The wrong side of the road

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I have arrived.

Day 1 in Bangkok is drawing to a close and I am absolutely knackered. I got here with no problems at all, Etihad airways (or Jihad airways as I like to call them) were much better than expected. But flying overnight is never fun, especially as the time difference made it feel a lot earlier for me. I got about 10 mins sleep on the plane (not an exageration) and today really feels like yesterday if you know what I mean. I'm determined to stay up though so I can beat the jet lag.

Now, as for the actual events. Well today has been a complete shock to the system. Everyone warns you about it before you go but there is no preparing for the noise and hectic activity that meets you in Bangkok. I reckon at least 100 different people have approached me today asking me to get in their tuk tuk. But there is no point getting annoyed, you just have to smile and say no thanks and they get the message pretty quickly.

I went straight to Khoa San Road from the airport and found a cheap guesthouse to stay in. The bed isn't the most comfortable in the world - ever since I fell through a bed in Israel I have been a bit nervous about cheap beds - but it will do for me.

I then sat in a bar for a little while trying to figure out what to do. I have spoken to a few people but I'm way too tired to be doing any serious socialising today, that will all start tomorrow. I decided to go to the Grand Palace because its close to khoa san road and it doesn't require too much effort to see - at least that's what I thought. I think I spent a good 2 hours wandering the streets of Bangkok, a dangerous thing to do at the best of times, before I found the damn thing! I thought I had found it at one point. There was a massive white building with loads of pictures of the king around it. I walked around it, really quite surprised and disappointed that this was supposed to be one of the city's best attractions. And then I stumbled across the real Grand palace and I realised that I had just spent half an hour wandering around some nameless government building. At least I didn't take any photos. The other problem I had today was that I always seemed to be on the wrong side of the road for things. No matter what I wanted to see, it was always across a road of about 10 lanes (again, I'm honestly not exagerating). It was a bit of a leap of faith just to get across the road because you can never be sure the cars are going to stop for you.

So anyway, the Grand Palace was a good bit more impressive than the massive white building, so I have come back to Khoa San Road relatively happy.

And now I am writing this entry. I'm writing this today because I'm too tired to do anything else but I'm not sure when the next update will be. I apologise because I know that you will be tearing your hair out with anticipation.

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Comments

[David Crudge]

Sleep
Hi Andrew Get a good night's sleep!!

[Laura]

Glad to hear you got there ok. Hope you've got over the jet lag and have started to enjoy yourself. Looking forward to your next more exciting post!

[Cate]

Nice
I am so unbelievably jealous of you Andrew. Sounds like you're already up for whatever gets thrown at you and that is just the right attitude. Surely your guest house can't be as cheap and nasty as the one in Jerusalem....? Have fun and keep em coming...enjoying the blog idea already! C x

[Stephen]

ping pong
have you been to see a ping pong show yet? Stephen T