Bangkok and Beyond

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The names and places have not been chaged to protect anyone.
The truth lies within.
Oh yeah, it is around 30 Baht (local currency) to 1 Canadian dollar.

Bangkok is, was, and always will be, a roit.
We arrived early in the moring, like 1am early, found a guest house which was clean and quite. Still a little jumpy from the flight we walked aruond for a while and had a bit to eat.
The next day we were still slightly tired. But we still managed to get in a full day of walking and taking in some of the sights. That night was the Loi Krathong, a full moon festival where the main river in Bangkok is adrift with Lotus shaped boats made of Banana leaf and containing a lit candle. We managed to get on some sort of a boat tour and all along the river where fireworks and more candles. I kept falling asleep but still enjoied the show!!!
The next day we toured Chaintown and ate some great food in a local stall on the street. That night we retired early to the area we were staying at called Banglamphu. There are loads of touristy things and good eats and great people watching. It is mostly young backpakers and tons of Thai trying to seperate all of us from our Bahts!!
After one more night of sleep we thought we would check out the Grand Palace. We were having a little difficluty finding the entrence and stopped along the side of the road to have a look at our map. This Thai guy stops by and askes us where we were going. He English was great. We told him that we were trying to find the entrance to the Grand Palace. He started telling us about all these other temples we should go and see first because there was a big ceremony at 1:30 that afternoon and we should be back at in the Grand Palace at that time. He took us on a virtual tour circeling things on our map telling us here first, there next and so on. Said we should be back around 12:30 in time for the ceremony that his boss, some lead military guy, was holding. He was telling us that we should be able to get a tuk-tuk for about 40 baht and have him drive us all around to these free temples and have us back at 12:30.
This seemed a little hard to believe as most tuk-tuks drivers take full advantage of the tourists. They will say things like "city tour 50 baht per person" and then take you to many shops and force you stay there for at least 10 mins so they can get vouchers for gas. However the local Thais use them for short distances becasue they are way cheaper than taxis, the tuk-tuk drivers use the toursit to send their kids to collage.
So all this seems like the start of some sort of con and then from out of nowhere a tuk-tuk driver shows up!! Right on time my cynical mind thought. But this guy commanded such visial respect from the driver that we had to go with our gut and trust our transistion from virtual to actual tour. So the price was set for 40 baht for both of us and off we went.
If you are ever luck enough to have a tuk-tuk ride it is a great way to see, hear and smell your way through the city . Not to mention a little scary as they weave in and out traffic. True to his word after the three temples, it seemed our time was up. We ended up at a tailors shop being asked to get some clothes made and dropped into the forced sale. We walked right out and told they guy no more shops that he can take us back to the Grand Palace now. He kept pleading and begging with us to go to a few more shops so we can get him gas vouchers. "Why no?t" he kept asking, and I kept telling him, "becasue we don't want to." Finally he told us we could walk back and we got out and made it across the street before he caught up and took us back to the Grand Palace, all for 40 baht!!
By this time we were a little Wated out and didn't really feel like another temple, dispite the ceremony, so we walked back through a market on the way back to our place. We had made a point to eat something different each day and have been doing a great job of it so far. But this place was way off the tourist trail. We ended up deep in this market, and the stalls kept getting more and more narrow until we were on wooden planks along the river that was too high. I don't know why we did but we ended up in a food stall that by all accound was under water only a few hours ago. Rice and chicken was the fare for 15 baht. It was all good until I spotted an extra large cockroach on the wall. We were out as quickly as we were in!! And if you can believe there was even something of a line up so they were happy to see us leave.
The next day we left to visit one of the largest shopping mall I had ever seen. Six floors of what we would call a flea market, albeit a little more upscale, but not by much!!
By this time we were all to familiar with the water taxi and even hopped on the fridge in the sky. Otherwise known as the Sky train. The Thai love the air conditioning and I thought for a moment that I could see my breath. We walked around most of the six floors, but after a while most of it seems the same. So we got out, back into the heat, humidity and pollution and found another river taxi.
There is a much smaller canal that taxis mostly Thai back and forth but I think I saw one or two other white folk on the boat. Now there are river tours you can take and are widly avalible in the area we are staying at, but cost upwards of 600 Baht. This does not include all the other hidden cost like docking fees and being forced to buy water and beer for the driver!! This was a great deal for only 8 baht. The sides of the rivers are not marked on the map that we have and after traveling along it you may realise why. It is mostly just slums. Hugh building with piles of garbage and rickty buildings. It was sad, but truly a Bangkok that most don't see. There are small communites along the river and int he slums to be sure. You can see make shift stores and people talking and kids playing all along.
From the drop of point we navigated our way back to Banglamphu on foot and sat and had a few beers with some other travellers. It was there that we heard of a place called Kanchanaburi. We had every intention to head to the north to a place called Chiang Mai, but found that Kanchanaburi had most things CM had to offer and was closer. So the next day we found our way there.
Bangkok is chalk-a-block with all sorts of people selling tours and tickets to somewhere, but if you actually read your guide book you will find that there are ways to get to where you want to go without having to rely on ticket touts selling toursits lies. We foudn the bus station and paid 86 baht for a three hour bus ride to Kanchanaburi. It was the local bus to be sure, but it was cheap and effictive. We got to our destination and as the station was a little ways away from where we need to be, there are tons of tuk-tuk, taxi drivers, you name it, all trying to get you to the tourist area for "special price". Well 60 baht is no special price. We found the local taxi, wich is really a pick up truck with some bench seating in the back for 10 baht each.
We got to where we needed to go and found a place to sleep. It was pretty posh, and the town had a sort of beach resort feel, but without the beach. It did however have a river and that was one of the main draws.
Along with the elephant rides, waterfalls and tiger temple, the river Kwai is a pretty big deal to some WW2 historians.
Lonley Planet says, "The railway was buit during the WW2-era Japanese occupation of Thailand (1942-1943) and its strategic objective was to link 415 km of rugged terrain between Thailand and Burma (myanmar) in order to secure an alternative supply route for the Japanese conquest of India. It was an ambitious goal that was accomplished with limited equipment, brutal treatment of forced labour and engineerign creativity."
The bridge still stands and there is a hugh cemetery hourning the thousands of Aurtrialina and British POWs who built the bridge. And for that reason there is a large ex-pat community that have set up bars and and pubs along the main road. As well and many older white men "courting" younger Thai girls. But it was cheap and it was on a large river which from our guest house could be seen from the top balcany. We had a pool at our guest house and the food was great. Two nights and some communist yoga, AKA Thai massage, later we were off to the beaches and islands of the south. But becasue we missed our bus that night, it appeared we had one more night in Bangkok.
Bangkok is a great city with lots to do and so many cheap things it is unbelieveable. From the south now neither of us are worried, or unwilling, to spend a few more days there before we leave on Dec 10.

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