilst i hid in my bed checking the room for holes to make sure the super rats couldn't get in.

After that we decided to escape the city for a bit whilst our visas got sorted so we headed to Kanchanaburi as it was pretty close and had a lot going on - waterfalls, elephants, rafting, prisoners of war - you know, the usual. Turned out to be wicked. Some of the POW stuff was pretty intense - we all had a bit of a cry at the cemetery as the headstones all said things like "a much beloved son" and "devastated but loving parents". There was one that said "to a touch that will never be felt again and a voice that will forever me whispered but never heard" from his lover. I didn't realise I got emotional at stuff like that but there is something really devastating about seeing messages from the parents on headstone after headstone. I think it all made us think of Dodd's mum as her brother has just signed up for the dodgy part of Afghanistan as infantry so the poor thing is no doubt worried sick. We just walked around the cemetery reading and blubbiing. It was all a bit much at 9am in the morning. Especially after we had just been woken up from the coach by a VERY EXCITABLE Thai man shouting "HEWO EWEYBODY it time to wakey wakey!!" in the most cliché Team America interpretation you could ever imagine. He was like Kim Jong-Il combined with the Easter bunny, on a fuck-load of speed and redbull. We instantly loved him though. Well I say instantly - when you are suddenly awoken by an overly cheery Kim JongIl and then dumped in a POW cemetery of course you are a BIT suspicious, but we soon realised he just really really loves his job. Seriously - I've never seen anyone smile that much - not even a gerning pillhead at a festival.

After depressing cemetery we went to depressing war museum to learn about how the Japanese forced Ozzy and English POW's to work for hours building the bridge and the train track towards Burma with no food so that they eventually died of starvation or disease. The museum itself left a lot to be desired for...namely a museum. It was more a room with some words painted on the wall about a decade ago so most of it had rubbed off and then some weird paper mache models of the people involved, which strangely had been given the extra detail of genital parts - clearly a necessity in a war museum as realistic as this one!

We then saw something even more depressing though - as we walked towards the bridge itself, we saw a woman holding what looked like a massive fluffy cuddly toy of a leopard. Turned out it was a real leopard - a baby being bottle fed. It looked cute at first until you realise that its mum is laid next to it chained up on a platform, clearly drugged up to the eyeballs with an annoying local kid batting it in the face to get its attention. When the baby had finished its milk it was then rammed back into the smallest cage I've ever seen to await the next gullible tourist to get sucked in my the tour guides over extravagant explanation of the safari park and what a good day out it is. Good if you like your animals to be drugged up to the eyeballs just so you can pet them safely. I know that's part of Asia but it still really pisses me off. God, I've become a caring soul - next I'll be holding a signboard and hollering ‘save the trees’. But at least I'd be skinny...tree activists are always really skinny. Ah fuck it, I'd rather have a Maccy D's on a sofa than a flat stomach that's chained to a tree.

On a brighter note we then got to see animals been treated nicely. We went to an elephant sanctuary type thing and had a wee ride along the river on said elephants and then we got to jump on bare-back and bathe with them in the river - a.m.a.z.i.n.g!!!!!!!!! I say bathe - it was more like bucking bronco, with us trying to stay on their backs as they dived under and rolled around and squirted us with their trunks - SO much fun! By the end I had mastered the rodeo and was about to stay on for at least five minutes at a time. Now I don't want to sound all 'i love animals' but they really are amazing creatures - as soon as they're in the water all they want to do is play and the baby that came with us kept going up to its mum and wrapping its trunk round hers for a cuddle. It was incredibly cute 😊 The guys that looked after them were really lovely too and they each had an elephant that was theirs to look after for life so they had a real bond with them. We found out later we were ridiculously lucky in that aspect as some of the other people we met had gone to a different camp where the people where hitting them with sticks and making them do tricks with hoops and balls and shit. Poor Dumbo would be turning in his grave!

After elephant amazingness we took the old stylee train along the death track and spent the whole time hanging out the windows looking at the amazing views of the rivers and forests go past. Me and Dodds immediately plugged in the ipods and cracked out some MIA - the only appropriate train music to be hanging out the window to on a sunny day in Asia 😊 I think that might have been the best train journey of my life - I got through a good 20 kick-ass songs on the pod - just hanging out the window and watching the world go by whilst appreciating how fucking lucky I am to be doing this. I was having a moment and it was bloody gorgeous!
I guess it was pretty surreal seeing how beautiful it was and feeling all lovely and nice when POW's had built it in misery. but at least you can sort of say well they didn't die in vain as now thousands of people enjoy this every year and hopefully they're all having moments like me. Bit of a wotsit: I can't think of the phrase right now...(english degree and 3 grand a year paying off right there)...but you know what I mean - irony but not....aaah fuck it, I can spellsupercalifragilisticexpialidocious- what else do i need in life?!

