Day #147: Walking around Bangkok

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Well, Bangkok is a full-on place. When I first arrived I was almost reluctant to venture out of the guesthouse door, such was the hullabaloo outside. The traffic is the worst I have ever seen and the roads unpredictable to cross, the pavements are patchy at best, and you can't walk 10 feet without a tuk-tuk stopping to ask where you are going.

Struggling to get my bearings, I decided to walk to the train station to buy my onward ticket to Chiang Mai. The route passed some of the interesting and historical buildings and also went through Chinatown, so was a good way to get to know the city. It would have taken about an hour if I could have done it directly, but roads I wanted to go down were closed for repairs or unexpectedly blocked off by markets, I often had to walk a roundabout route so that I could find a place to cross a road, and in areas of Chinatown just walking down the street meant negotiating market stalls, shoppers and car and scooter mechanics with machinery strewn halfway into the road. It ended up taking closer to 3 hours and I was dazed by the end of it.

I did see several interesting buildings, but the roads and traffic so overwhelming that it's hard to admire them - often you look at them across 8 or so lanes of traffic and every view is dominated by tarmac and concrete. Bangkok also has a canal system, but again it is easy to miss amidst the roads.

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