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MBK Centre
Shits over Bluewater AND Lakeside......Right then, where were we when Verlie last spoke to you? We were about to leave Bali, and head to Thailand.
Before that though indulge me if you will in a couple of paragraphs about leaving the hostel.…………
It was tough for me. Verlie was always the social butterfly, and bonded with a good few people, and became very close with them. For me as I’ve mentioned before in this blog, being at the hostel, even at 11pm on a Saturday night, I’m still at work. Imagine half a dozen of your mates spending your working hours with you every day. Unless you work for Dunder Mifflin Sabre or Wernham Hogg, having a laugh with your mates isn’t high on the old working day agenda. Subsequently, I never really let myself go, and felt that our friends never really saw the best of me.
So I left the hostel with a feeling that the people I really liked, people I’m proud to call friends, people I hope I will remain friends with for the rest of my life, only saw glimpses of the real Mark. I know (hope!) they all understand. The come dine with me 7, Marije, Trevor, our friends
Siam Paragon
Outside the Bangkok "Harrods" from the very early days, Rich, Carina and Marc, Krystal, Kev, Dana, thanks for making the job such a pleasure……….
Moments like this make it so worthwhile.............. Also I’ve had a tattoo, I’ve been thinking about it for a number of years, but I’ve never seen anything I liked enough to have it permenantly inked onto me. I was looking at the Spurs website a few weeks ago and the club logo is there, and I thought about the club motto “Audere Est Facere” I’ve always known this was the club motto and that it was latin and meant “ To Dare is To Do” looking at it now, I felt, even without being a Spurs supporter, the words meant enough to me, to have it tattooed. I was a bit worried, in my minds eye I can VERY CLEARLY see and hear Del Trotter going “Odaray Est Facaray…….to dare is to do Rodders”
It didn’t hurt, except the final letter which is right over the veins in my wrist, and hurt quite a lot. I checked the spelling about 20 times before I went to the Tattooist in Northbridge, it cost $250 and I didn’t faint after one letter!!
So we flew to Bangkok, the
sin city. The rat infested den of inequity where muggers and pick pockets are stalking you whenever you step onto the street. Street vendors are hassling you every 10 paces and you can’t turn any corner without being propositioned by lady-boys who don’t want to take you on a walk, rather a 25 mile hike, on the wild side………..Don’t believe the hype! It’s nothing like that at all. It’s one of the cleanest cities I’ve been to. Street vendors in comparison to the Bali hard sellers are positively disinterested! I haven’t been offered any mind boggling sexual encounters, although I did have a rather lovely massage earlier tonight, more of that later. As I said to Verlie earlier, if Bali is Grays town centre, Bangkok is Bluewater. It’s AWESOME here, our hostel/hotel is literally 30 seconds from the skytrain station, and about 5 mins walk from the biggest shopping centre either of us have ever been in, and location of the aforementioned massage.
We flew to Thailand with Air Asia, and it was a shit flight. We both had horrible colds, were tired and both of our ears were killing us due to the air pressure as we took off
from Denpasar. You are not allowed to take drinks you buy onto the plane even though there are two MASSIVE signs as you exit passport control/security that say “yes, you can take drinks bought here onto the plane” turns out this is only duty free. So 2 litres of flammable liquid per person is ok, but not a pepsi max and a water….right, yep seems fair……..you can buy drinks on the plane though……3 times the normal price, cash only…….
With Air Asia you can pre-book your in-flight meals. I ordered 2 chicken foccacia’s for us, sounded nice. When they came it was actually chicken, ham, salad and some rancid prawn cocktail looking dressing. I flipping hate it when you look at something on the menu and all the ingredients are not listed. Ok I expect a bit of salad in a roll or whatever, but come on……..I binned mine straight away, Verlie did the same after one bite. As per usual the stewardess look at me like I’d just shat on her head because I didn’t like the airplane food she’d served……..I’d rather go hungry, than eat that, and for me, that’s really saying something………..
So for convenience and comfort,
we took a taxi to the hostel, Lub d Bangkok, Lub d means "nice sleep" in Thai. After checking in and dropping off our bags, food was the number one priority, but where to eat in a city you don’t know? Sitting outside the hostel we spied a fellow guest coming back with a McDonalds bag, after a long day and nothing to eat, that would do for now, so we set off in search of the golden arches and what we found was the biggest shopping centre in Asia….probably. After literally 200 yards we came upon the MBK centre, a monolith of a shopping centre, it’s so big it’s got a (fake) Ikea INSIDE OF IT!!! And not one but TWO McDonalds’…………. We had pizza in the end…………The next day we spent exploring our surroundings and getting our bearings, and posing for photo’s with giant ducks, taking it easy as our big day was next and we didn’t want to be too knackered!
