One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster......

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Well the time had finally come to say farewell and begin our adventure of a life time in Thailand -"the land of smiles". I was excited, nervous and anxious about our trip abroad. I knew it was going to be a culture shock -and boy was I right.

After what seemed an eternity we finally landed in Bangkok, it was a 14 hour flight from NZ with a short stopover in Sydney. Getting through immigration was a piece of cake, and I couldn't believe we were finally here. I imagined armed guards and sniffer dogs greeting us off the plane - but there were none in sight. It took 5 minutes to get our passport visa stamped, grabbed our luggage and headed through the exit. Couldn't believe there wasn't even a baggage check!!

We met our hotel transfer waiting for us and piled in the taxi. Driving through the streets of Bangkok was definitely an eye opening experience at 3:30am and I had never seen anything like it. There were young girls lining the streets in skimpy clothing, street stall vendors with their food carts, millions of taxis and rubbish piled high in the gutter. It was so hot even at this hour of the night.

We were absolutely shattered arriving at our hotel, it had been a massive journey. We crashed almost immediately, knowing we only had 4 or 5 hours to sleep and then it was time to get up and explore the crazy city of Bangkok.

Day One

After eating breakfast we navigated our way to the MBK shopping complex via the sky train to Siam station.

The smell underneath the street markets was gross, the footpaths were narrow and the tuk tuk and taxi drivers were constantly yelling out to us to convince us for a ride with them. Holding tightly onto our day packs we ignored them and kept walking. On our first day in Bangkok we witnessed two Thai people trying to scam us but our radars were on and we weren't going to be fooled. One man tryed to offer us a tuk tuk for 10 baht and we also came across a guy who claimed he was the tourist police and tried to take us to a market instead of MBK.

I didnt buy a thing in the shopping complex. Yeah there is extremely cheap shopping at MBK but its rip off labels and everyone is trying to sell the same stuff- cheap technology, rip off clothing, jewellery etc. But we haven't come to Thailand with the purpose to shop but thought we better have a look around while we here. We had lunch on the 5th floor at the international food court. They had a huge selection of yummy food.

Later in the afternoon we made our way back to our hotel to freshen up, as we had booked to go see 'Siam Nirimit', included was a buffet meal. We got picked up at 5:00pm and headed to the show.

The buffet meal wasn't that great but the show definitely made up for it. It is apparently the largest theatre stage in the world, about 3 times the size of any theatre I've seen. New Zealand OSH standards would have had a field day. There were 12 dancers hanging from wires gliding across the stage all together, pyrotechnics being set off inches away from the audience and elephants walking around the stage and though the audience. I'm not complaining however it was pretty magnificent to watch. The elaborate costuming, set changes, and lighting were also very impressive. A flowing river magically appeared on stage, I don't know how they did it.

After the show we headed back to hotel and crashed as we had only been running on 5 hours of sleep since leaving home.

Data Two

After a great sleep in, we headed to the 'Grand Palace' via taxi. We weren't up to bartering with a tuk tuk just yet and it was too hot.

We knew about the clothing requirements to enter the palace so I was wearing the only pants I brought - black jeans and a jersey - not my best choice. I was under the impression they were more lenient for the blokes so he wore long shorts but they still refused us entry. We weren't the only tourists getting singled out for not wearing suitable clothing. We finally got some fashionable elephant printed baggy pants for him and in we went. What a sight!!

The palace was beautiful with such intricate detailing all over each of the buildings. We got some fantastic photos of the statues around the Grand Palace. It was a really busy place, and by the time we had a good look round it was mid afternoon and we were extremely hot and sweaty. We grabbed some refreshments and made our way back to the hotel.

After freshening up our transfer arrived to take us to our river cruise for the evening- a rice barge Loy Nava. It had been recommended to us by a friend and sounded really picturesque. We were really pleased we had booked this cruise as the food was delicious. We were served small portions of many different authentic Thai dishes with a selection of seafood and meat. We saw the Grand Palace, and some other temples along the river lit up and they looked amazing. It was a great way to end a fantastic day.

We got our transfer back to our hotel and finished the evening in the bar, having a few drinks with a couple from Melbourne who regularly visit Thailand. They suggested some places to visit during our stay in Phuket. They were in Thailand with the main purpose of getting dental work done, and suggested a dentist we should visit in Phuket. We shall see!!

Tomorrow we are making our way north to Kanchanaburi. It's about a 2 hour bus trip from Bangkok.

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