The long awaited first week in Thailand.

---

Well, as everyone can tell, this is not being written / typed up in the present...we are reminiscing if you like, seeing as life has been so incredibly busy these last few weeks.

Leaving India was an experience, as we previously said. We were feeling elated in a sense to be landing in a country that appeared to be futuristic in comparison to India. We didn't quite know what to expect, but i had heard a lot of good things about Thailand so we were both chomping at the bit to get on with SE Asia.

Trying to remember what happened in that week is going to be difficult, so bare with me please! It's unlikely that i will be able to put it totally in chronological order either so pardon me that too!

Asha Guesthouse, where we arrived from our flight was a sight for sore eyes, as we hadn't slept in so long. Pushed down a backstreet of a busy road, somewhere in Bangkok that is not usually associated with backpackers sleeping quarters .
The hostel greeted us with pleasant staff who quickly handed us a room key to room 17- luckily on the first floor of the elevator-less 6 or 7 floor hostel. The unfortunate porter picked by his superior in the hostel, carried both our bags up to our room We quickly changed, and did our ablutions in the maticulously clean, shared bathroom for our floor. We stumbled downstairs and had a well- deserved drink of Singha beer and went on the internet for a short time before retreating at some unholy hour to our room where we blacked out until the following day.

Over the week we did a number of things.
Firstly we relaxed and soaked up the atmosphere of Thailand through the comfort of our hostel- eating good food Later in the week, probably the next day in fact, we orientated ourselves and headed towards the nearest Sky Train, a five minute walk away, but as we found out, a suprisingly convoluted route to take. We weaved our way through throngs of market stalls selling all that the heart could possibly desire- Airline slippers, Micky mouse T- shirts, wild and exotic fruit, and fried pigs faces . We arrived at what looked like some way of reaching a Sky Train...a municipal staircase disappearing mysteriously into the rising heated air. A stairway to heaven perhaps? Close enough. After sojourning in the market stalls, our clothes were stuck to us with the help of humid Thai air and the aroma of cooking animal caracasses and rotting fruit, so arriving on a sky train platform after buying a ticket and to enter a train with AIR CONDITIONING was really heavenly .
I think this is the point where we found our favourite little spot to go when nothing pressing is going on - Siam plaza. A huge mall, brimming with a multitude of examples of modern- age commercialism and consumerism that does not fail to reach all corners of the globe: The bottom floor, a 'Sea World', floor above, our personal favourite 'Gourmet food floor', next couple of floors above that 'Designer shopping' and i mean 'designer'...Gucci, Chanel etc etc...Tom's favourite floor is next, the 'Designer Car Floor', Farraris, lamborghinis, BMWs, Mazeratis , finally the top floor, the 'Cinema complex'. So anyway, this mall is fascinating to say the least, and regardless of Tom and i being somewhat unexcited by the prospect of designer shopping, we spent most of the day there people watching and eating mainly . On the food floor we found a tiny shop selling the most amazingly good smoothies. So ever since finding this goldmine of a smoothie stall, we've retuned several times since.

The next part of our Bangkok exploring took the form of a boat trip on that river that runs through Bangkok...i think it's called the Kho Praya river I am still tuning my Anglo-Thai spelling, so excuse me again for the mistakes i am making so frequently! On this boat trip that cost about 10 B, we could hop on and off a boat as we pleased, wherever the boat temporarily docks. So we decided to see the 'Golden Buddha' shrine, that was absolutely beautiful- gold leaf everyewhere, a minagerie of intricate oriental paintings adorning every fraction of wall space. Definately an awe- inspiring experience.
On the same boat trip, we stopped off at an antiques arcade and auction house where we walked around inside stunned by the sheer size of some of the relics they had . We found a cheaper shop spilling from the edges with oriental paraphernalia. Some of which, we could actually afford to buy- small pieces of jewellery etc.
The boat trip, unfortunately only went on until 5pm so afterthe two stops we got off at, we were nearly out of time.

During the week we also spent some of our nocturnal hours doing intersting activities, such as:

Khoa San Rd by night An interesting sight to behold, that's for sure. A backpackers paradise. You arrive at one end of the road barricaded off by police and enter into what seems a strange concoction of sensual experiences . Both sides of the road are lined in permanent bars and restaurants owned by the hostels and hotels. In front of those you have an inexhaustable line of market stalls, a relentless snaking body of cheap- priced and cheaply made clothing and memorabelia. Through the small, unclaimed middle road area, naive tourists stumble wide- eyed and open jawed at the blurring of colours and the cacophany of sound. OK, enough of the in- depth poetic lark...It's a really fun place to be, have a drink and buy a lot of very fun things, but my God are we glad we didn't go there first off and end up staying there for an entire week. I don't think my senses could take it- they would overload in no time...plus i could not take the frustrations of watching so many wannabes stumbling around with newly acquired fake dredlocks and identities, thinking that they were world-explorer- extrodinaire. It would gradually make me go insane i think...you can only put 'cool', 'groovy' and 'far- out' in a sentence so many times when you're not actually living in the 70's .

Pat- Pong...the mother of all good nights Pat- Pong is somewhat infamous really. It is an extreme place, where so much fun can be had...but similarly, there underlies a stinking and cruel reality too which isn't that hard to see .
The main area of Pat- Pong, is Pat- Pong market, which covers an entire street area. As with Khoa San, it is lined with bars on either side- except these bars are slightly different, in that they are pole- dancing bars with vast numbers of young bikini- clad Thai girls moving somewhat uniformly to bad music to the delight of many bald, strange looking foreign men.
The market has all that a person could want, and at good prices too. Tom and i quite literally shopped til we dropped here a couple of times for bits of silver jewellery and rubbishy presents. The market people are wonderful and always interested in how high a price they can get you to pay...but once you have been in a Thai market once, you can generally manage to get them down to a great price .
The peripheral areas of the market, consist of narrow lanes, market one side bars the other, and it becomes difficult to see beyond the small laminated cards thrown at you by strange short Thai men, stating what is included in their 'Ping- pong' show. Word of advice, Thai's aren't hugely into the sport of Ping- pong...it refers to an obscenity that could only by thought of for foreign customers willing to see such comically crude acts for high prices!
The entire area buzzes and is such a good night out if you aren't too concerned with the plethora of ping- pong show cards blocking your vision . This area has been one of our favourite nocturnal places to reside. Personally, i loved Pat- pong but there was something sad about seeing so many beautiful and some very young girls dancing with very little enthusiasm to bad European trance music. They are all very lovely girls and don't particularly mind their job, but personally i have a problem witnessing a girl being ordered to 'entertain' a very strange white man who probably has very bad breath and a crude imagination! Hence why Tom and i regularly had crowds of the girls around us, even though we're a couple, because it gave them an excuse to not have to sit next to about 40%!o(MISSING)f the customers there who were a little too weird for anyones liking!

During one of our visits to Khoa San, Tom and i managed to book our bus ticket to Siem Reap in Cambodia at what we thought was a reasonable 20 quid, later to find out we had been seriously ripped off as always. Also found out that these tickets are usually a scam and so got warned against going at all, because apparently it was for our live's sake! Oh well, we had booked our next adventure to start on the 11th of April and 7.30am...

---