We were up at the ungodly hour of 430am the next day for our long awaited trip to the Bridge on the River Kwai, the Tiger Temple and Elephant Camp. Our tour guide Kung from the
Monks At The Temple
Offering the Monks some Brekkie highly recommended Tours with Tong called and left a message for us the night before, reminding us of the pick-up time of 5am and to not to forget to charge our camera batteries and bring extra memory cards, she was not wrong, by the end of the day we had over 600 photo’s. We were collected at 5am by Kung and our Driver for the day as arranged, Kung was full of beans and as we left the (not so mean) streets of Bangkok behind for the Expressway towards Kanchanaburi Province, she filled us in on what to expect from the day, how we should behave around the monks and Tigers, and a general itinery. All delivered with great enthusiasm and gusto. I tried really hard to pay attention, but it was 5am and we’d had about 3 hours sleep between us the night before, such was our level of excitement.
Our first stop was the bridge on the River Kwai, made famous by the black and white movie of the same name, and a more recent one by Clint Eastwood I think, the name of which escapes me at the moment.
Just as we arrived a train came along
Monks At The Temple
Free Breakfast, you'd think they'd look happier..... so we jumped over the tracks to the other side for a photo opportunity. The usual street vendors were there, I bought some drink and some postcards. We posed on the bridge for photo’s I wondered what was an appropriate facial expression for a photo opportunity on the infamous “death railway” where, we were told by the ever informative Kung, that for each railway sleeper laid from Bangkok to Burma, 500 POW’s were killed. Looking back at the photo’s now I feel a bit of a lemon………So we jumped back into the car and headed onto the Tiger Temple………This was one of Verlie’s 30th Birthday presents and so She is taking up the blog from here….
Well it’s a beautiful day on the island of Koh Samui and a perfect time to while away the hours and continue where Mark left off. The drive towards the Temple was loooooong, it was great to get out of the city and see Thailand’s beautiful countryside with huge lush green mountains. I was so excited about the Tiger Temple and as we pulled inside I could hardly wait to jump out of the car. Kung had been briefing us on the order
of the day, the one thing I was worried about was the food offering to the Monks. All I could do was repeat the guidelines Kung had given us in my head and hope I didn’t screw it up. So in my head it went something like this:
Take off shoes
Hold food in both hands
Put food in Monks bowl
Do not smile, do not make eye contact
And Wei, which is the traditional Thai pray bow.
I’m pleased to report I only accidentally made eye contact with one Monk, surely it’s half his fault though? After this we were led along with 11 other people to the Temple, shoes removed again and a brief welcome from one of the handlers about the cubs. I have to admit I was hardly listening mesmerized by the huge cat I could see peering through the concrete pillars above. Once up the stairs we headed for one of the young cats who was 4 months old and started to feed him his bottle, they were chained in the temple as at 4months old all they want to do is play and were quite boisterous. After feeding we sat on the floor where
Tiger Cubs
Come back here you little bugger there were maybe 8 cubs from just 2 weeks to 4 weeks old. My heart melted a small bundle of fluff, their heads too large for their bodies and still learning to use their legs I could hardly believe they could ever be predatory. We were allowed to pick up the cubs but were warned not to put our hands near their mouths to prevent infection and also if they cried to put them down. As with any baby, as soon as I picked up a cub it cried, Mark however was a natural, the cubs loved him and were almost dozing in his hands.
Eventually I got some more courage and started rocking a cub with a Liverpool Football Club collar on, holding him under his front legs with his back legs hanging free; he started to doze as I rocked him from side to side. I was elated and totally infatuated and then I noticed he pooed on me! After a quick clean up he was wide awake and skidding about with his friends. It was boiling hot in the Temple, 14 Monks, 13 guests with their guides plus all the handlers and the Tigers I was struggling,
Teenage Cubs
Verlie being taken for a walk after a cool bottle of water we grabbed some breakfast. On offer was rice, curry, chicken, spicy beef and other spicy concoctions for 8:30am in the heat we ate a few mouthfuls before heading back to the cubs.
