Ben again!

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Hello! Ben here.
After climbing Mt Kinabalu Sarah and I were suffering considerably with our legs! It seemed we had pulled and strained every muscle possible, in the process discovering leg muscles we never knew we had! Climbing up stairs was hard, going down was impossible! Descending stairs backwards was marginally easier though! Also going up and down curbs proved to be really tricky! This was much to the amusement of many passers by.
We spent a day in Kota Kinabalu at a hostel we'd stayed at previously, and were quite pally with the people who worked there. We only saw one other person staying there, so with our poorly joints we took advantage of the TV and comfy chairs and had an incredibly lazy last day in Borneo! We also found an imported goods supermarket where we bought some Heinz spaghetti for our dinner, and gawped at the many varieties of Spam, Baked Beans and other English goods. (that night we enjoyed Absolutely Fabulous and Red Dwarf on TV - not our most cultural day but our legs needed rest!)
The next day we got up at 4.45 AM for our 6.30 flight, and by 10.30 we were in Bangkok.
We arrived in Thailand pretty unprepared, but had an idea of where to go (thank you Andrea for the guidebook!). We took a bus into town and got off where all the other backpackers did, as it must have been Ko San road! Ko San road is often considered not really Bangkok, and not really Thailand! The majority of people there are white backpackers, all the signs are in English, and what consists there are numerous dingy but pricey travellers hostels, over-priced bars and restaurants and a plethora of conterfeit goods to purchase!
We spent one night in a dingy overpriced hostel, before sourcing a 1/3 cheaper place the next day (which was a lot nicer - it had two dogs and everything!).
The first day in Bangkok wasn't the most enjoyable! With our four cards (three debit and one credit), they had all given up and stopped working. To add to this our mobile phone with a Malaysian sim-card (which connnected to a Thai network) also gave up. And we didn't have a lot of cash. The day was spent ringing HSBC twice - a very expensive practice while in Thailand (no one will believe that if you use a landline it will cost nothing so they make you pay anyway) to be told my card was working (it was not, and still isn't!), performing internet banking in chat rooms, and hobbling back and forth to western union transfer booths (our legs were still not working!). I lost my rag slightly while on the phone to HSBC in an internet chat room and felt very bad at visibly disturbing the thai workers there (who don't like raised voices or confrontation), but the bank needed telling for the 3rd time that i was abroad! In the end this was resolved (thank you Chris!) and the next morning we got some money from the Western Union booth, which was intensely relieving!
The next day we went to a vegetarian restaurant, which we ended up visiting the next day also, as we became friendly with the workers there, a man who owned a tailor opposite, and the incredible food! (i found out that you can get rice tofu and peanut tofu! - the rice tofu wasn't the best though...). We then headed off for the grand palace. However on the way we were stopped twice by men who informed us that the previous night on TV it had been broadcast that the following day (this day in question) would be a Buddhist holiday of sorts, where the temples would be free and the petrol for tuk tuks would be free, and for any English speaking Thais to inform the tourists. Therefore we got into a Tuk Tuk (a motorbike type thing with a two-seat cart attached to the back) and were whisked off to the golden Buddha, a huge golden Buddha statue. It was pretty interesting, and very golden. We also saw a monk on a mobile phone, a but strange. We were then taken to a TAT - a tourist information/travel agent who asked where we were going and offered us a ticket for 800 baht, which we declined. This trip has taken an odd turn we thought. We went outside and the Tuk Tuk driver was being handed money by one of the workers. Hmm. So we had four more temples to see. The next was the lucky Buddha. We walked around but could only see glimpses of a statue through a window of a closed building. hmm. We went back to the road to get back into our Tuk Tuk to travel to the next Buddha, but he wasn't there! We went a bought a drink, sat around for a while, and he still didn't arrive! hmm... We found out where we were - conveniently very near our hostel and more sights, and headed off to the giant swing (a big swing frame with no actual swing over a road). So we had been involved in a scam of sorts, but we'd paid no money and been driven around Bangkok! Fair enough! My time here us running out, so i will continue the Bangkok story soon... farewell!

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Comments

[mum]

scam!
same thing happened to me and Maggie in Bankok! However we thought something wasn't right so got out of the tuk tuk before he set off, then the friends we were staying with told us it happens all the time, the drivers are paid to stop off at shops in the hope you'll buy something. every tuk tuk ride after that we shouted "don't stop" every time they slowed down!! If you try this it will involve a few near collisions with traffic and pedestrians - be warned!