Advertisement
We are in Bangkok...
Bangkok has to be one of the craziest places to live, I certainly know I couldn't do it. It is so loud and so extremely dirty. The whistling is constant - the Traffic Police have the worst job trying to create order from the unbelieveable kaos that is Bangkok peak hour traffic. There is so much pollution that no one seems to see, the smells range from sewage to incense, exhaust fumes to waffle cones.
Bangkok really is one big contradiction. Huge hotel buildings with massive advertising billboards on one side of the street, with derelict houses and markets forming a kind of shanty town on the other. In the big shopping malls, it is all too obvious that the Thai people are catering to the tourist - everything is written in english, there are images of non-asian people in posters - its as if they are completely fine with jeopardising their own national identity in order to please the tourist population.
Monday / Tuesday Arrived in Bangkok at around midnight on the 2nd of July. It was my first international flight and all in all it wasn't too bad. I was just so excited to have my own tv screen and watch the movies that I wanted to watch, I didn't care that I had approx 5 cm leg room and sat in the middle of three seats.
We spent most of the day by the pool on Tuesday, so beautiful, our own little oasis in amongst the dirt and hustle and bustle down below (it was on the fourth floor rooftop). Typically, I lay on one side too long and proceded to get quite sunburnt (here's me thinking I won't need sunscreen because its an overcast day - have I learnt nothing from all those slip , slop, slap ads?!?).
In the afternoon we went to Central World Plaza, a massive shopping complex. It was like two or three marion shopping centres stacked on top of each other. We got lost a few times. They also had all the international stores eg fcuk, benetton, etc, it even had Country Road which was so exciting. Didn't buy anything though (the prices were all in the thousands - due to the baht being worth so little - but it kept putting me off because I kept thinking it was really expensive, when really the prices were comparatively similar to home). I should have bought up big if I had known how expensive the UK was!!
Tuesday night we had our complimentary Thai Dinner and Dance in the hotel restuarant. The dinner was great and the dancing was hilarious! They came out in twos and threes and did their little routines but at the end of each performance they would leave and then come back out to pose for photos for at least 5 minutes every time. This made it drag on so much, so most of our table made a run for it when they started teaching us how to fold table napkins - so devastated that we had to miss it...
Wednesday Free breakfast, woohoo! Anyone who knows me knows that my two favourite things in this world is food and free stuff. I was in heaven. There was a massive buffet with everything you could ever want so I lived it up.
Mags and I went on a tour of the City and the Grand Palace at around lunchtime, which was a particualrly poor choice as the weather was so humid and stifling because it had just rained that morning, so it wasn't the most enjoyable thing to do. Took stacks of photos which I will upload at some point to my page in Picasa so everyone can have a squizz. Absolutely stunning architecture, the temples and the Palace really were quite beautiful. There was one king though who preferred Western architecture so there was quite a bit of that scattered around as well, which seemed a touch out of place. We got to see the Emerald Buddha (which is actually made from Jade - go figure) and lots of monks where walking around so it was an interesting experience.
Thursday A very lazy day, I went to the gym before breakfast which I thought was very keen, but I realside it was probably my last opportunity to workout properly for 6 months so I gave it one last shot. I was sweating walking to the gym so you can imagine what I looked like actually doing weights and riding on the exercise bike. Note to self: don't try and do exercise in 100%!h(MISSING)umidity ever again.
Sunbaked by the pool again (me lying on my tummy this time, so as to even up the sunburn). Started pouring which was lame, so we stayed inside for most of the arvo. Decided to go out to the market stalls lining the street and buy some token Thai souvenirs. I bought a rip-off Lacoste t-shirt (very wise investment) and a bag, Mags bought a couple of trinkets and her trademark snowglobe!
We were then very boring, went and packed all our gear and waited 3 hours in the lobby for the airport transfer and then 3 hours at the airport for our flight to London. So by the time we were crammed into our oh so claustrophobic seats on our BA flight, we were thrilled to be there and looking forward to 12 hours of babies crying, turbulence and shitty food - but that is another story!
Funny bits that went down in Bangkok Before we even got on the plane in Adelaide, our check-in lady pulled Maggie up for having a different name on her e-ticket to that on her Passport. Woohoo! Go STA, you guys are the best... Thank god we didn't have any trouble anywhere else.
Gave Bell Boy at hotel 400 baht as a tip, we then spent the next half an hour spewing that we'd just given him an $80 tip - we were to later work out that it was only $20 as I had only exchanged $60 worth of baht to begin with (still an outrageous tip though, he left the room beaming the smug bastard!!)
Numerous nutritious picnics in our room with stoled breakfast rolls, tins of tuna, vegemite, etc.
Mega overcharging of drinks - 40baht for a litre bottle of sprite in a shop vs 220baht for 2 glasses of sprite at the bar (bloody outrage it is!)
Ending up stealing from the maid's cart - we ran out of toilet paper...
Thai man playing piano in the hotel lobby singing easy listening songs you would hear on Mix 102.3 - only he couldn't pronounce the letter 'l' so it was amusing, especially with all the love songs!
Our airport transfer driver stopped on the side of a 5 lane highway suddenly, throws on the hazards and starts fiddling with something near the gearbox. Mags thinks she's about to kill us because she had just taken the piss of the King and Queen who were on a billboard we had just passed. I thought she was looking at a map, which was dumb because we were on the only road leading to the airport itself...
At the airport, we weren't allowed to go to the bloody toilet, because we had passed security but we weren't allowed to go into the boarding area! What made matters worse was that they were playing instrumental versions of rock ballads (think Bon Jovi - Bed of Roses) over the loudspeakers, which was thoroughly enjoyable!
Lastly, oh my god, they all idolise their King - there are photos of him everywhere around the city. The even all wear yellow polo shirts to celebrate the day he was born. So very bizarre, I can't imagine anyone in Aus doing that for little Johhny Howard.
Anyway, I think that sums up our Bangkok experience. The next entry on London will be coming soon.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.074s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 5; qc: 44; dbt: 0.036s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb