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Published: December 10th 2010
We arrived in Bangkok at 6am after our overnight bus from Krabi, which went smoothly, and as we didn't have any accomodation booked we headed to the main backpacker district of Koh San Road. This road is lined with shops, bars and restaurants as well as street stalls and markets, and at 6am was still going from the night before. Tired, hungry and in need of a shower this wasn't what we needed, so after a fruitless search of the nearby roads to find some decent accomodation (this involved Scott running around trying to look for a nice place to stay at a nice price, not easy in one of the worlds biggest and busiest capital cities), plus by 8am it was already about 25 degrees. Luckily we soon found a nice little hotel with a pool not far away so jumped in a tuk tuk and headed there. The tuk tuks in Bangkok are similar to the ones in Krabi but they drive faster and beep a lot more!
After being shown to our room and freshening up we decided that, as it was still early, we should spend a few hours seeing the famous temples that Bangkok has
so many of, so we hired a tuk tuk driver for the day to take us to several temples and agreed on a fee of about £3 for the day. This was with the priviso that after 2 temples we would go to a tailors shop for 10 minutes so the driver can get his petrol paid for, something that most drivers ask passengers to do and you can't really say no. One thing to bear in mind here is that as we were visiting sacred places of worship we were told by the hotel to dress appropriately, so in the 35 degree heat we were covered right up, Vic in a long sleeve denim shirt, leggings, socks and trainers, and Scott in a long sleeve check shirt, combats and trainers, so we jumped in the tuk tuk and within 3 minutes were sweating as it was so so hot, and in addition to the heat you had the fumes from the millions of other veheicles either side of you while you sat in traffic in the open sided tuk tuk...not nice!
We visited the first 2 temples which were quite small and very nicely decorated with traditional oriental
features such as gold tipped roofs and marble floors, but immediatley realised that no one else we saw was covered up as much as we were anbd looked very cool (in the heat sense) in shorts and flip flops....doh! At least we were respectful even if were severly overheating. We then went in to the tailors shop where we pretended to be interested in hand made suits (Scott does want one but not that day, and the sales guy was relentless we ended up walking out after a few minutes) before jumping back in the tuk tuk to do to our 3rd temple of the day. When we got there the driver said 'there are a lot of steps to the top, when you finish i will meet you down here' so we said ok and started climbing up the steps, of which there must have been over 100. By this point we were so hot and we had no energy but when we got to the top the views over the city were awesome and the temple was the nicest we had seen so far, with gold buddhas everywhere, monks in traditional orange dress, and other Thai features. We
learnt here that over 90% of the thai religion is Buddism, something we didn't know before we came.
When we had finished here we climbed down the steps only to discover our driver had gone and left us! We waited for over 15 minutes for him and even walked round the whole carpark twice in case he was somewhere else, but no he was gone, we presumed it was because he had got his petrol money already but we hadn't paid him anything yet so at least we didn't lose out. We got another tuk tuk who would only take us to the last 2 temples and back to the hotel if we stopped at another shop for him to get his petrol money, so reluctantly we agreed but only if whe didn't charge us anything, which he agreed to! So we set off (via another pushy tailors) to the biggest temple of them all, The Grand Palace. The Thai King lives here and as it was his birthday weekend the main entrance was closed, but there was a part of the temple you could see for free so we went round the corner to see this part, only
to be told Vic couldn't go in wearing leggings as they were too sexy?! So she hired a very attractive sarong to put over the top from the local woman outside (how convenient) and we went inside. If we were feeling a bit templed out by this point, this gave us a boost as it was just stunning inside, again various gold buddha statues and a buddha with an emerald in its centre, one of the most valuable artifacts in any temple in Thailand. It was awesome to see and worth the sarong incident.
We then left and wanted the tuk tuk driver to take us to the last temple of the day, Wat Po, as this is home to the largest gold reclining buddha in the world. The traffic was bad by this point and lots of roads were closed due to the kings birthday, the tuk tuk driver was getting more annoyed and kept saying 'Wat Po no wat po no' which made us laugh at first but then he insisted we go tomorrow so we got out and walked the remainder to the temple as we were determined to see it that day. This was the
only temple we had to pay to go in to but it was beautiful again and the reclining buddha was absolutely massive! Happy that we had seen it but wanting to get back to the hotel we jumped on a river boat (the temple was on one side, our hotel was on the other) and cruised back to our hotel where we have never been so happy to see air con and have a cool shower!
That evening we went out to meet Jo and Tyson from Oz, who were on holiday in Thailand, and all went for dinner and a few drinks (very amusing trying to pick out lady boys and also watching a crazy man dance in the street - especially when Scott spotted two 60+ year old thai men raving to techno). We ended up in a club on the Koh San Road which played really good music until the small hours...good times, and we were really beginning to love Bangkok!
The next morning we were pretty tired so decided to have a quiet day at the hotel pool and catch up on some needed sleep. We met up again with Jo and Tyson that
night and decided to go to the Patpong area of Bangkok, an area known for its seediness but more so for its huge night market. We all had a good look round hte market which was huge, before having a lovely Thai dinner and a few drinks, before going to see a ping pong show. Now i know we had seen one already and we were not exactly desperate to see another one, but the others wanted to so we all went into one that was near the night market as the guy who was taking us in said it was free we just had to buy a drink. As we climbed up 2 flights of stairs and were led through a door which was quickly closed behind us we had a feeling tht this wasn't a great idea, and we were right when we went to pay for our drinks after 20 minutes (more than enough in there) and they tried to charge us over 5000 bht or we couldn't leave! We all argued and said no but the guy who was running the (obviously illegal) place got really aggressive with us so Scott the negotiator agreed a much
smaller sum (less than £10 total?!) to pay so we could leave. It was a hairy moment and when Scott saw the guy who had assured us it was free outside he ran off, clearly aware at what he had done. So definately no more of these shows for us! We then all went to a normal bar for a few games of pool before caling it a night.
Our last day in Bangkok was spent at the weekend market which was even bigger than the night market and is rumoured to have over 10,000 stalls! We had a good look round for a few hours and came out with nothing more than a vest each and a full stomach after munching on some great food from the street stalls, but it was good to see. We then went back to our hotel, got our bags and headed to the bus stop as that night the 4 of us (on two seprate buses) were going down to Koh Phangan, the island where the full moon parties are held, for its monthly Black Moon party and a bit of beach time after this manic city...
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William
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Thailand Great Tour
Great article. I am also in the travel industry and have been looking newsletter on thailand Tours & Travel. Because thailand has many beautiful places. Night life parties are major attraction of This Country. Your article help me lot to plan my next trip for thailand. Thanks buddy to share valueable stuff on travel in this article. I hope soon you will add more stuff on thailand.