Wild1s in Bangkok

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It needn't have been like this . . .

You would have expected more from a man and a woman in their 50s who decided to give up their jobs and to drop everything to tour SE Asia for 6 months.

At the very least, you would have expected us to have done some serious planning before leaving quiet Nottingham, UK, and hopping on to an Emirates jet to Bangkok.

But we didn't.

So here we are. And this is our story . . .

Hope you like the title that Sue and I have chosen - Wild1s - for our blog. It has a certain irony for two previously sensible people of a certain age. Mind you it's been pretty wild since we hit Bangkok 5 days ago with all the usual confusion and laughs. I've seen this sprawling megalopolis before - but those times were from inside 5-star hotels like the Oriental, complete with spa treatments and padded suitcases. Sue is on her first trip to Asia and we are both experiencing hostel life as complete virgins! And it's great. Yes, there has been chaos. Our shortage of planning for a 6-month trip was naughty. We hadn't even packed a Bangkok map and had a very amusing journey after arriving at the airport. First we were directed to the public bus station but ended up in a dead end basement. Then we got off the fast train into the city and were picked up by a taxi driver who found our hostel location map a complete mystery. We went round in circles, as he asked directions from a variety of innocent bystanders, including 2 armed soldiers, a group of schoolgirls and a kind businesswoman who got on her mobile and called the hostel to help!

Anyway, enough of that moaning! The HI hostel in Dusit ( Sue had booked it online thankfully) is clean, chilled and very friendly. It has HI's London seal of approval and is well worth the £13 a night, including scrambled egg and toast for breakfast. The great thing is meeting people (try that in a 5-star) and the great exchange of views and ideas about where to go (as cheaply and safely as possible).

So far, we've stayed away from the big tourist sights, preferring to eat, drink and shop with the locals (Sue was helping a local lady to cook a curry the other night at one of the night food stalls nearby). Yesterday we hit the Chatchak market. It's the world's biggest, with 9000 very mixed stalls and is a browsers paradise for tourists and locals alike, selling everything from art and jewellery to clothes and family pets. We also took the Skytrain tour to check out the city, not to mention other tourist magnets like China Town (it's their New year tomorrow so we'll be back for the fun and fireworks at night), a cheap public boat trip along the Chao Phraya river and the totally spaced and buzzin' Khao San Road (the backpackers' rocking capital of the world). But mostly we have been chilling' with the locals.

Last night we went with our new friend Valerio, from Palermo, Sicily, a lovely 33-year journalist, to the fab chilled Ethos Vegetarian Restaurant at the back of the Khao San, where we tried their fried rice, curry and stir fry, washed down with blueberry coconut juices and finished with a glass of mildly alcoholic fermented herbal tea? Yummmmmy!

We started this adventure aiming to go next week to Cambodia - Angkor Wat and Sihanoukvilla followed by the southern islands - but Sue is loving Thailand and the people so much (I've always loved them in fact) that we are having a week in Chiang Mai in the North first before moving on. Cambodia,Laos, Malaysia, NZ, Idonesia will be great. For now though, it's just magic being in the City of Angels and the Land of Smiles! James and Sue x

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