Advertisement
Published: July 18th 2007
Edit Blog Post
hello there... still very behind i'm afraid peeps, as actually in Chiang Mai right now, but i'll try and give you the 'word' on whats been 'happening'...
Bangkok. As i'm sure you already know - shopping and traffic. both of which are in abundance! The traffic is as fucking ridiculous as everyone says. i mean it is gridlock, constantly. And not only are all the roads, 4 lane on either side roads at that, packed solid, but there's always a sneaky motorboke or tuk tuk trying to squeeze into the 30cm gap between lanes! Perhaps unsurprisingly, we were almost in an accident, when, as we were speeding dfown the road in our tuk tuk (seriously, its like riding on a toy!) a taxi tried to take the space our vechicle was occupying. Dear god it was nerve wracking! hge went right for us and we had to swerve into the next lane, obviosuly with oncoming traffic... and frankly out there a tuk tuk is like a very small weak tortoise wandering through a gang or rampant rhinos. yeh, that was a rubbish metaphor. I'm a little tipsy. and HOT! (which isn't something all you folks in england will know
about heh heh heh). ANYWAY! what did strike me was thoguh the roads are absurd, transport is still worse in london in other ways. I mean, when you get on a bus in Bangkok, you don't pay straight away. you just sit down, and the guy wnaders over to you later when he can be arsed to collect your fare. And no matter how LAZY he seems (i swear its like the New Deal with all the fake jobs they got round these parts!), he always knows who has and hasn't paid yet. Imagine that in London? Where we're packed to the rafters on buses, meshed into one massive person, and frankly if you could hide from paying, you would!
But yeh, just a thought! So in Bangkok we went to the infamous Khoa San Rd. After our 20 hour journey of hungover PAIN, me and shell went to the first available cafe for a big nasty brekkie, and to wait for sofia who was in the vicinity. it was about 7am, and was suspiciously packed with westerners (farang - as we're called here. apparently),mainly English i hasten to add. Yeh, you got it, the English hadn't all suddenyl
thought, hmmm, lets get up early today, have a hearty breakfast, and see the sights of bangkok... no, they were pissed and had been out all night. We sensed it was a party kind of place...
We of course did some shopping while we were there... more MASSIVE malls! we went MBK which is an 8-floorer. The best bit was the food court. Beats the Ilford Exchange hands down people. I had one of my best asian dinners there, for about 80p. Oh yeh, have you heard the rumours that in thailand they have deep friend cockraches and other nasty things? Well, its true. We sawe it. But to be hinest, i reckon its more for the tourists than anything... but it was pretty goddamn gross nonetheless! Did i sample a deep-fried grasshopper.... Well, no. Come on people, i've only just starting eating eggs again! You're pushing it a bit there....
whats else... we went to more wats, some very impressive ones, and the Grand Palace - formal residence of our beloved King (we even saw an album of the shop of music by the king, reworked by some orchestra. Thats pretty cool for a king no? I
love the king). One of the wats had the biggest buddha i could have ever imagined! Its gold, and 45metres long and 15m high! Seriously! Even his feet wre bloody 3 metres high! It really was amazing, and the pics just ain't gonna convey it. but hey, have a look anway! Being all into the Thai culture and Buddhism, and that, we even went to do a Meditation course. see what the fuss was all about. It was alright actually, interesting... what you bascially have to do is consider every move you make. whatever it is. the focus is on your breathing, and just sitting there, thinking about your stomach 'rising, rising, rising,'and 'falling', falling, falling'. The best was the meditating walking. i swear it takes a minute a step. and you don't even want to know about turning around. Phew-ew! and when you're not doing anything, you return to think about breathing... and when your mind wanders, you ahve to drag it back. and so on... its really tiring actually! but what i realised as they explained it was that i bloody meditate all the time! i just didn't know it! Thats how i get to bloody sleep by
thinking about my breathing... and i see funny clours and pictures everythime i close my eyes. I'm probablyt a Buddhist master already, and i didn't even know it. I always knew i was gifted... anyway, it was fun! Afterwards we went out into the amulet market, where they all buy their charms, like the ones we were given in Nakhon Sri Thammerat. The hundreds of stalls of amulet related goods were interspersed with ones selling false gums and teeth. Quite a combo....
We also went to the Floating Market, which i;m sure you have heard of or can imagine... we meandered through a load of stalls (most of them selling tourist related crap nowadays) on a little boat. It was actuially really nice, relaxing... but special. I was also amusied by the selling technique of the stall holders... i mean they were just reeling off randon sales pitches to noone in particular, sounding even less intersted in saying it then we were i hearing it. 'you want buy souvenir...?'. What else... we went to the Erawan Shrine, which is this random shrine in the middle of the city, next to a main road, underneath an overpass and the skytrain, which is of massive significance to the Thai Buddhist, and constantly rammed with worshipping people. It was quite a juxtaposition (i hope thats the right word... i'm not gonna check. I'll be well proud aat my linguistic capability if it is. thats what a few beers does for ya). I couldn't tell if i was choking on the horrific traffic fumes, or on the cloud of incense that surrounds the shrine. The best thing about the shrine though is that people makes wishes on it, and if they come true they have to tahnk the shrine. the consequence of this is a sort of house thai music and dance troupe, who you take a number and queue uo deli-style for, so you can sit in front of them while they do a little dance of thanks for you to the shrine! Its genius!
So yeh, that was pretty much bangkok! and I did all this and more with the bare minimum of sleep, and absolutely no catch up post-kho pangnan. This is probably the reason behind my losing my sim card, and my sulky refusal to get up early on the morning we were meant to leave. You knoiw when you just reach the end of your tiredness tether. I mean, i had been consistently tired for a week, REALLY tired, i lost my O2 sim card (40 smackeroons on that bad boy) AND it was Dave's birthday and i was missing it (ahhhhh. I here you all say sarcastically). That evening, our last in Bangkok, wasn't all bad though. We went to a salsa club, as sofia is addicted, but the beers were well pricey in there so me and shell sloped off to cheaper climes. So there we are, having abeer in thecentre on bangkok, traffic streaming all around us, concrete as far as the eye can see... ad as i'm taring out with my Singha, into the terrifying traffic, what wanders into my eyeline? an elephant. Yes sir. and elepahant. a little baby on at that! it was a well wortna double take! Some pikey bloke, bloody drags that little elephant around the grey, pollution ridden concrete jungle that is Bangkok of an evening, trying to get westerners in bars to give him a few baht to feed the elephant he drags around with him! Now, THAT was random.
I'll stop here, and and try and squeeze the next places into one blog... actually, can i be arsed now? oo, you'll have to wait and see! xxxx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.13s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 7; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0943s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb