Up, Up and Away!

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Sunday 6th August we left Auckland for Bangkok. It was a 12 hour flight, but we kept ourselves occupied with our personal TVs and I whiled away the time watching "Failure to Launch", "Mulan" and "Bambi", with episodes of Scrubs and Without a Trace thrown in for good measure.
Arrived in Bangkok, which is a huge airport, and after hiking our way to immigration we collected our bags and headed to customs. Now I have to admit, I was expecting super-strict customs in the vein of Brokedown Palace or Bridget Jones II, but the guys standing at the red desk just laughed at us when we told them we had some food (mints) and medicines and sent us out the door.
From there we met our package organiser who took us to our driver and off we went to our hotel. We were staying at the Siam City Hotel which was just lovely. Big atrium with small fountain, super flash for less a night than a motel room in New Zealand!
Despite the fact it was about 4am New Zealand time we were wide awake so watched a bit of "Raising Helen" that was on the TV, unpacked and went to sleep.
We wandered down to breakfast the following morning, which was divine. A buffet breakfast with a large variety, and some of the best croissants I've ever had. We had a bit of an explore on the way back up to our room, found the cosy swimming pool (just the right size - not big and sprawling, but not cramped), then ventured out into Bangkok.
Our plan for the day was to go to the Red Cross Snake Farm. Fortuitously our hotel was less than 200 metres from the Sky Train station, and after consulting our lonely planet and the complimentary map we bought our ticket for the sky train and waited on the platform. By this time it was about 10:30am, so we were quite horrified when the train pulled up, and it was literally packed, sardine can like, with commuters. We both looked at each other, and before we could negotiate our way on to the train the whistle had sounded and the train had whisked away. Fortunately this turned out to be the exception rather than the rule for our skytrain ventures, and the next one to come along (2 mins later) had plenty of room.
One thing that struck us as we walked along the streets and travelled on the sky train, was the vast number of people wearing golden yellow t-shirts with (what we later found out) the royal emblem on it. We couldn't quite fathom this - does Thailand have a national uniform? Does Bangkok have designated guides all dressed in yellow (we wondered this as many of them would stop and talk to us, offering to show us "the best" suit maker), were they the cleaning staff of all the hotels in the city? We later found out that this year is the king's 60th jubillee and every monday for all of this year the people wear golden t-shirts (the king's colour) in honour of this.
So after negotiating public transport Bangkok-style we arrived at our designated stop and headed up to the snake farm. However we were too late for the morning show so we ended up having lunch at a lovely restaurant in a mall in the area (which was bizarrely almost entirely designated to golf), I had a thai massage (costing all of 300 baht ~$12 NZ for an hour) then we wandered up to the snake farm.
After an interesting lecture on the different snakes in the area, and finding out how the different poisons kill you (would you rather bleed to death, be paralysed or slowly go into kidney failure?) we moved to the viewing area where we had King Cobras, Siamese Cobras, Pit snakes, and other charming species paraded before us. They milked some of the snakes for their venom, and we had the option of holding a python. Having already done this in Australia years ago I declined, but Wendy got the traditional photo with the snake.
After this we headed back to the hotel via the Sky Train, for a swim and a shower before heading out again to the Suan Lum Night markets.
After getting thoroughly ripped off by our tuk-tuk driver we arrived and headed for the food court. Now this wasn't your average small food court. It took up an entire street block on its own. Stalls lining the outside with a huge number of tables in the middle, and a large stage with a truly awful band of the Japanese-Pop impersonating a dreadful boy-band crossed with country-and-western variety. They had good lights though.
Replenished by spring rolls, pad thai and a bottle of singha we headed out to do some wallet emptying. We also went on a large ferris wheel that gave us spectacular views of the city.
Several hours later we existed the area, taking a tuk-tuk back to the hotel (for a much more reasonable price after negotiating properly) and home to bed.

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Comments

[jubeedoo]

I found your blog!
Howsabout that :) looking forward to seeing your pics! x x ju