Bangkok

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From the peace and tranquility of Mama's bungalows we reached the jetty in Ranong and tried to secure a taxi back into town. As it turned out, the man who brought us was Soi's brother - sadly not known as 'Uncle'. He dropped us at Pon's Place where we had a bite to eat and then took a taxi to the bus station to catch the one o'clock mini-bus to Chumphon.

When we got there we discovered that there was only one seat remaining on the one o'clock bus and the two o'clock bus was sold out. We had no choice only to book the three o'clock and pull up a pew in the bus terminal to wait it out. I have no problem with spending time in bus stations. It gives me a legitimate excuse to people watch. I had a wander through the terminal and pondered the little day to day things in Thailand. For instance back home we have a milk man, who turns up in his milk float every other morning. It's a handy convenience. Here, there was a water man, carting crates of bottled water around the town - in the same frosted plastic bottles we used to have, pre-tetra pack, for milk back home. It was a subtle difference, but it made me realise how we take simple things like tap water for granted. The people here have a different way of life to back home, but does that mean they are less happy?

While I was busy wondering about water, the bus company were busy bumping us up to the two o'clock bus. They had four no-shows, so we were ushered into the back of a nice air-conditioned silver mini-bus which we shared with some local families.

The mini-bus reached Chumphon after two hours of running the gauntlet that is Thai traffic. Thankfully on its last pick-up, we picked up a beautiful Thai girl who spoke a few words of English. She asked us our hotel name, then explained it to the driver, and then he brought us somewhere else. But this turned out to be ok, because the somewhere else was better!

Once settled in a comfortable hotel room, kindly sponsored by Karin and Charles, we regrouped to The Farang Bar which was across the road. After a leisurely aperitif, we took off down the street in search of some food markets that we had seen earlier on. We found them, but they weren't exactly what we were expecting, and the sight of brains and the stench of butchery did little to increase our appetite!

We gave up on the markets and started back for the hotel, stumbling upon a really cheap Thai restaurant. Tonight was Philippe's turn to fall prey to the heat of Thai food. I opted for a delicious Pad Thai, and soon we were ordering more of it when Philippe threw in the towel on eating his curry. How the Thai tolerate the level of spice in some of their food is beyond me...

We spent one further day in Chumphon. Philippe and I needed an admin day and Karin and Charles took the opportunity to go exploring on their own. They hired a tuk-tuk driver and his English speaking sister and visited several of the places of interest in the town. They saw Buddha's, monkeys and the beach. We spent the day on the internet, making notes about our various visa applications and booking accommodation in Bangkok.

The next morning we took a coach to Bangkok and settled in for what turned out to be an eight hour journey. Arriving in Bangkok felt wrong for several reasons, the main one being that this would be the last location we shared with Charles and Karin. It was also just another big city, which traditionally we don't enjoy as much. We knew we were going to have to spend a minimum of a week here, as an India visa takes five working days to process.

First though, we checked into the Unico Express Hotel on Sukhimvit Soi 3, and made a plan. Karin and Charles were instantly drawn to the tailor shop in the lobby of the hotel. There were some beautiful suits and dresses in the window, and after a bit of negotiation Charles was getting measured up for a suit before dinner time. This was a Tuesday and the shop guaranteed the suit would be ready to take away by Friday. As it turned out, only one more fitting was necessary and the suit was ready on Thursday evening!

The next day we left Karin and Charles in the luxurious hotel and we headed out into the streets of Bangkok. Our mission, and we had no choice in accepting it, was to get an extension to our 15 day visa for Thailand. We set about finding the Thai Immigration Office.

We thought it would be pretty straight forward. The immigration office had a website with a map on it. Our map from the hotel had a nice building emblem showing us where the office was on the map. Our first thought was to take a tuk-tuk - that was until the guy insisted that he would bring us to the shopping centre, the tourist information point and then to the immigration office. When we politely stated that we didn't want to go to the first two places he insisted that the immigration office doesn't open until 11am. He was a scam artist and we knew it. We walked away and didn't look back.

Unfortunately we walked in the wrong direction, and effectively got ourselves lost. Once we accepted our situation we hailed a metered taxi and asked him to take us to the point on the map. He began arguing that there are lots of streets called that in the area, and but we told him to just get us there. The closer we got, I started identifying places on the map, and eventually he dropped us in front of the immigration building. We were chuffed that we had managed to find it.

