Bangkok - Day 1

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Both me and Trav shared a room. 1 single bed and one double bed. We were highly amused to find that the toilet was inside a shower cubicle, and that it had its own hose tap and drain..to wash things down. The wardrobe was also in its own ex-shower cubicle (with drain). I'll put some pics up when i can get them off my camera.
So we had a pretty shitty nights sleep, due to the heat, and the air conditioners being as noisy as a fat bastard after baked beans and prune juice.

Got up at 8am to have breakfast and get ready for our packaged klong (river) tour.

The IEP group that me and trav are with consists of 13 other awsome people. Me, trav, Andrew, Andrew, Daniel, Kylie, Mel, Megs, Tania, Tania, Hamish, Liz, Alice, Jeremy and Courtney.
We all went on this river tour... and jesus us kiwis don't know what poverty is.

This tour went via canals and creaks that thread their way through bangkok, through the ass end parts of town etc.
A law came in 20 years ago forbidding people to build over water... but allowed for buildings already built over water to stay where they were, but they couldn't be modified. When I say that these buildings were literally falling apart at the seams... they were. But people were still living in them. And there was thousands of them... literally thoussands. Again ill put up pics when i can, but they dont do justice to the shear number of these people living in shit holes.
Oh, the smell. Bangkok smells.. bad.
Anyway, we finished that tour up in 4 or so hours (it included a stop to a snake farm, where i got to touch a snake! yay me...).

We got back to the hostel, and had a quiet beer to relax the rest of the afternoon. That beer turned into 2..then 4.. then 6 etc.
About half the group decided to head off to find dinner... eventually winding up at a road side stall, where we all prompty sweated out every millilitre of fluid from out bodies, due to the heat, humidity, and the spiceness of the food. It was fantastic!

We finished up there, and got back to hostel for a few more drinks. By this time we were all in a pretty good mood, so most of us decided to hit the party part of town. Ill keep it brief, but it was drunk, we made several purchases with road side vendors and drunken bartering powers! We also laughed at all the hookers macking on the white males in the popular western bar there... I dunno what was worse, the hookers, or the fact that half the males thought that they had "scored" some thai chicks.

Me and trav and 2 others from our group went to leave about 1am... and it was about that point that we had no idea where we were, or where our hostel was. All we knew was that it was called New road guest house, it was near bangkoks main river, near a huge tall building with a gold dome on top, and near a McDonalds (which we ate at several times...bloody westerners) and KFC. Unfortunaly our taxi driver didnt understand any of this, and we proceeded to spend well over an hour trying to find our place, which should have been a 15 min drive.
We eventually happened across the McDonalds, and sorted our way back from there. All that cost us about 210 baht... or about 6 dollars. God bless the thai.

We promptly hit the sack after that.

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Comments

[Mel]

Bro- you forgot about singing and dancing with that band in a bar, the random elephant walking down the road in the middle of the night, and the mystery of the floating jandals!! :-p what an awesome trip- wouldnt change a thing!!