Bye Bye Bangkok

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August 22nd 2009

Published: August 22nd 2009

Well since I last posted we have finished our time in Bangkok and all in all it was pretty good. We didn’t really get up to too much other than on the Wednesday when we went on an organised one day ‘trek’, but more on that later.

On the Sunday night we headed out for food on Khao San and went into the Centre Bar and as we were taken to our table as we sat down and on the adjacent table spotted some guys we knew from Uni, (Symo and a few others.) This was a pretty welcome surprise as Matt, Katie, Dave and Lauren couldn’t make it up to Bangkok in time it was nice to see some familiar faces. As the United-Birmingham game was on Andy and I stayed in the bar and then met up with the other guys a little later in a Live Music Bar, the bar was pretty cool, the music surprisingly good (some random Thai blokes doing all the classic covers) and the drink flowing. We also met up with these guys again on the Monday and Tuesday nights which was again good fun.

A couple of notes on the hostel we stayed (Phiman Water View Guesthouse), as I wrote last time there are lots dogs roaming about but the hostel itself is pretty cool and one of the more sociable guesthouses in Bangkok with a large patio/balcony overlooking the river, a pretty good place to relax and meet the other guests. The other guests appeared to be largely made up of Artists (or wannabe artists) and seasoned travellers (or again wannabes), all things considered a fairly interesting bunch. The hostel also had a policy where you could paint any designs you had on their walls this again was probably the attraction to many of the ‘artist’ guests. Also living in one of the buildings was ‘The Artist’, a pretty cool guy from Laos with a possibly unhealthy obsession of creating representations of male genitalia in his work, be it the creation of numerous wooden penises or representing them in almost every painting he did. He also told us that when he last returned to his home village (where he is quite the celebrity, being the first to move so far as Bangkok) he created “Giant Penis.” A bit strange.

On Wednesday we had our big day out of the week, we headed on an organised one day ‘trek’ booked through the hostel which would include a visit to the Bridge over the River Kwai, Elephant Riding, Bamboo Rafting, visiting a waterfall and handling baby tigers in the Tiger Temple. We set off at 7am so had to be up bright and early, despite only getting about 2-3 hours of sleep, (largely due to having no discernable sleeping pattern), we somehow made it onto the tour. In doing so we encountered several forms of transport during the day and in a rather hazy state we were guided on and off transport at some rate. Firstly we were guided to the end of our road and then directed onto a tuk-tuk, this took us about 100 yards until we met some bloke and his car (definitely not a taxi) and then he drove us about 2 minutes to Khao San Road were we once again disembarked and joined a minibus. This minibus drove us for about 5 minutes until we came to a petrol station and again were asked to get off and onto yet another minibus, was pretty confusing considering the time of day.

After a long drive in this minibus we finally came to our first stop for the day, a graveyard of the POWs who died in the construction of the Death Railway, a really interesting and pretty horrifying story, this was a quite dramatic and sobering place but due to a lack of sleep and abundance of hunger I feel we didn’t really get to take in the full experience. Before we got back on the minibus to head to the bridge I grabbed what I assumed were some small frosted doughnuts, and my assumption was almost correct. As I bit into the first one I realised that almost was a long distance from correct. They were a doughnut of sorts and had frosted sugar on the outside but what I did not bargain for was the curry like filling, still don’t have a clue why anyone would create such a monstrosity. Anyhow after a short drive and an attempt to recover from this experience we arrived at the Bridge over the River Kwai, walking across the bridge submitted us to some monstrously intense heat. The bridge itself is quite impressive and the scenery again so(photos to follow). We then had our breakfast of Coconut milk and an ice cream, not ideal but the best we could find. Also at this stop was the JEATH Museum, but due to tight time constraints we did not get chance to have a look around, although after speaking two some middle aged blokes from Australia who missed the bridge and saw the museum it sounded like we got the better deal.

Following this we again changed minibuses, well actually this time the rest of our group left us and we were joined by a few different people and headed for the Bamboo Rafting. This was as dull as I remembered from my last visit to Thailand, as relaxing the ride and impressive the scenery all in all it’s a bit dull. Following this we had a Thai lunch and then got to ride elephants, again this was a mere taster lasting about 10 minutes, the elephants were fun but it is a little sad to see them in chains. The next stop on the agenda was at the waterfall, here we got chance to swim(well not really swim as it was a bit shallow and small) which was a great relief considering the heat, again we were not allowed too much time here and almost got lost attempting to find our way back to the Sangathew (Sort of open-backed van with two benches). Upon eventually finding people from one of our groups, about 15 mins after the scheduled meeting time, we found out we had not got lost as both our tour guide and vehicle had changed while we were at the waterfall and we had been standing on the road opposite them, great communication.
We then picked up a few more people and headed for our last stop of the day, the Tiger Temple. This was probably the part of the day I was most looking forward to, not knowing much about the Death Railway and having done all the other activities last time in the north of Thailand the chance to get close to some tigers sounded like fun. Unfortunately before we departed we were not informed that the entrance fee for the Tiger Temple was not included in the tour price, also we weren’t told that the entrance fee was 500 Baht (about 10 quid), consequently we had not brought enough money for us both to get in. Thoroughly annoyed we headed back on the next minibus back to Bangkok taking a gruelling two and a half hours, made gruelling due to the previous lack of sleep, annoyance at the tiger temple fiasco and general discomfort of travelling in a packed minibus. Overall the tour was ok, it ensured that we left the hostel and actually did something productive with our day but for 20 quid it could have been better and the Tiger Temple experience really soured the day. Also in attempting to cram so much into one day it felt as if we never really experienced any of the activities but only sampled them.
The following was our last day in Bangkok and we had left ourselves a fair bit of stuff still to do, due to this we had a fairly quiet night and then headed out at the hideously early time of 1030am to the MBK shopping centre. It wasn’t the most eventful day but I managed to buy a few bits of clothing to take onwards to China. We left the MBK at about half 2 and figured that we’d have to be getting a taxi to the airport at about 5 in order to check-in on time. We headed straight to the tailors to pick up Andy’s shirts and trousers and then had to rush back to get travellers cheques exchanged, grab some food and finish packing, it all got a bit hectic and we ended up getting the taxi at about twenty to six and the traffic in Bangkok was almost at a standstill. The taxi driver predicted a one and a half hour journey to the airport which we figured would leave us about 15 minutes to check in before the desks shut, a bit too close for comfort. Fortunately the Taxi driver was quite the pessimist and we made it with about 40 minutes to spare, a wealth of time. After miraculously coming in within the baggage limit we headed through the gate and after a quick Burger King said farewell to Bangkok. Whilst the time in Bangkok was undoubtedly fun it was just about enough and despite the comforts of cheap western goods, Premiership football, English menus and ice cold beers it was time to move on.

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