Pride comes before a fall, or so they say, and in this case, 'they' were right. As we sauntered up to the building we noticed a large sign stating that visa extensions are no longer done there, and are instead done somewhere that I couldn't even see on our hotel map. All the street names bar two on the map on the poster were written in Thai. We hadn't a clue where it was. Finally, we wandered inside the building and overheard a guy forcefully making the (valid) point that he had paid a lot of money to get to the address stated on the website, only to be required to pay more to go to a completely different location. The officials shrugged and handed us a map and suggested we take a taxi. We approached the other foreigner and agreed to share one.

He had another friend outside, so the price was split four ways. The guys were from the Ukraine and we spent some time chatting about our respective travels so far. About forty minutes later we were dropped in front of an impressive looking building and soon figured out that we were not yet at the right place.

After walking around the building looking for building B, we were eventually pointed to a shuttle bus that took us a short way up the road to another, more impressive building. We arrived at this building at 12.05pm, and, given the way the day was panning out, we were unsurprised to see that the office closes for lunch between 12 and 1pm. We went off to find food, and came across a photocopy shop that supposedly pre-prepares all the forms for you. We paid 24B (50c) each and were handed back forms that identified me as First name/Surname: Eireannach.Irish/Sinead. We had a second look through the rest and changed around about five more pieces of information. Then we grabbed some food and queued patiently for the doors to open. The minute they did open, there was a free for all, with Thai people coming running from all angles. Queue, shmoo, it was each man for themselves. Our pre-prepared forms did at least get us past the first counter, and then we took a number and sat in front of a small cubicle with four or five people shuffling around in it. At 1.10pm we were called in. We handed over our documents and cash and were told that we would only be allowed a further seven days in Thailand. Seven hours of our day for seven days in theirs, but it bought us enough time to hopefully get our visas sorted out.

But we hadn't reached the finish line yet. We had to take another number and wait outside until someone else processed our passport and then another person stamped it. This took 40 minutes! In the end we were just happy that we had what we came for. We took a taxi back to the hotel and laughed as we recounted our story to Karin and Charles over dinner in the hotel.

The next morning Philippe and I tackled our Indian Visa while Karin and Charles went to see the sights of Bangkok. We shouldn't have been surprised really, but after walking a kilometre or so from our hotel to Sukhumvit Soi 25, we were handed a photocopy stating that visas had been outsourced. Thankfully it was only to the beginning of the next street! We got there sweaty and irritated and were greeted by a body search. Eventually we filled in the forms and were given a number. Once we reached that stage everything was very efficient. So it should be, when you see the service charge they throw at you. We opted to hold on to our passport and bring them back on Day 5.

Amazingly we had everything sorted by 10am, so we moved onto the next visa on our list: Cambodia. The short version of this story is that we took the Sky train to the address listed on the Cambodian Embassy website and found a hotel in its place and another photocopy in our hands. 'We are now located on the far side of town' - you cannot be serious!!

We gave up on Cambodia for now and turned our attention to finding the Vietnamese embassy. We were walking in the midday sun, feeling very sorry for ourselves and getting grumpier with each step, when we were jerked from our reverie by the sound of screeching brakes, crunching plastic and a loud thud. Several metres behind us there was a collision between what seemed to be a car and two scooters. From what we could see, one man was limping to the side of the road and another lay injured in the middle of the road. Initially the traffic just went around him! Very quickly a medic was on the scene and we stopped our rubbernecking, said a prayer for the poor man, and continued on our way, rethinking our good fortune. It was a stark reminder to enjoy every second of this trip.

We found the Vietnamese Embassy, which was closed for lunch. 'Thou shalt not grumble' being our new motto, we found a shopping mall and bought lunch. Back at the Embassy we elbowed our way into a queue and surrendered our passports for 24 hours, and a wad of cash forever.

We were chalking up the visas and had figured out that we could apply for a Cambodian Visa online, so all we had to do now was wait for the wheels of bureaucracy to turn. We were however running out of time with Karin and Charles, so we prioritised time with them and told them about our day over drinks in the middle of the red light district of Bangkok.

I think that curiosity brings most tourists to the Sukhumvit Soi 4/5 area of Bangkok. Apparently it isn't the seediest part of town, that honour is bestowed on Patpong, but it was creepy enough to leave you feeling uncomfortable as you look around you. By day, the streets are lined with innocent enough street hawkers, selling food, shoes, clothes and knock-off watches and handbags. As night falls however the scene alters noticeably. The hawkers are still there, but a lot of the merchandise changes to lingerie, DVD's and any other tool you can think of that is essential to the oldest trade in the world. It is heartbreaking to see beautiful, young, Thai women, dressed up to the nines being chatted to by greasy, fat, old men. If the girls are lucky, or insistent, they get bought dinner. If they are unlucky, they get pregnant, and are still forced to work to earn a living.

