Advertisement
Published: January 10th 2008
We left Fukuoka on a plane bound for
Bangkok - with stopovers in Dalian and Beijing and our flight arrived in Bangkok at midnight. We had no idea where we were going to stay. We organized a taxi to backpacker area - Khao San road - and we were on our way. We actually wanted to stay on Soi Rambuttri, a more laid-back street close to the never ending party and street vendors of Khao San road. The taxi let us off at the bottom of the street and oop - the first person we see is a very convincing lady boy (man dressed as a woman)! Too funny. Soi Rambuttri is a very cool, slow paced street lined with street vendors, bars, restaurants, Thai massage parlors, custom tailor shops, internet cafes, and most importantly for us at the time, guesthouses. The street is completely tailored to the lazy backpacker, so if you"re looking for the authentic Thai experience, this is definitely not the place.
The first four guesthouses we walked into were full but we eventually found a vacancy a little up the road. It was about 2 am. After staying in Japan for so many months, and spending
Wat Po
Amazing architectureabout 50 - 70 Canadian a night (at the cheaper hostels) we were thrilled to find a room at a guesthouse for 200 Baht a night (about 6 Canadian dollars). Our room was basic (four walls, fan, double bed) but it did the trick!
One of the first things we noticed about Thailand is that almost everyone speaks English. This is very different from Japan, where we thought only about 10% of the population did. It makes Thailand a very easy country to travel in.
We woke up and had cold showers (not too bad in a hot climate) and enjoyed our first of many "backpacker breakfasts" - a heaping bowl of muesli, yogurt and fresh fruit from a street vendor that cost about 1 Canadian dollar. So good! We love Soi Rambuttri. With it's stray dogs, bars showing movies throughout the day (The Beach is shown every day!), smiling Thai shop owners, low prices, and backpackers from all over the world, it's easy to see why it's such a popular destination.
Our first day we strolled Soi Rambuttri and Khao San. We spent most of the day planning the first leg of our Thailand travels, and
Wat Po
We reckon if this guy had to go for a pee, the whole place would collapse. arranging visas for Laos. We hired a taxi and went to Lumphini Park and strolled over to Suan Lum night Bazaar, where we ate dinner. The food is fantastic and every time we order we can't believe it's so cheap! We had yellow curry and pineapple fried rice, fresh fruit shakes for all less than 5 Canadian dollars. Ok we will stop reporting how much everything costs!!
We hired a
Tuk Tuk and told our driver that we hoped to see some Thai boxing. He informed us that due to the death of the
king's sister, it was cancelled but he offered "If you like sport, why not go ping-pong show?" We said sure and wow it was very different from what we expected! We both had to wipe our brows after that performance!
We hired another Tuk Tuk (it's kind of fun haggling with them) and headed back to Khao San road. We wanted to walk it at night. It is much livelier at night and it is great for some people-watching! We had a few drinks and headed back to our guesthouse for some much needed sleep.
The next day we woke up to a cold
shower and the backpacker's breakfast then headed to
Wat Phra Kaew - the emerald Buddha temple. Beautiful pagodas and decadent shrines made this place nice to visit. The
Grand Palace was closed, again as a result of the death of the King's sister. We continued on to
Wat Po - home to the reclining Buddha. Reclining Buddha is huge 46 metres from head to toe and 15 metres high! We stopped for lunch at a restaurant called Tuk-Tuk's with the tag line "Mention in your guide book". We said "ok, we'll take your word for it!". We enjoyed very good middle-eastern food and fresh fruit shakes.
It was very hot and we noticed one of the bars was going to play the movie "I Am Legend" at 7:00pm so we thought we'd check that out. We grabbed a seat with a good view of the TV and ordered a few Thai beers. We noticed several people sit down in the bar without ordering anything, hoping to watch the movie. The owner of the bar put on the movie it was a terrible bootleg copy taken from a shaky handy cam. The owner then turned to the people who hadn't ordered anything and said
Wat Po - Reclining Buddha
We were half expecting the Buddha to actually be reclining, like in a lazy-boy. Sorry, bad joke "Sorry, this copy too bad. We can't watch this bad copy". Sure enough all of the people who hadn't ordered anything rolled their eyes and got up and left! Then the owner positioned a table in the best spot in front of the TV for the two of us and said "They never order anything!" and put on a perfect quality version of the movie! We laughed so hard. So that means he has two copies of the movie, one to trick loiterers, and the other for paying customers! The other hilarious part of the movie was the english subtitles were on but were so poorly translated (as the movie is not yet "officially" out on DVD!). At one point Will Smith says "Bob Marley" but the subtitle says "Bart Marley"! We laughed so hard at that and the next day when one of his songs came on we said "Isn't this Bart Marley"! Ha! We had amazing Pad Thai and after the movie the owner put on Notting Hill. It was great to relax and watch some movies over a few beers.
