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Published: January 22nd 2007
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Lunch at The Markets
Beats a Boost Juice any day! We've made it to Bangkok!
Saturday morning started out as a ripper! With Alicia not stressed out enough already, apparently I slept in, however I thought I was timing it perfectly. She had only one hour of sleep the night before, and was suffering from a unique and worsening condition that only Alicia could possibly get. Described in her own words as "Acute and reoccurring pains to the lower abdomen". Basically she was worrying her self sick. To make matters worse, after i eventually awoke and crawled into the shower, in my rush to wash the conditioner out of my hair, i whipped my arm down from my head, smashing the porcelain soap holder and cutting my arm above my elbow. With no time for stitches, the best the doctor could do was hold it together with a butterfly clip. Although the butterfly clip has sweated off and the bleeding has stopped, I still have a slight numbness in my elbow, but hopefully this will disappear as it heals.
Despite these minor setbacks, we managed to make it to the airport with plenty of time to spare (just ask those who kindly waited with us). In typical Alicia fashion
Broken Soap Holder
Really, it didn't hurt as much as you'd think it would... we arrived at the airport two hours before the plane boarded, keeping in mind it was only a domestic flight to Sydney. This flight was relatively uneventful, except for 'roasted chicken on a bed of chick pea salad' complete with moldy tomato. However, this small error was ever so eloquently described by our rather feminine male flight attendant as "A once off slip through our stringent quality control". Very strange…
Arriving in Sydney, we were transferred comfortably from the domestic to the international terminal on the Qantas shuttle bus. We slid through customs and immigration and resisted the temptation to purchase any duty free goods, knowing we have a long road ahead, and not a great deal of money! With our last remaining Australian currency, we had to get the essentials. Food for me and Panadol for Alicia. As you'd expect the food was crap and overpriced, but the spectacular view of the Sydney skyline from our table made up for it.
Nothing much to say about our flight to Bangkok. The service was fine, considering we are traveling on an 'economy-economy' ticket. The guy sitting next to us had a few too many bottles of red, and
later had some interesting dreams, complete with verbal and physical actions for the cabins amusement. Poor guy- he was none the wiser!
We touched down at Bangkok's amazing new 3.9 billion dollar Suvarabhumi Airport. After passing through the relatively non-existent customs we were engulfed by a sea of transport company sales people, complete with tuxedos, offering us the cheapest taxi deals. We struggled through this gauntlet and made our way through to the metered taxi rank, but even this had an additional commission of 65 Thai Baht. We were soon to discover that this 65 Baht included in car TV viewing, and a ticket to a once in a life time thrill ride. You see, our driver was flicking through Thai television channels on his personal LCD TV screen, while driving at 120kph, weaving through 6 lanes of heavy traffic by rotating a knob on his steering wheel to steer, without once using his indicator or checking his blind spot! Compounding our fear, it soon became apparent that everyone drives like this in Bangkok (although not as fast as our driver), leading to complete road anarchy. Thank God he seemed to know where he was going and what he
was doing. Stunned yet somewhat exhilarated, we were relieved when we arrived safely at our hostel- HI-Sukhumvit.
Having paid less that AU$30 per night for our own room with double bed, we were pleasantly surprised by our room and the hostel in general. We wont spend too long talking about it, but as you can see from the photos, our room is small but comfortable with an airconditioner which only operates between 6pm and 8am.The hostel is really nicely furnished, with hand-made wooden ornaments and furniture. So much nicer than the generic crap you would find in a regular hotel. The top floor provides great views of the city, as well as clothes lines and some great areas for relaxing, especially when it cools down a bit over night.
Falling asleep pretty much as soon as we arrived and sleeping solidly, we seemed to have escaped any jet-lag and were up before 8 (this is early for us). We were surprised to realise that we had beaten the rush to the showers, but our mood quite literally cooled when we remembered we had booked a hostel with no hot showers! But with the mercury reaching 35°C and humidity
Geezer Air
We can't believe something that big can fly, we're just glad it did! around 75%, this turned out to be a real blessing in disguise. After filling up on FREE toast and a cup of tea at our hostel, we set off to the 'weekend markets' on Bangkok’s very groovy sky train. This was our first daylight view of the city and not surprisingly the city reminded both of us of Kuala Lumpur. Like Kuala Lumpur, what struck us most was the contrast between, wealthy and poor and modern and traditional. You never see a car more than 5 years old, and there seems to be an extremely high proportion of luxury cars, especially Mercedes-Benz. When walking to the sky train we noticed a massive mansion, bigger than any we have seen in Adelaide, yet once on the sky train we saw that the majority of people live in severely degraded concrete apartments. The sky train (like the new airport) optimizes Thailands ostensible drive for modernisation and development, yet the popularity of shopping at the weekend markets reveal that the Thai people still hold on to their traditional ways. No doubt when we leave Bangkok on our tour we will see an even greater disparity in wealth between the urban and rural people.
Duty Free
We would have bought something, but they didn't have the cigarettes we like! Never the less, the city Bangkok has a great vibe. Everywhere we went we saw people walking, street stalls, hawkers and the like. And this was a Sunday morning. From what we have seen, the city appears really decenteralised, which means wherever you are, you never feel far from some action.
The Chatuchak weekend markets were a real blast. The place was huge and packed with locals and tourists. Being backpackers with little money and no baggage space, our purchasers were limited to genuine *cough* Diesel and D&G watches. The majority of vendors were selling counterfeit products and novelties, fresh from China no doubt, but more memorable stalls included puppy sellers, and dried seafood vendors. As you can imagine, they were memorable for differing reasons! We had spring rolls for lunch at Café Ice at the market, and enjoyed a Banana, Orange and Papaya fruit juice. Yum! After returning to the hostel via sky train we splurged (460 Baht ie.$AU 16.50) on dinner, eating (alone) at a small restaurant near our hostel. We are yet to try genuine 'local food', but with our appetite for trying new things growing, only our weak stomachs, fear of unhygienic conditions, and anxiety
about not knowing exactly what animal and what part of the animal we are eating will prevent us from dining like a true local!
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James
non-member comment
nice pictures
that's great. but can u sent more pictures and less text.