It isn't just sex trade customers that frequent the area - after all, we were there! Sukhumvit is the business area of town so many of the big name hotels are based there. It is also a busy hive of Bangkok night life. Many colourful bars and expensive restaurants line the strip. We ate and drank and watched dirty old men attempting to seduce the women they had already paid for.

Our final day with Philippe's parents was spent purchasing a belated Christmas present for Karin (a new camera) in the MBK shopping mall, and picking up our Vietnamese visa, which guaranteed we could see my folks at the end of the month. It was a bitter-sweet day, that ended with happy reminiscence of a wonderful time travelling since Singapore and over a parents vs kids card game in the hotel bar. It would be ungracious of me to say who won!

Spending four weeks as one of four, leaves a great void when you become just one of two again. If I'm honest, we didn't really know what to do with ourselves for the first few days. We had both agreed that Bangkok was giving us a head-ache. We essentially hid out in the hotel for a few days. We managed to organise a Cambodian e-visa but by Monday evening we were even sick of the hotel, so we decided to pull our tourist-caps out of hibernation and dust them off for a days sight-seeing.

I'm really glad we did, because it changed our view of Bangkok. On Tuesday morning we tackled the city with gusto, using public transport to make our way to the train station. We wanted to buy a train ticket to Aranyaprathet on the Cambodian border for Thursday, but these can only be purchased on the day of travel. A local tout tried to convince us to take her bus instead, as the 5.55am train that we wanted would be full of local people. We didn't bite, but it did give us food for thought. We made our way out of the train station as far as the Golden Buddha temple. It was an amazing sight, and it was humbling to see the number of Thai people who visit to pay their respects to this giant figure and honour their faith. It was also gobsmacking to stand in front of that much gold. The statue is apparently worth 144million dollars nowadays!

When we left the temple we were twisting the map around trying to make sense of which way to cross the road when a kind Thai man ushered us with him and then effectively created our schedule for the day. He hailed us a state-sponsored tuk-tuk, which are much cheaper than private one, and negotiated a price to take us to the first spot on his list. We were deposited at a jetty on the river a few minutes later.

I am so glad we took the man's advice. For two hours we chugged along the river catching fleeting views of the many beautiful temples that border with it. Our captain took us up a side river into the poorer, less touristy area of Bangkok, where we saw a different side to life in Bangkok. Along the way we purchased a 'flog' from a lady in a kayak selling souvenirs and we helped a bunch of school kids who's ball had fallen into the canal. They were so happy to have it back!

We hopped out of the boat at the Grand Palace and walked into a market where we snacked on brochettes to keep our energy up and continued walking around the palace. As dark was falling we were approached by another Thai man, who informed us that this was not a safe area for tourists at night. He was an off-duty policeman and was afraid that we would get pick-pocketed. He pointed out a nice restaurant on the map and flagged down a tuk-tuk to take us there. He also explained the difference between state sponsored and private tuk-tuks. If they have a yellow front licence plate they receive a subvention from the state and should therefore be cheaper. On the way to the restaurant I saw something unbelieveable: a completely empty road in Bangkok. There is only one thing powerful enough to make the Thai's wait at the traffic lights: their King. As a policeman plonked his car sideways across the road in front of us, every available inch of tarmac began cluttering up with scooters. No one crossed the line as we waited patiently for about five minutes until the convoy of beige cars passed by. The King himself was in a beige stretch limousine. I thought the Thai people might bow their heads or something, but it turns out, agreeing to being held up was reverence enough. Once he was passed the revving of engines was deafening and it was like a Formula One race start as everyone came off the line at breakneck speed (only to be stopped again at the next set of lights!). The tuk-tuk dropped us at a restaurant that was way outside of our budget range, but it was next to the sky-train, so we hopped on that and headed back to our hotel to eat there.

Wednesday was our final full day in Bangkok and it is safe to say that this did not make us sad. We dropped our passports to the Indian Visa office at 8.30am and returned at 4pm to pick them up. Then we packed up our rucksacks and made a decision about our trip to Cambodia.

That's three visas down, only Nepal, China and Russia to go, but they're for another day in another city....

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Photos

Tuk Tuk
'fullofshit'

Kids
After we had managed to retrieve their ball from the water

Comments

[anneke]

Must be nice to have your parents nearby! WHat a wonderful experience you both have in this trip. It will take at least a weak to show all your 'holiday' stories....which mostly can be told in one evening or so. Take care and see you in a few months...x anneke

[anneke]

my o my
What a story, why does it need to take so long and so much energie to visit a country. And the traffic foto....it's almost the same as ours in Kenya, hahaha.