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Published: July 16th 2010
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Soi Cowboy in Bangkok
The sleazy part of town Hello Readers, we hope you are all well.
Sorry it has taken us so long to blog but we have had a little hiccup along the way in the form of an unscheduled 5 day hospital stay in Chiang Mai. Anyway, more on that later.
So we started off in Bangkok after flying via Singapore. The flight over wasn’t too bad at all - Singapore Airlines were excellent with good in-flight entertainment and very good Singaporean food. They were not shy with the Riesling either! We arrived in Singapore Airport at 8am only to find that our connecting flight to Bangkok didn’t depart until 4pm (it was supposed to be 10am). Whilst Singapore Airport is wonderfully clean and immaculate, there are no comfy places to kip so we an uncomfortable 8 hours before we were Bangkok bound.
We arrived in Bangkok and were immediately struck by the intense humidity. It was 31 degrees but it felt like being in a steam room! After 20 minutes of carrying our bags back and forth looking for a way into town (well, Steve carrying Ellie’s back and Ellie wheeling Steve’s), we just decided to get a taxi. The taxi driver seemed
The Grand Palace, Bangkok
Note the similarity of the other people's clothes very nice but when we arrived at the guesthouse tried to charge us double the amount quoted by the woman at the airport on the basis there were 2 of us! We negotiated a price though and vowed afterwards to play hard ball from now on!
The guesthouse, which came recommended by Ellie’s cousin Will who visited a few months earlier, was very impressive. It had air-conditioning, en-suite, wireless connection in the room - we decided to treat ourselves for the first few nights but after this it will be basic accommodation all the way! Our first night we shared some chicken noodle soup from a market stall for 75p - which was less than the bottle of Chang Beer Steve bought from the 7/11 to accompany the football which happened to be on in our room. The dish was delightful and the beer was better than the Chang they serve at Everton.
In Bangkok we took a boat trip and visited Wat Phra Kaew and saw the Emerald Buddha which was impressive, albeit a little small. Ellie had to rent a lovely khaki shirt to enter as you are not allowed to display your arms (so if
you see a photo with a few people wearing the same thing, thats why!) It peaked at about 37 degrees that day and we had to take our flip flops off to enter the Temple to view the Buddha. The floor was so hot we were dancing like Gene Kelly up the steps of a sacred Temple! Bangkok is a tiring city and the pace of life is pretty hectic so after 3 days and nights we decided to head west on a train to Kanchanaburi.
It was a 3 hour train ride costing 100 baht each (just over £2) and it was very hot - there was no air-conditioning as it was 3rd class carriages only. We didn’t know what to expect from Kanchanaburi but were surprised by how much is resembled Tenerife or anywhere on the Costa Del Sol with bars like ‘Del Boys Place’ and ‘Nite Magic Bar’. At first we were disappointed but it was probably more to do with the state of ‘Sam’s River Raft House’ we had pre-booked the day before. All the fan in the room managed to achieve was to blow the hot air around the room - it was cooler
outside where we sought refuge at 2am. There were frogs in the bathroom and lizards on the inside walls, and the place was really dirty!
Things looked up the next day when we checked into a new place on the main ‘drag’. We hired a moped and went to chill by a waterfall at Saiyok Noi and went onto Hellfire Pass where the Allied PoW’s were imprisoned in WWII, which was pretty shocking. It was an 80km ride from Kanchaburi and the journey back coincided with a monsoon which was pretty exciting. We have uploaded a couple of video clips to show how fun the moped was! The next destination would be Ayathaya which is 4 hours on a non a/c bus with a change half way - very punishing!
Two interesting facts about Ayathaya - 1) the kids are really fat here and 2) it is pretty boring! OK so it’s a Unesco World Heritage Site but other than looking at it there isn’t too much else. I guess it’s because it is on a much smaller scale than Bangkok that it seemed light on activities. The ancient ruins are pretty special though as you can see
from the photos. We took a 2 hour tuk-tuk tour around where we looked at a couple of impressive Wats including one which houses a huge golden Buddha which was amazingly spectacular. We also took an elephant ride which was a strange experience. Halfway through the ride, the Thai fella steering spanked his elephant which was totally un-necessary and it was at that point that we realised that animal welfare was not a priority. We will not be riding an elephant again. After two days and one night in Ayathaya we headed north on the night train to Chiang Mai. 2nd Class was sold out so we had to take a 1st Class 2 bed carriage and within 5 minutes we had the hostess in our carriage with a bucket full of beer. Her name was Yin and she somehow persuaded us to buy a load of beer including some for her and more amazingly she managed to get Ellie to drink beer! About 90 minutes and 6 large bottles of beer later, we went to bed absolutely shattered.
What an amazing place Chiang Mai is - the highlight of the trip so far. The town is a young,
trendy and vibrant place and the climate is much cooler up in the north but it still reaches low thirties. The main part of the town is an old quadrant 2km by 1.6km and is demarked by a moat and the remainder of a medieval wall built 700 years ago to defend Chiang Mai from a Burmese invasion. We had found a good deal on hotels.com where we can stay in a spa resort for a fraction of the normal cost so we treated ourselves to two nights of relaxation away from the activity of the old town. We booked up some activities too for the following week...... first whitewater rafting and then a cooking course at a Thai farm. The rafting was amazing - there had been a drought so the rapids were not as challenging as they could have been but it was certainly exciting enough. There were four of us in the boat altogether; the two of us, an American girl called Brittany and the instructor who was a lot of fun. Brittany is from Portland in Oregon in the States where we will be passing through next year so we have agreed to meet up -
apparently they make good wine up there!
Our luck took a turn for the worse the following day. We both began feeling unwell so we spent 3 days tucked up in bed. On the evening of the 3rd day we ventured out of the guesthouse in search of food and Steve pretty much passed out in the street so the owner of the guesthouse got us a tuk-tuk to the hospital. Steve was immediately admitted with a fever (which was later identified as Dengue Fever) and then a few hours later it was Ellie's turn to be admitted with severe food poisoning. Then followed 5 days each in hospital which was slow, dull and painful. We never made it to the cooking class but there will opportunities to hone our culinary skills at other places on the journey. We are now discharged but stuck in a guesthouse in Chiang Mai as the hospital are holding our passports hostage until the insurance company pay up our bill. We have been told that they are happy to pay up so realy hoping to get the passports back today so that we can head off to Laos asap where the fun and
games recommence!!
S&E xx
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Brian Cove
non-member comment
Nice one
Great to hear you're both still alive (just). Great blog but next time please don't start it with "a little hiccup on the way in the form of an unscheduled 5 day hospital stay in Chiang Mai'" and then put more of that later. I nearly went hairless........oh! Well when I read that bit I was getting in the car to come and pick you both up. Fantastic to hear your news - insanely jealous!!! Me an Mindy xxxx (no doubt Rachel will send you something when she reads this later)