Cub time over, we waved goodbye and it was time to walk the 4-6 month olds down for their morning baths. How exciting, we grabbed a lead and were informed to stand to the side of the Tigers away from their heads and growing paws. Our young tiger was particularly cheeky, he decided to take us for a walk and at points I was running to keep up with him then when he’d had enough of that he would refuse to walk and play lets wrap the walker around the tree. We were one of the last to arrive at the Tiger bath, where not only the 4-6 month old were, but also teenage Tigers were joining us too. Now a teenage Tiger is big at least 4 times the size of the Tigers we had just walked and I don’t mind telling you that was the first time I was truly scared. Also, the term teenager makes me think of what
I was like, rebellious, unreliable and naughty so why would these teenage cats be any different? Not to mention their heads were bigger than mine which contained huge teeth and their paws were massive, did I really want to start rubbing shampoo on a teenage predatory animal and then spray it with water hoping it won’t mind??? No, I didn’t, Mark took the big Tiger and I was quite happy bathing a 6 month old. Once they were washed down and clean ‘KFC’ arrived! Buckets of roasted chickens were pulled apart for us to feed to the Tigers, some were more interested in playing than eating not that I minded really was just great to be so up close with them.
The next stage of our tour was to play with the teenagers in the waterfall enclosure. A chance for the Tigers to exercise and run around and play with each other before the hot midday sun got too much for them. Again I was pretty scared, when these cats were standing on their back legs they were taller than Mark but to be this close to big cats had always been a dream of mine I had to get
Exercising the Tigers
Black Bag to a Tiger, the Adrenaline Junkies version of Red Rag to a Bull........ over it and do it. Each of us had a handler with us and then we were given a huge cat toy. Basically nothing exciting just a bamboo stick with a bucket or a blown up bin bag to entice the cats to jump around just as I used to with my own cats. However, with your normal domesticated variety of cat the worst that can happen is a scratch with these guys I’m pretty sure they could have taken me down and used me as a cat toy! It’s only now when I look at the pictures I see how close the cats were jumping up towards me, I doubt they would have caught anyone on purpose but had a paw caught you I think you would know about it. After a while Mark and I became separated as two teenage Tigers having a play fight headed straight towards us, me and the handler ran one way with the rest of the group heading in the other direction. This gave Mark the ultimate opportunity to get up close and personal as he was right by a platform with 2 cats and I was on my own with a handler
2 Year Old Tiger
Yes we were a bit scared! just by a tree. It was amazing seeing these cats play just as they would in the wild, stalking each other in the waterfall and pouncing. It was a good 45 minutes of playtime before our attentions were turned to the big cats.
We sat in the shade and had some much needed cold water as two 2 year old Tigers were lead out to where we were, you can see from the pictures how huge these boys were. The cats were attached to a chain and were quite content sitting in the shade. We were invited for pictures with a few rules, stay away from the head (obviously) don’t turn your back to the Tiger (Tigers hunt from behind) pet firmly, and smile! Mark and I were amazed by the size of the Tigers, we petted him firmly and he seemed happy, a big yawn or two before rolling over to get in a more relaxing position, a happy contented Tiger. As we got up to allow other guests a closer look the 2nd Tiger who was behind us gave Mark the once over which alerted the handlers to move him away quickly. The site of Marks back had
clearly raised the predatory senses of the Tiger who may have been feeling a bit peckish and decided that Mark would make a nice choice for lunch. No such luck for the Tiger though. Why not just take a walk with the Tiger, I was still quite scared as the handlers were in front and it was just us with the Tiger. It was explained that the Tiger was taking us for a walk and not the other way round, if the Tiger stopped we stopped. So off we went on our stroll toward the Tiger Canyon with our beautiful Tiger, he was beautiful and very well behaved, all I could think of was if I step on his paw he will kill me!
Once at the Tiger Canyon we were informed that the adult Tigers and the Teenage Tigers were going to come out and play and we all 13 guests were going to be in a cage, a bit like a zoo in reverse. As we got to the cage it was fairly obvious that it would be useless at defending anyone against a Tiger attack. The fence came up to my ribs and was flimsy with large
Walking the big cats
Tiger Temple Staff cleverly cropped out of picture to make me look braver! holes in. We gathered inside as the Tigers started wandering down from the top. For me apart from the cubs, this was the highlight of the day. The canyon had a large mass of water with high rocks, shaded areas and objects for the cats to really run and play in. Kung had had hold of my camera all day and had been snapping like mad but with my camera at the ready I was excited to see how the cats would behave. I took something like 200 shots of the cats in the 45 minutes we were there. They were interacting with each other, play fighting, swimming, pouncing or just chilling out. I loved it. One of the handlers had a toy and was playing with the Tigers so they jumped off the rocks into the water it was great to see.
