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Published: November 24th 2012
Close to heaven
– a lychee martini at the Moon Bar, Banyan Tree as dusk settles over BangkokWhen does the lure of the mundane become more compelling than the lure of adventure?
At around eight and a half months by our reckoning, so this is the end of our travels, homeward bound via Bangkok and Sydney.
It’s definitely been an adventure - The Grand Tour - not a holiday. We don’t seem capable of doing ‘holidays’ – that’s what we’re coming back to Matarangi for - there’s nothing like the luxury of... YOUR OWN BED…
In 37 weeks we’ve slept on 53 beds, struggled with 53 showers, puzzled over many different types of oven, wrangled nearly as many washing machines, fought with about the same number of front doors and diced with a dozen or so dish washers.
We’ve had no hot water, no water at all and far too much water in the wrong places. Noisy city places, places in the middle of nowhere, hot sunny places, cold dark places, places that were so hard to find even with a GPS we had to ring the owners. Places we didn’t want to leave and places we couldn’t wait to get out of.
We had no real disasters, but I have one big
Moon Bar view
Bangkok just west of the central city – yes there is green amid the streets of chaos travel gripe…BEDS! What is the main thing you need and are paying for with travel accommodation?...a comfortable place to get a good night’s sleep! The biggest problem was the European style of having two single beds pushed together for a ‘double’ …all it does is double the discomfort in the middle of the night when you roll into the ever increasing chasm between the two mattresses.
Is it so hard to provide a nice, reasonably new bed when you are renting out accommodation?
We’ve had convex, concave, lopsided, lumpy, squishy, so high I fall out of, some so bad we’d wake up through the night and have red circles on our backs in the morning from the springs, one where the bed was against the stone barn wall and Rhys woke up with grazed elbows.
Thick crunchy feather duvets provided for year-round guests were too hot even in the British ‘summer’ and NOBODY USES TOP SHEETS anymore!! So duvet or no duvet, that is the question, which means an endless round of chucking off then scrabbling round on an unfamiliar floor to find an edge and haul it back on again.
And pillows? Don’t get me
Pavement sign in Bangkok
– that’s why we had to get Rhys on the next plane out! started on pillows... not enough, too many, like planks, like bouncy castles, full of rocks, full of fluff…and clearly no-one in the self-catering world has heard of pillow protectors. Pillows are important when your partner snores like a 737 unless he has just that right amount of cranial elevation.
I can sleep with earplugs and an eye-mask, but for only about 2 hours until the mask falls off and the plugs fall out and I spend another hour trying to find them in the bed, by then it’s light outside in the crazy British summer and the layer of gossamer over the windows pretending to be curtains fails to keep out the early morning sun…which is the only time we might see the sun that day as by the time we’re ready to go out it’s started to rain.
Don’t get me wrong…we had a fabulous time!! But the best beds we slept in were those of family and friends.
After this much experience of accommodation, I’ve developed 'Hily’s holiday laws', not dissimilar to Murphy’s law, which may help prepare you if you ever have the foolhardy desire to plan a similarly lengthy trip.
1.
Christmas tree at the Central Mall
- they may be Buddhists but they know how to do business If you’ve never seen an oven/washing machine/dishwasher/microwave like it before, there will NOT be an instruction manual – use Hily’s tried and true travel tip, take a wild guess and push whatever button takes your fancy.
2. If you have no tea/sugar/washing powder/dishwash liquid/powder/soap etc there will be NONE in your accommodation – conversely if you are well stocked up, there will be oodles of product waiting in the cupboards on your arrival.
3. Cottage/villa/apartment doors never open the way you expect them to (because the key has been munted by other people who couldn’t open it) and the only real skill is how you hold your mouth.
4. An eggcup makes a passable sink plug (Rhys’s discovery) - plugs are often inexplicably missing in the UK where they still prefer the medieval practise of washing up in a uselessly small plastic bowl.
5. The number of vases with plastic flowers, doilies, bad art work and crockery with holiday motifs will be in inverse proportion to the number of decent wine glasses.
6. Light switches are never where they should logically be and steps are always where they shouldn’t be
Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn
on the bank of the Chao Phraya river - I recommend adopting the house-on-fire technique of feeling your way from the bedroom to bathroom BEFORE you retire to avoid a nasty accident.