The next day was our last day in Bangkok and we had booked a day trip
Wat Po - Reclining Buddha
Really really big Buddha with avg. sized human to the
Damnoen Saduak floating market. We checked out of our hostel, checked our bags, and began the day trip. On the way we met a nice girl from Scotland named Kerry and spent the day with her. We had a 1.5 hour van ride, followed by a 20 minute banana boat ride through the canals to the market. Although a bit of a tourist trap, it was still colourful and a neat experience. Hundreds of wooden boats bump their way through narrow canals while women peddle their wares by hooking your boat and pulling you alongside them for the ten seconds it takes to pass. If you see something you like, you can slow the boats down for the transaction, but if not, you just pass by. We tried several new foods (we have no idea what it was called!) and it was fun to buy the food out of a boat!
We headed back to Soi Rambuttri and had a few hours to kill before our train ride out of town so we decided to get an authentic Thai massage! Wow it was great...and extremely painful! We lay side by side while two diminutive Thai women worked their magic on
The famous Khao San Road
Seems like anything can happen on this street. our sore muscles. Those girls are strong! And funny. They bent us like pretzels and laughed whenever we would say "AAAH!" or "OW OW!". They would say "No Pain No Good!" or "Thai massage # 1" or "Hello handsome man from Canada!". It was hilarious and we felt amazing after, although painful during! We still had time to kill after the massage so we headed to
Wat Arun - which ended up being our favourite temple in Bangkok. Steep stairs and a beautiful view of the city.
We met up with Kerry and her boyfriend Tim and had dinner and drinks then it was time to catch our overnight sleeper train to
Surat Thani. After being in Japan for so long we grew accustomed to their punctual train service! Our train from Bangkok was only 35 minutes late so that's not too terrible. It was a funny experience and the rickety rockity motion of the old railroad made it feel like we were trying to sleep on a roller coaster. 10 hours later we arrived at our destination, and were immediately herded onto a bus. 3 hours later we were being herded onto a boat with dozens of other backpackers and
2.5 hours later we had arrived at our destination: the beautiful island of
Ko Pha Ngan.
We loved our hotel. A bungalow with a beach view and a private bathroom. A very nice place with a quiet beach - just what we were looking for! We relaxed at the bar and watched the sunset over a few Thai beers. The next day we took a taxi into
Haad Rin - the biggest city on the island. We booked a few tours for the next few days and arranged transport out of the city, for the next leg of our journey. We had lunch on sunset beach - the beach famous for the full moon festival. Every beach here is breathtaking! Later we walked to a private beach and sunbathed away the afternoon while sipping cocktails until the sun set. We enjoyed the rest of the night hanging out in the town and grabbed some dinner and drinks.
Today was our most scenic day yet! We booked a day tour to visit Ang Thong National Marine Park. In the morning we snorkelled in the park. Unfortunately it wasn't too clear but the water was so nice and we enjoyed swimming around for
a bit. From there we visited Emerald Lake, a beautiful green-coloured lake in the middle of one of the islands. It was really beautiful and was also one of the shooting locations for the movie "The Beach". We went to another island and ate a delicious Thai lunch with a couple from Norway and enjoyed the view! Our last stop of the day was definitely the best! We stopped at another island and climbed to the top of a long rocky trail called Pha Jun Jaras Nature Trail. It took us about 40 min. to get to the top - using hands and feet and trees to hoist ourselves up. Some parts seemed to be straight up! It was also very hot and humid, so we were exhausted when we finally reached the top. We should have suspected it was a tough climb when we realized we were the only two people out of 20 on the tour that wanted to climb to the viewpoint (the rest went kayaking or sat on the beach)! However, we were not disappointed and our efforts were definitely worth it! The view was breathtaking. We could see around the whole park (which is made
up of 42 different islands). Happy and exhausted, we had to start heading back down to meet the tour group. It was such a great day.
We're heading off to another island tomorrow for the day and then we're crossing over to the west coast to stay in Khao Sok National Park. We'll try to update as often as possible, but on some of the islands internet access seems to be quite expensive with a slow connection!
Hope everyone is well, and thanks for reading!
Love, Michelle and Travis
Advertisement
Tot: 0.176s; Tpl: 0.019s; cc: 15; qc: 81; dbt: 0.0828s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
WanderlustTarrants
Wanderlust_Tarrants
Great Blogs!
Love your blog... only 23 sleeps until we fly out on our adventure... your story is inspiring! Cannot wait!