After this Mark and I sat down and reflected on what had happened that morning. We had been as close as you can be with Tigers of all ages for 4 hours, a dream come true.
When we returned to Bangkok that night we read a report about the Tiger Temple saying a number of years ago
Tiger Canyon
It's all kicking off that it was going to build ‘Tiger Island’ for the cats to roam free. Sadly this isn’t happening, the Monks are building what appears to be a hotel in order for guests doing the early morning tour like us to stay overnight at the Temple. We also saw a new toilet block going up outside Tiger Canyon but no evidence of Tiger Island. As we read through the report it did raise a number of questions about the Monks and the Tigers and how genuine the Monks are about the Tigers welfare. We personally didn’t see any evidence of abuse at the Temple, the Tigers all seemed happy and healthy but we wish now that we had asked a few more questions in order to find out about the mothers, the cubs, where the Tigers were housed etc. It’s sad to say that it seems as though these Monks could be using the Tigers as a money making outfit without any real care or concern for them. The Tigers are not released back to the wild, so what happens to them? Where were the Tigers who were older than two? Sadly we will never know, although I understand that a
Tiger Canyon
Chasing the Bin Bag again number of organizations have been investigating. It was a dream come true for me to see these Tigers up close in what I believed to be a caring environment and to see them properly exercised and cared for. I only hope that the Monks intentions are for good and not for money. We've uploaded some pictures to the blog, but like I said there are hundreds, the best of the rest can be seen
By Clicking This Link And you can see part two of the Tiger Temple Pictures
By Clicking This Link Hello Mark here again. After our experiences with the Tigers we were taken for lunch at a local Thai restaurant by Kung, on our way to the Elephant Camp. The lunch was excellent, way better than the breakfast we'd shared with the monks earlier in the day. We stopped on the way to the camp to buy some bananas, apparently to feed the Elephants and bribe them to not dunk you in the river! I didn't think it would work. When we arrived our Elephant was still with her last "clients" and we changed into trunks and swimming costumes etc and waited for our Elephant. Two of our fellow tourists we'd
Elephant Bath
Spraying us again! been at the Tiger Temple with were on her back, riding towards us, soaking wet........must've forgotten the bananas then...........So we fed the elephants some banana's and as I climbed aboard "Full Moon" Verlie and Kung followed behind. The path down to the river was VERY steep, I could feel one hell of a travel insurance claim going on had I taken a tumble, Full Moon of course was an old pro, as was her Mahout, (driver/keeper) "just lean back" he said as Full Moon took one slow deliberate step at a time down to the River.
We stopped to let Verlie on and went straight into the river, the Mahout calling out instructions in Burmese to Full Moon who obliged with trunk-fulls of river water time after time. Then we played a game where the aim was to try and stay on while Full Moon in the style of a Bucking Bronco, tried to tip you off, We lasted about 3 seconds before being plunged head-first into the River Kwai. We then had a water fight, 4 arms Vs 1 trunk and we still lost! Finally Full Moon hoisted us triumphantly up into the air on her trunk, only to
Elephant Bath
Dunked in the River! dunk us unceremoniously back down into the water. Verlie then climbed on-board for the steep walk back up to the camp. It was I have to say, for me one of the best things I've ever done. Elephants have those smiling eyes, and to be that close to one, have a ride on her and mess about in the river with her, was one of the most amazing experiences of my life, I enjoyed it way more than the Tigers. I've obviously put some photo's on this blog, but
If you click on this link You can see the full photo album of our time with Full Moon
We headed back to Bangkok and both fell asleep in the back of the car, I'm slightly embarrassed to say we both snored for most of the time!
The next day was our only chance to get to the much hyped Weekend Market at Chatuchak. A huge market covering 35 acres, selling everything you could possibly want. So we went there on the Skytrain, having been pre-warned by Kung the day before about Pick Pockets I was on full alert, with everything in my backpack, and strapped in reverse so it was in front of me, like
Elephant Bath
Posing, about to be dunked one of those terribly enlightened new age dads carrying a baby, except my "baby" was my camera, wallet and a couple of cold drinks. The market was a bit of an anti climax to be honest, we only bought some Thai silk cushion covers for our house in Perth and about a dozen drinks in the 5 hours that we wandered round. I was expecting a really hard sell, but a lot of the stall holders were dis-interested, some were asleep. We'd been told, you have to haggle to get a real bargain, on the odd occasion we tried it, the stall holders looked at us as if to say, well that's the price mate, If you don't like it.....jog on. I think the days of Thailand being the land of the bargains, especially for clothes, is long gone. Everybody bangs on about getting shirts and suits made here, got to get it done, it's a must when you are in Thailand, and SOOOOO CHEAP! The cheapest shirts I found in the tailors that we went into were $30. Maybe next time when we've both got a job and I need a suit for say........a wedding I might come here
and get a suit made, until then, I'll leave it thanks. Anyway as we walked around a crowded part of the market, Verlie felt a hand go into her trouser pocket.....there wasn't anything in there, but anyway, the little bugger still tried.