7. You will find the brochure or website that gives you exactly the information you needed at the start of your stay, on your last day, or the day after you’ve left.
8. There will be a great market with fabulous local produce on the day you arrive at the accommodation which has no kitchen facilities, equally, when you want to buy fresh local food to cook, the market was yesterday.
For all these travel trials, there are many lovely people that leave you wine, biscuits, local cheese, tubs of gelato or beer in your fridge after a long hot drive…hugs and kisses to them (and a mention on Trip Advisor!)
It’s a long way home from Rome, so we planned a week in Bangkok and were looking forward to it – mainly to thaw out from our European ‘summer’!
Thailand makes the perfect stop over from Europe, not least because of the shopping – it’s more than likely that t-shirt, bag, earrings or sandals
Hindu Temple
in the Indian area around Silom Rd you see in Camden, Montmartre or Campo Fiore markets will have been made in Thailand anyway, so why not support their industries directly rather than some sleazy importer making 400%!m(MISSING)ark-ups.
Best buys in Bangkok –
Thai silk scarves in an infinity of colours and designs – go to the Chatuchak markets on the weekend
- Made to measure shirts and suits in that lovely Thai silk
- Rubies and emeralds – they mine them there. Just have a look anyway…
- Ping pong balls – they must be cheap as they go through a lot of them
Bangkok is the hottest city in the world, so be prepared to be sticky approximately 5 minutes after leaving your air conditioned hotel and get progressively stickier and grimier as you walk the food stall and market lined streets, travel on the skytrain, get shoved into an already overcrowded river ferry or risk life and limb driving through the crazy traffic in a tuk tuk until you finally return to your chilled sanctuary, drained and exhausted.
Also be prepared to be invited on the street to experience the charms and talents of
Tuk tuk ride
they look so pretty – till you get going in the Russian roulette that is Bangkok traffic artistes such as Miss Pussy Ping Pong – they’d generally ask Rhys first (with me right there!) or if he waved them away, they’d ask me! Do I look like someone who likes table tennis??
Have a Thai massage – 2 solid hours of pleasure and pain for under NZ$20. I asked our hotel for a recommendation to avoid going into one of the many places where Miss Pussy Ping Pong has her day job.
No matter how hot it is, wear appropriate clothing when going to the Grand Palace or you’ll have to wear rental gear and look like a compete tourist wally in all your photos. NEVER wear stripes with elephants.
Do NOT believe anyone who tells you that the Grand Palace is closed for the King’s second cousin twice removed’s birthday and instead you should visit the best silk shop in Bangkok by tuk tuk (which has miraculously drawn up beside you). Even if the river ferries are closed for the afternoon because of a royal flotilla. In short – don’t believe ANYONE on the streets of Bangkok.
When you’ve kept walking and got to the Grand Palace, don’t miss Queen Sirikit’s textile
museum (easy to miss – it’s right at the exit and by now your head is reeling with oriental splendour overload) It’s not just about beautiful clothes, it’s a fascinating insight into the impact of the beloved royal couple and the recent history of Thailand. And it’s air-conditioned!
Eat at all kinds of places – Rhys even ate chicken off a wizened old lady’s street cart and didn’t die (although he’s still waiting for the salmonella symptoms to appear). Even the fancy restaurants are cheap by our standards and you can get fabulous Thai food for two from $10 - $20 at a zillion little neighbourhood cafes.
An interesting thing we experienced in Bangkok – we found it a much easier dining experience than in France, Italy or Spain, where making your dining needs known was often fraught with language and etiquette issues. Thais working in hospitality seem to have much better English skills – or maybe they’re just more interesting in trying.
It was a great end to our eight and a half month adventure. But even better was seeing our first grandchild for the first time on our stopover with Torin and Andrea in
The Golden Buddha,
it was very…golden Sydney. Yes of course he is the most adorable child in the entire universe, so as his parents are living on the other side of the ditch I can’t help thinking our travel plans might have to have a different focus in future…
So over and out from Flying Kiwis for a while – thanks for joining our adventure!
“May your bags always come out first on the carousel”
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Home and Away
Bob Carlsen
It has been a pleasure following you on your Grand Tour...
thanks for sharing with us!