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Published: February 21st 2008
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Tuk tuk
Less likely to turn over than an ambulance with LLoyd driving... Our flight from Auckland to Bangkok took us first to Sydney, and flying over the Opera House and The Harbour Bridge on a clear afternoon felt like a home coming. But with just three hours in the airport before continuing on to Thailand there was no time for sentimental visits, instead we would just view the City longingly from the airport departure lounge.
Then followed the worst flight I've ever been on. After a dodgy take off (I'm no expert, but that was bad) we were warned that we may experience some turbulence on a few occasions during the flight. In reality we had about 7 hours of it. The sort that made me wonder just how much shaking a plane could take before it would start to break up. At one point I looked out of the window to see if the plane had any engines or whether it was just the flapping of the wings that would get us there.
However it was achieved, get there we did, and what we expected to be a lottery of swindlers and rip-off merchants waiting to con us out of our hard earned cash for the journey into the city of
Back streets
Our hostel could be found in amongst streets of kitchens and washing. Bangkok turned out to be anything but. And soon we arrived at our very tidy accommodation in a back street that we may never have found on our own.
We spent our first few days in Bangkok wondering what all the fuss was about. We walked from our hostel to the Grand Palace seemingly unnoticed with only the odd gesture from tuk-tuk drivers offering lifts, but that was about all. Here we viewed the much worshipped Emerald Buddha and a bit further down the road the massive Reclining Buddha at 45m in length, and finished entirely in gold leaf.
We tentatively delved into the world of satisfying our hunger by means of food from the street vendors. This is always a bit of a lottery, where the food falls into two main catagories:
1. You recognise something that you definitely don't want.
2. Failing to recognise or identify exactly what that thing is, that looks mildly appealing.
This of course is all down to a difference in culture and eating habits which bluntly put means, unlike the locals, we're not really that enthusiastic about dining on something that's just been hooked out of the Chao Phraya River (Bangkok's
The Reclining Buddha.
At 45m long, takes up slightly less room than Sean in the crew room on nights. main river/sewer) and still contains both head and bones. However, we endeavour to give most things a try and nearly everything comes with rice. We made the mistake at one stall when offered "no-spyseee or spyseee?" to go for the latter - this resulted in both our mouths being on fire within the first few spoonfuls.
We've been caught in a Bangkok down pour in which the heavens opened to produce joined-up rain.
We've travelled using the skytrain and of course those ever present tuk-tuks.
We've travelled down and across the Chao Phraya river on a variety of boats.
Our second night here we sat ringside at the local Arena for an evening of Muay Thai (Thai Boxing).
And we also found the 'nightmare Bangkok', that we all hear so much about. The one that kinda makes you wanna leave before you've even arrived.............. The Khao San Road.
For us, this place is exactly what you don't want to see when you visit a foreign city and yet tourists and backpackers flock here in their thousands and make it just that. We saw more westeners down this street, during the 5 minute walk from one end to the
other than we did during our fist two days across the city. The pierced and tattooed fraternity with their dreadlocks and braided hair calling themselves 'travellers' on the grounds that they don't work or wash. Wandering the same tiny stretch of an otherwise sprawlling capital city because that's where they'll be able to satisfy their westernised palate, listen to club anthems, drink pints of stella and smoke gear, ending the night with a Thai prostitute. Although only a five minute walk away, our little back street hostel (still only 20pound/night) and this hell hole seem worlds apart.
Our stay in Bangkok should have only been a day or two, but with nice accommodation and plenty to see, that doubled.
We've been too late to get anything but 3rd class travel on a train down to Krabi, and as an overnight journey, this isn't a good option as theft from foreigners' luggage is extremely high. So instead we've booked ourselves two seats on a coach for a 12 hour overnighter down south, which neither of us are looking forward to, but hopefully the destination will be worthwhile and we hope to do some diving whilst on the southwest coast, where
Bangkok sunset
Along with the ever-present tuk-tuks. we'll put our feet back into the Indian Ocean........
Did think about combining all of Thailand in one blog, but due to possible difficulties with internet availabilty we'll publish as we go.
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