There is so much stuff for sale it's hard to take it all in, We could have bought, Samurai Swords, Puppies and Kittens, (real live ones) or an 8ft high Transformers model (Optimus Prime in case you were wondering) We ended up tired and sweaty, heading back to the hostel with just the silk cushion covers.
We had just 2 days left before we got the overnight train to Koh Samui, and we still hadn't seen any temples or the famous reclining buddha, so on our last but one day in Bangkok we decided to hit the temples. We managed to find a taxi that didn't want to rip us off and was prepared to switch on the meter, rather than just make up a number and multiply by 5 to charge us our fare. We had the Wat Pho Temple with the reclining Buddha and the Grand Palace with the Emerald Buddha. We'd been pre-warned, in
Elephant Bath
Verlie being sprayed YET AGAIN! just about every guide book and website we'd looked at to be aware of a very well known scam involving you making a purchase of completely worthless jewellery, in the expectation that you can re-sell it in your home country and make a big profit. I won't bore you with the finer points of it, suffice to say the scam starts with a taxi driver (who is on a commission) not dropping you off at the main gate to the temple, instead dropping you at a side gate, where an official looking man will tell you that for whatever reason the temple is closed today (public holiday, cleaning, for lunch) but that he has a Tuk Tuk driver who for the very cheap price of 20 baht (50p) take you to a market instead, where you will be dropped at the jewellery shop for you to be reeled in by the rest of the team. The convincer to the scam being that there will be other Western tourists already at the shop, (also on a commission) who will tell you that they have been doing this for years, buying cheap jewellery and selling it, that's how they paid for the
Elephant Bath
On our way back trip/put their kids through college etc etc. People have been known to get scammed out of $10,000 in one go........
In researching the temples I'd noted that the Grand Palace was closed for lunch between 12 and 1. So we pulled up in our taxi at the Wat Pho temple at what I thought was around 12 noon. Sure enough an official looking guy told us that it was closed for lunch, my immediate thought was that I was mistaken and it must be Wat Pho and not the Grand Palace that's closed for lunch, my second thought and the one that killed the scam right there in it's tracks was.......mmmmmm lunch! So rather than accept his offer of a cheap Tuk Tuk ride, we went for lunch, and waited for the temple to re-open. We chose a lunch spot dead opposite the main gate and ticket office, and It was only when Verlie looked at our receipt for lunch and saw the time of just after 11am, and we saw the sign that said "open daily 0830-1530" that we realised that the guy we'd spoken to was trying to get us to go to the jewellery store to buy
Wat Pho Temple
Reclining Buddha his worthless tat. There's no way that we'd ever get fished into spending money on "precious" jewel's and be scammed like that, but It says a lot for their skills that although completely forewarned, I didn't even realise the scam was on until about 20 mins after. The guy on the gate looked so official, he must've been an employee, otherwise the police would've just arrested him.....wouldn't they?
Anyway as we walked into Wot Pho it became apparent that I'd made a fashion Faux Pas and that shorts were not allowed, they do provide long trousers for hire, unfortunately they do not cater for the fuller figured gent. So we had to get yet another taxi back to the hostel, change and another taxi back. costing us time. Anyway as you can see from the pictures, the temple and reclining Buddha are amazing sights, the workmanship and detail, is awesome. We decided to give the Grand Palace a miss at it cost almost 7 times as much to get into as Wot Pho and you are not allowed to take photo's. So time being against us, we went back to then hostel and packed, ready for our overnight, 1st class
sleeper carriage train to Koh Samui and the next leg of the trip, Thailand Part Two......The Islands.
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Richard
non-member comment
Hey
another epic story guys, read this wen u posted it, only just been able to reply. where are u now? hope ur both well. i hate been so close to oz but yet so far lol! loving my name drop into your blog! sure we will catch up face to face soon!