Bangkok on my lonesome

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The 18 hour journey stated with a bus over to the other side of the island, followed by a 2 hour ferry. At the ferry teminal I then took a minibus to the ticket office for the bus, which I thought I'd already obtained :s. Exchanging my ticket for another ticket I then took a Tuk-Tuk to another office, and got a sticker, and then took a tuk-tuk to where the bus would, I was promised, eventually pick me up. It was 2 hours late. Finally I was on the last vehicle to Bangkok, and could get some rest. I was beginning to regret choosing the budget option of travel.

Arriving near Khao San at about 9ish, I decided to check out a couple of guesthouses off the main road, as they were rumoured to be cheaper, and away from those bloody croaking frog women.

About 5 minutes walk from the police barrier end of Khao San is My House Guesthouse, which cost me 180 Baht a night, about 2 pounds fifty, bargain. In fact, everything seems to be cheaper around this hotel, I managed to stock up on some books for 100 Baht each, about 1/4 the price of KS rd book exchanges! There was, however, the occasional croaking frog lady, but you don't get nearly as harrassed as you do on the main strip.

Why the Vietnamese need your passport for 3 working days to grant you a visa I don't know, but they do, so I was stuck in Bangkok for 4 days until I could fly to Ho Chi Minh (Saigon). All the travel agents seemed to offer the same deal on the Vietnam visa, the only one of the countries in south east Asia that I'd visited where you couldn't get it on the border or at the airport. 1600 baht is the going rate.

I decided to go on a 3 in 1 tour the next day to the floating market, the bridge over the river Kwai, and the tiger temple in the Khanchanaburi region. I was picked up from the hotel and took a minibus, with people booked on different tours (confusing as hell), to the floating market. After a longboat ride down the canal, and seeing some Thai's who's boat had sank (see facebook pics), we arrived at the market and after about half an hour of taking pictures and accidently buying enough bananas to feed an army, I decided to have a butchers at the cobra show, seeing as I had another hour to kill.

The show started with a dude charming a king cobra, and milking it for venom. The guys then moved onto different snakes, firstly a python that was bloody massive, that apparently could jump up into the second row of the audience if the guy made a wrong move. I was safely in the middle of the rows. Suddenly the dude with the snake let go of its tail and it darted towards the crowd, half of which crapped themselves and ran from their seats, highly amusing. Once the snake was back in its cage the snake charmer came round with another king cobra for everyone to touch for good luck. When it came to my turn, he basically rested the cobra on my shoulder for the people in the row behind to touch, my life was in the hands of a guy who's just dropped a python about 5 minutes ago, slightly unnerving.

They then brought out a mongoose in a glass tank and the guy on the mic explained that mongooses eat cobras, and proceeded to show us how, by dropping a snake in the tank. A wild fight ensued, which the mongoose was clearly winning, biting the cobras neck, getting snake blood everywhere. Apparently, after 5 minutes, the cobra would be dead, so the fight was stopped after a minute or two. This would not have gone down too well with greenpeace or friends of the earth, and was actually quite shocking.

The grand finale involved 3 yellow and black rather nasty looking snakes, and one thai guy. The snakes were released and the guy wne about catching them one by one. He caught one with his right hand, one with his left, and just when I was wondering how the hell he was going to catch the other one with no hands left, he lunged to the floor with his face, and caught the last snake in his mouth! Absolute nutcase! That's something even I would have thought twice about trying.

After the cobra show I eventually found the right minibus for the next part of the tour, the fact that the tour guide had labelled with me with the wrong sticker didn't help the situation. About half an hour down the dual carrigeway, the driver pulled over to the hard shoulder and proceeded to reverse the bus the wrong way down the hard shoulder, whilst talking on his mobile. I wonder how many points on his licence he would have got back in the U.K.!

After asking for directions at some kind of farm, where he almost ran over 2 dogs and a chicken, the driver told us he no wknew where he was going and we arrived at the place for lunch only an hour and a half late. That coupled with having to wait for 3 Aussie birds to go to the toilet for half an hour, we were taken to the tiger temple first, as this shut at 4pm.

The tiger temple was bizarre. From what I gather it's a sanctuary for tigers, where the monks take in orphans and train them. On the walk up to the temple, just about all of Noah's ark were wandering about the grounds. When we got to the canyon where the tigers were, there was a queue, which when you got to the front, you handed your camera to one of the employees and another one literally held your arm at all times and walked you around various tigers which were loosely chained to the ground, whilst the person with the camera took photos of you sitting/crouching with the tigers. One of the tigers rolled over and the guide told me to lie on its belly! As soon as I put my hand on its stomach, it rolled back over and looked right into my eyes. The dude who was guiding me told me to step away quickly, so I did. It was a very surreal experience.

I was lucky enough to be wandering by one of the monks on my way out who had a cub with him that he was feeding. We were invited to sit with the cub and have a picture taken, and as I did, the cub decided to bite me! Just a little nip, like a puppy, but a tiger bite nonetheless.

On the way back to Bangkok we stopped at the bridge over the river Kwai, built by WWII POWs for the Japanese army. Next to the bridge was a museum expaining the history of the bridge. The weather had taken a turn for the worse and was bucketing down, but I thought I couldn't come this far and not take a walk on the bridge, so braved the conditions. It was then time to head back to Bangkok.

The next night I decided to go out and find some friends, so headed to Gilligans on Khao San. Sitting in a bar on your own in Bangkok is very strange. Firstly you notice loads of other older men sititng on their own too, and then you realise why they're there. In the space of about half an hour I was approached by about 4 differnent Thai women all wanting to 'chat' with me. One even gave her camera to the bar staff and started taking pictures of me! Luckily I got chatting to a couple of lads from North London, one is the son of Gordon Brown's bodyguard. When Gilligans closed, we headed to a rooftop bar called Gazebos where 800 Baht got 4 people in, and a huge bottle of Scotch. I finally made it back to the hotel at about 6am.

When I finally got my passport back, I headed to the airport, where I flew to Ho Chi Minh city.

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