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Published: June 24th 2006
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Hotel room
Boutique hotel room and there is a massive glass window seperating the room and the bathroom Sorry it's been a while, we've been trying to find an internet cafe! A lot has happened since our last blog.
Our last day in Hong Kong we didn't really do too much. We checked in our bags at the airport express in downtown Hong Kong, which was really efficient and we were able to get rid of our bags 12 hours before our scheduled flight and nowhere near the airport! The rest of the day we went round the Lan Kwai Fong district, which was full of busy and important business people looking for lunch! This made the narrow streets seem practically impossible to get through especiall with our heavy hand luggage that we had with us! We wandered around, got lunch and then sat in the park in the centre of town. We said goodbye to Hong Kong and got the short flight to Bangkok at midnight.
We arrived in Bangkok at aroun two o clock am. We had some time to kill at the airport and luckily the England vs Sweden game was on and there were lots of people watching it, mainly young Thai airport workers that looked like they were taking a long break! We then
The Bar
Mountain Bike Bar, which to this day we still don't know where it is though we've been there! went to phone the hotel to see if we could check in early and that was our first taste of a Thai person trying to sell us something! We asked him for the phone numebr because he worked in the 'Bangkok hotel information' kiosk. He tried phoning them for us and said it was too early but if we go there in an hour or so we could check in. Then for about the next twenty minutes he tried to get us to go on a boat trip at a 'special price' that was only available for an unorthodox two hours only! After finally prising the phone number from his hand and having no boat trip we left and got a taxi to the hotel, making excuses all the while enabling us to get away!
The drive to the airport was a bit worrying as we weren't sure that the driver knew exactly where he was going, because he kept calling the hotel something else. Also lots of Bangkok is being built up now so there are lots of building sites and we went through some scary places with no people around, which seemed weird in a capital city.
The
People
This is Jack and some of Lek's friends hotel itself is amazing and much better than the Metropark and our expectations. We arrived at 4 am and got some sleep.
At around lunchtime we got up and went to the reception with our map like complete tourists and asked the guy there for some advice and where to go etc. He talked to us for about twenty minutes and he introduced himself as 'Lek'. He had drawn on our map and he is not the last person to have done this! It;s hard to see anything on it now!
We had mentioned that we wanted to experience a Thai local life in Bangkok for instance food, drink and where they go and in answer to this he offered/insisted that he take us to a bar called the 'mountain bike' that his friend owns and where he goes everyday. Because he'd been so helpful and enthusiastic we felt as though we couldn't say no so we found ourselves agreeing to a night out with someone we'd only met for about twenty minutes in our hotel. The rest of the day we went to the 'MBK' shopping mall in Siam, which is massive and had lots of levels and stalls
Lek
This is Lek. He's 28 and likes basketball and drinking whisky. selling various things. It was like an inside market. You could even barter the prices, which felt weird inside a department store!
At 7.15 we met with Lek across the road from our hotel because it's against hotel policy for staff to meet up with guests! In the day time Bex was worrying what he was like and what he wanted from the night and us, because we're not used to people being so helpful and friendly for no apparent reason. His intentions seemed a bit dodgy as he took us to a suit shop first, and Jack ended up getting two tailored shirts. This was nothing compared to what they wanted us to get in the shop but we were firm but polite. We have now found this is the best way to deal with 'helpful' Thai people. Lek seemed a little disappointed that we didn't buy a suit but quickly changed and then told us stories about the Lady bars in Bangkok! We decided against it as we weren't too keen and didn't want to get ripped off.
About an hour after picking us up we finally arrived at the bar as promised and got a table. We started to feel a little more at ease and ended up having the best night that we've had so far. The local Thai's drink whisky as it's cheap and you buy it by the litre bottle and then mix it with soda water or coke over ice on your table. It was apparent quite early on that they don't do nights out by half and we joined in as they were and by the end of the night we'd got through about a bottle and a half! For people who don't normally drink whisky we were really enjoying it. When the football match finished on the tv the dj came in and he started playing a mix of English and Thai songs, some of which Lek had asked him to play for us as he knew him. A few of Lek's friends arrived and joined us at our table and were also really friendly and smiley and really appreciated us sharing the whisky we'd bought at the bar, with them (about four quid a bottle). They all looked our age but were all in their mid to late twenties. As the night wore on and more whisky was drunk the Thai people became even friendlier and random people from other tables were smiling and raising their glasses to us and singing along to the music. The only downpoint was when suddenly a fight broke out between two Thais. One guy stood up and punched the other one in the stomach and the head and the other one hit him back in the face. Then other people started holding them back. We thought it would finish there but then out of nowhere someone smashed a whisky bottle over the head of one of the guys friends. Everyone was shocked for about a minute until the lights went back off and they clapped and got on with their drinking! Taxi home at 2 and a long sleep!
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Deejay
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Mussive
i bet bex would have loved the Lady bars lol!