Advertisement
Published: November 24th 2005
Edit Blog Post
Bangkok Palace
Finally we see it - sort of! Russell - So we need to get to our suit fitting. Not a problem, we have a map from the factory, we know how much a tuk-tuk should cost what could go wrong.
We went up to the first tuk-tuk we saw and showed him where we wanted to go. 30 Baht. Yes no arguements. We set off around the corner and the tuk tuk stopped. "You want suit I take you to cheap cheap place, very good." No were're fine for suits just take us to Venus factory. "No you go to my friend shop or you must pay more than 30 Baht." No you agreed the fee take us to Venus factory. After a lot of arguing he threw us out of his tuk-tuk in the middle of nowhere. Not knowing where we were we just grabbed another tuk tuk. He wanted 100Baht or would not help. Fine we have a map, we will walk. And we walked around and around in circles for over an hour and half. We did ask a couple of people but none of them spoke English as we were outside the tourist area. Despite their rough pointing we were none the wiser.
Group Aerobics
Mass Aerobics can only be done in yellow apparently In the end we did find someone who spoke English. "You are about 2km away." It seems our friendly helper the day before had marked it in the wrong place on our map. We hailed a cab and just gave him the map. he nodded and drove. 'Here" he said pointing to an empty shop. Oh that's not it. The driver got out and spoke to a tuk-tuk driver who came over. He explained where it was exactly and that the quickest way was on foot. So finally two hours late we arrived at the shop where we whisked upstairs for our fitting.
As I've said I've never had a hand made suit before and I was bit confused as what to say when presented with a suit with no arms. "How does it feel?" Like it needs arms? Anyway I have to admit the trousers did actually fit rather than mostly fit and the waist coat was pretty good too. I'll trust them on the arms. Lins was even more pleased to have a suit that fitted as I think she has always felt there was a conspiracy against people who didn't fit the standard mould. I did
At the palace
Nice hat Lins get a bit worried again when the tailor started to use something that looked like a knife to slash at the suit. Turned out to be a piece of chalk, but a sharp one mind. With the fitting complete and a promise the suits would be delivered to our hotel by 6pm as promised despite our tardiness we set off back to the backpacker district - on foot. It's easy when you know where you are to begin with! Of course this didn't stop at least a dozen people asking us if we wanted to go to the standing Buddha. Enough with the Buddha! After that only a stress free lunch followed by a swim in the hotel pool would do.
We decided that the next day we would go to the Royal Palace - honestly - and then head for Phuket to get some lazing on the beach done, I mean so we could go and support the Tsunami stricken regions of Thailand by our patronage.
After a morning swim and hearty lunch we headed for the palace on foot, feeling too scarred by our experiences to use the tuk-tuks. As we approached the park in front
Angkor Wat?
No it's just a model though it looks a lot more impressive than the real thing! of the palace we could see there was a large number of people around all wearing the same yellow T-shirts. We are not entirely sure what was going on but appeared to be a mass team aerobics competition, with people up on podiums showing the large crowds below how to exercise in time to the music. There were bus loads of them of all ages with some groups clearly the other side of 70 or even 80 showing the young'uns how it's done with the creative use of a loud hailer and mouth organ. It was fun to watch but of course we had a palace to see and as the guide book tells us it is only open from 1pm to 3:30pm. Normally that is. Of course this was yet another special holiday so the palace was only open from 3pm til 5pm and as we need to be catching a bus at 6pm on the other side of town it wasn't going to happen. Still the temple next door to the palace was open and you could walk the grounds so we did. We even splashed out on an audio tour which though interesting was narrated by the
Enlightenment
Russell achieves enlightenment sitting under the bonsai tree like Buddha most boring man I have ever heard. Shade was also an issue so we were quite literally melting in the sun but it was still an interesting day.
After the palace grounds we headed back to the hotel to pick up our bags have some food and prepare ourselves for a 15 hour (Any bets on how acurate that will be) overnight bus ride to Phuket. But the roads of Thailand are good so there is no reason to think we won't be able to sleep the whole way and wake up in sunny Phuket tomorrow.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.241s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 14; qc: 82; dbt: 0.1841s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
gayle whelan
non-member comment
they're all mad
Hey you two. I can't imagine a 15 hours bus ride in something as crazy as another bus! I'm just slightly confdused by the date though! it's actually teh 28th now, but your blog says the 19th! Are you writing this ten days late or are you really that far behind in that part of the world. (yes, I already know the answer to that!) In which case are you un phuket now or have you been there and now are somehwhere? It's horrid here - really windy and there's apparently blizzards on the way. Hmmm!! Catch up soon, xxx PS Russ, argument has just one e!!