still in Bangkok...


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Asia » Thailand » Central Thailand » Bangkok
September 6th 2006
Published: September 6th 2006
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I'm going to have to flag Chiang Mai for now. The trains weren't just stopped for flood-waters, whole sections of track had been washed away. An express train plunged into a river and killed at least the driver and mechanic. I get my Cambodian visa today, so tomorrow I'm going to head down south to the Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park for a while (maybe a week, depending on what its like when I get there) then back to Bangkok and over to Cambodia. After Cambodia I'll go up north to Chiang Mai.

I can't believe Steve Irwin's dead!! I didn't personally like him as a personality; I think he brought us nothing but shame (yes, in my own country I'm quite well-known to myself as a TV personality) but he was good for conservation. And he even made Americans think about stuff, which is no small feat in itself. Its sad.

Odd things come to my attention every now and again which I never get round to putting in my blogs, so here are some items of absorbing interest (odd only from the perspective of a farang of course):

The Ronald McDonald statues outside McDonald's restaurants over here have their hands clasped in a wai.

I got a packet of cooked sausages which had on the label: Pork 45%, Vermiceli 30%, Ingredients 18%, Sugar 4%, Salt 3%

I passed a place called "Cheese Dental Clinic"

I saw a food stall selling whole fried squid on a stick.

There's a night food stall on Khao San Road that sells fried locusts and water bugs and such for the sort of waste-of-space tourists who come to Thailand, go to Khao Yai for one day, spend all the rest of their time in Bangkok, then go home and go "I went into the jungle in Thailand... OH and I ate BUGS!!! I'm so outrageous!!!"

There's lots of white guys with Thai girlfriends over here, most of them are OLD white guys with YOUNG Thai girls.

On Khao San Road you can openly buy fake international student IDs, international or UK driving licences, security IDs, journalist IDs... I also saw a guy on the pavement selling an array of swords and other bladed weaponry.

Half the population of Thailand wear yellow shirts with the royal emblem on the breast (yellow being the colour of the King). Thai people are VERY patriotic. There are portraits of the King and Queen everywhere: in buses, in shops, I even saw one of the King covering the entire side of a skyscraper (near the northern bus terminal). If ever the King wanted to crush, oh I don't know, lets say America, he'd probably only have to say the word and he'd have an army of millions at his disposal.

Milo is very popular all over southeast Asia. It gets served in restaurants, it gets sold in shops in cans and boxes and in bar form... its everywhere! Tourists who haven't been to NZ probably think its some kind of special Asian drink. Then they go to NZ and go "hey, they've got that Asian drink here too"

There are some really extravagantly painted buses over here. I think they all belong to the one bus company. I haven't got any photos because I only see them when I'm on another bus passing by. They have really well-done scenes of Disney characters, Spiderman, Manga-esque things, Santa Claus in Thailand, underwater scenes, jungle scenes, and then there's just some nightmarish demons and flames and eyeballs type ones.

In the Bangkok Post yesterday was a bit about 200 smuggled reptiles being seized at Don Muang airport, probably destined for sale at the Chatuchak Weekend Market which is renowned for illegal wildlife sales and is regularly raided by officials. Its all kept hidden from the average punter, so I saw none of it while I was there. (Apparently the baby squirrel trade is quite legal).

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