That night we stayed on a floating riverboat house which was pretty cool. We tried to be all serious susans for the evening and use the time to plan out what the hell we were going to do in Vietnam but 3 drunk Welsh people ended up wooing us with a bottle of Samsong whiskey and strange stories about 'little disableds' - one of the girls - Aimee - worked with mentally and physically handicapped people and spent the evening telling us the cutest stories about them in her own politically incorrect but terribly endearing way that I won't repeat as they don’t sound as endearing unless you know her –there are some things that can only be said in a Welsh accent without sounding like a complete mentalist. After a few glasses of cheap whiskey I was set for a good nights sleep...that was until I woke to my favourite sound in the world at 3am in the morning - that's right - the sound of gnawing and nibbling and scratching that only a rat makes. Fan fucking tastic.
I lept GI-JO / ninja stylee from my bed onto Dodds’ and woke her up with a small heart attack and then we spent the next 30 minutes sat on her bed going back and forth over the following conversation:
“I dont know what to do, what shall we do?' "i dont know......how about...i don’t know...what shall we do?" ”Well I don’t know…….shit….what are we gonna do?”.
Eventually Dodds had to take control or we would have sat there for the rest of our lives. She basically came up with an escape plan (run for the door really quickly and then run down the houseboat yelling until someone came and saved us) and then had to pull rank on me to try and make me follow it. This involved several stern speeches that went like this:
"Right jaz, look at me...LOOK at me... Now this is what we are going to do...(explanation).... okay, you ready...?" Queue the Jaz dramatic "I might possibly die of sadness and upset right here" head shake. I'd then have a little eppy about the whole thing and almost cry and we'd start again. 5 attempts later and we were out the door (i needed to pee which is the only reason i left). Much to our delight the owner of the riverboat thingy was still up drinking whiskey. Unfortunately he was also a massive opium smoker and was clearly off of his nut on the stuff. After bumbling about for what felt like an eternity he had to ask us where the light switch was (really) and then kicked my bag a bit (the rat was after a pack of unopened cookies I'd stupidly left in there) then shrugged his shoulders and said "it okay". Not satisfied with his super-sleuth rat detective work I demanded another room for the night which as soon as we got in had a massive Praying Mantis on my pillow. WHY?! WHY WON'T YOU LET ME SLEEP?! Eventually I managed to kill it with a bottle and then crazy opium man picked it up and went to eat it. We managed to dissuade him and agreed we'd come and smoke a quick ciggy with him before bed. He then demanded we smoke opium as he fell over his chair and we kindly declined and sidled off to bed whilst he tried to work out why his face was embedded in a cushion. . What a lovely end to the day. Apparently i can rodeo an elephant 10 times my size in the water but put a rat in the room and I will instantly transform into a 90 year old lady and hide up the tallest object, tree or person I can find.

The next day we went to the Erawan waterfalls which are super pretty but full of fish. As well as a fear of rats I also have a ridiculous fear of fish. I am fine if I’m diving and I’m on there ‘level’ - so to speak, but put them under me and I am literally shitting myself. I’m convinced they’re going to team-suck me to death or something. To be fair they were pretty big fish in the waterfalls and there were a lot of them so I wasn’t the only one that was a bit hesitant of a swim. So instead we all got round this by sliding down the water slides and into the pool and then immediately splashing around like a spastic whilst attempting to get to the edge as quickly as possible to scrabble out for safety. You’ve never seen a group of people have so much fun (the cries of ‘weeeeeeee as we whooshed down the water boulders) followed by so much panicked fear (cries of “are they near me? Are they getting me?!!!!!! DON'T LET THEM GET ME!!!!” As we desperately tried to scramble back out). Brilliant way of burning of a few pounds though – nothing like mentalist swimming to work off your Samsong calories from the night before 😊

So that was Thailand. I’ll be popping back here in a few weeks to Full Moon it up but for the time being it’s on to ‘Nam and pastures new. I’m not sure if I’m the right sort of person to be able to pull of ‘Nam but imma keep it up for a bit and see if it starts working. I’m sure that there are plenty of idiots in the world that are terrified of rats and spastic swim to fish that can pull off the use of words such as ‘Nam and ‘blates’…........god I’m a twat. Goodnight.




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