Advertisement
Published: August 14th 2013
Tonight is the final evening of our adventure so i thought I should nip onto an actual computer (doing it on my phone is far harder than it should be!) and do one last catch up.
i haven't updated for a few days because the adventure section of the holiday had finished and in theory we should now be as chilled as polar bears in winter! This isn't quite what went down however...
Monday - the journey back from Koh Chang was only beaten in rubbishness by our crazy train journey from Hanoi to Hue. We were picked up from our hotel (over an hour later than we should have been) by a little white people carrier. Our bus was supposed to leave at 8am sharp from the other side of the island so when we were still stood in our ponchos waiting for a lift at 8:10 I figured we would be waiting until the 2pm bus. We were the 4th group to be picked up and after us were two more stops for two more couples. We were crammed in to within an inch of our lives. There was no apology or explanation for the drivers lateness. Once on the ferry it became clear that there was no large bus waiting for us and we would be making the whole 6-7 hour journey "a la sardine." Things were complicated further by the fact that we were now 2 1/2 hours behind schedule and people had planes to catch in Bangkok just 3 hours after our original arrival time. The driver was a crazy person. He weaved and almost caused accidents and even caused one poor lady to swerve on a moped and lose all of her shopping into a giant muddy puddle. It was horrendous and we couldn't sleep because the two speeds available were foot flat to the floor and foot slammed on the break meant our heads were whipped around on the ends of our necks. I have never been so glad to be out of a minibus in my life!!!
Our hotel is lovely in Bangkok and has very comfortable beds which we rested on for a while to regain composure after our Mario cart style journey. We nipped to Pat Pong Night market after tea just to gauge what was what... most people were very friendly and keen to make us a good offer and get our business... although we did use the "only looking" line several times to stop pushy sales people. We said it to one man and he told us to get out of his shop because he wanted to sell and looking sells nothing!! We did laugh. It was so hostile and so out of place in a busy tourist filled market! We also were offered very many ping pong shows... all of which we declined without every then slightest hesitation!!!
Tuesday - Le Shopping! We wandered around all of the tourist shopping malls and bought up all the stuff we wanted the first time around but had decided to save until we came back so we knew how much money we had. I have been fighting off some sort of illness since we got to Koh Chang and i think it finally started to cause me to feel a lot crap as of yesterday. I think its just a throat infection but its but a right dampener on the last couple of days of our holidays. We had planned a final blow out on Kho San Road last night but I only lasted until midnight. Still, we had a good laugh and several very cheap beverages.
Wednesday (Today) - Eireann thoroughly enjoyed the all you can eat fancy hotel breakfast buffet this morning and as we had absolutely no plans for the day we stayed pretty much until we were asked to leave. I am still poxed up so i just had water (rock and roll!!) There were still a few bits we wanted to get so we got into a taxi and headed to Prananum Market as we hadn't been there yet. Unfortunately the taxi driver told us it was all rubbish quality, and anyways it didn't open properly until around 1. So off we headed to MBK - we spent all of yesterday there but only saw about half of the place. We pulled up outside, paid the driver and Eireann opened the door to get out... right into a passing motorbike taxi. The woman on the back dived off and was gone before the driver had even dragged himself out from under the bike and out of the gutter. In any functioning road system the motorbike would have been in the wrong but here its perfectly acceptable to undertake a parked taxi on the very edge of the curb. We both kept saying how sorry we were, and the driver kept rubbing a very old bruise on his leg and shouting at the taxi driver. The taxi driver told us to keep saying sorry and give him 500 baht to replace the wing mirror he lost down the gutter. Eireann didn't have much choice other than to pay the man as quite a crowd was gathering to look at the stupid falangs causing devastation in their paths!
We managed to get a few bits but decided to go home and pack as we weren't really feeling MBK for a second time in two days. Once back at the hotel we did a little research into the bar we wanted to go to tonight. It seemed that according to all the blurb there was a strict dress code and strappy tops, shorts, flip flops etc were not allowed at all. This caused a dilemma, we came with nothing but flip flops and our affectionately named special shoes. Off out we went to a big fancy shopping mall down the road on a quest for footwear. After perusing 3 floors of designer shoes we thought our money would be better spent on cocktails later and went to look for cheaper goods... at MBK! AGAIN!! This time we weren't aimless, we were girls on a mission. We weren't bothering with tourist formalities, we wanted good low best price cheep cheep. We didn't want the story of how we would cause the vendor to go bankrupt or how if he gave us the goods at that price his children would starve! (We know that if they are only talking about starving children then you are still negotiating... i took it too far the other day when haggling and it was pretty clear from the stomping, shouting, and gesturing that we were no longer in the haggle and we should depart rapidly!) Shoes in Thailand have been a slight problem for someone with feet the size of boats! I had no chance! Eireann got some beautiful skyscraper green striped ones... i went to our bar in flip flops which i had disguised well under my exceptionally long dress.. if i shuffled a bit like a woman in traditional Japanese dress my feet were a mystery!!
The hotel with the 360 bar is right next to the river and the views were absolutely spectacular. What was a tad annoying however were the people in shorts and flip flops enjoying a drink!! It didnt matter thought as it was so nice to get as dressed up as we could out of our back packs and go out on the town. It was the perfect way to spend our final evening and think about all we have done and seen. These blogs so lacking in details as ive forgotten so much by evening. I think it will take reviewing all my thousands of pictures and just having some time for reflection before i realise just how many wonderful things i have experienced over the past month. I plan to bore you all with my pictures and scrap books very soon!
Off to pack and sleep... 4am start tomorrow.
Night Night from Bangkok
Kate & Eireann
x
MYH
Advertisement
Tot: 0.082s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 7; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0469s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Mel
non-member comment
Awesome Update
Isnt that the way... You follow the rules and others flaunt them. ;). It sounds like it's been quite an adventure. Safe travels home!