We had been looking forward to Bangkok, largely due to the accommodation. We'd managed to find a hostel, which basically was a big building full of small flats - we got ourselves a studio, which had a fridge, a microwave, sofa, tv, use of the pool, fitness centre and tennis courts, but more importantly at this point, washing machines. Everything we own was dirty when we arrived, so the first thing we did (after a plate of chicken fried rice from the restaurant - 80p, very reasonable) was do some washing. We got downstairs at 8.50pm, only to find that the bit with the machines closed at 9pm. Boo.
We spent the first morning washing and attempting to dry enough things to go out in in the afternoon (we needn't have bothered really, cos as soon as we went outside in it, it would've dred instantly anyway) then we decided to grab a taxi to the Grand Palace. The palace is my lasting impression of Thailand from last time, it's incredible - the most decorated building I've ever seen. There isn't a single centimetre that doesn't sparkle with gold, or coloured glass, or have hand-painted flowers or bells on. I've never seen anything like it. All of the temples I've seen in Thailand are incredibly beautiful - even the less touristy ones you pass on the road, but the palace is a whole other level. We wondered around, in the blistering heat (not literally this time at least, thanks to the upgrade to factor 50), for an hour or so, and then got a tuk tuk to the sleeping Buddha.
Tuk tuks are another reason why I love Thailand. They're hillarious. I can't believe they are actually government licensed taxis, cos they're crazy. Bashed up metal carriages with no sides, joined to the back of a motorbike. They look like one of those 3-wheeled, red and yellow early learning centre cars that small children have - the ones that you sit in and push yourself along... only with an engine. They tear around bangkok at god knows what miles an hour (I'm sure it sounds faster than it is, cos the engines make a lot of noise), and you pay whatever you manage to negotiate with the driver... which is basically what Thai people would pay, plus at least 150% for good measure. You also have to be very specific that you don't wish to be taken to any sort of Rolex shop or ping pong show before you go to your destination, as they all seem to be on commission from one or the other.
We were quite fortunate this time with taxis I will say. Last time I came to Bangkok they tried to rip me off every single time I got a taxi. I don't know whether it was cos I was on my own at the time, or whether I was just unlucky but they tried every trick in the book - meter rigging, extra surcharges, fixing the price blah blah. Thankfully this time, we were really lucky- particularly with the guys who took us too and from the airport, as last time one guy tried to charge me 3 times the amount!
(Quick tip...If you ever get a taxi from Bangkok airport - don't give them the bit of paper that the booking people give you, keep it - it's a complaint form. If they try to take it off you, they're going to scam you. They should put the meter on, it should start at 35 Baht, and it should tick up slowly 2 Baht at a time. They should have a distance versus price table displayed in the car too so you can check. They're not allowed to fix the price, they have to put the meter on from the airport, if they don't, get out. They won't want you to complain cos they'll be in trouble, so they should change their mind before you get your luggage out of the boot! Watch for big jumps in the meter too.) They do scam you with a smile though, and in my experience if you call them on it, they back down. Thailand is so cheap its very easy not to notice that you massively overpaid for something, because at home it would still be more expensive.
So where were we, tuk tuk round to the sleeping Buddha. I'd seen photos of the sleeping Buddha, but you can't see in photos just how huge it is. He's massive! 46m long by 15m high! We grabbed a few pics, then headed out to another temple: Wat Arun.
I think this was actually my favourite. From a distance Wat Arun looks like it's a stone carved temple. When you get close to it, it's actually white with loads of coloured flowers carved on and painted in different colours. It sounds tacky, but the over all effect is really pretty. There was also the added bonus of climbing up the sides - I'd seen monks do it on a postcard, but I'd assumed it was a 'monks only' thing. Turns out it's not! Yay! The steps are seriously steep though. I was also wearing a skirt, which wasn't a good choice of climbing attire, particularly on a windy day... hey the old Japanese guys loved it anyway. They were too old to climb it themselves, so they took to taking photos of Loz climbing instead. Haha!
By the time we got to the top the sun was starting to go down a bit. There was a nice breeze, and beautiful views of the gardens and the river. Another place where they should consider a cocktail bar I think... not sure it's in-keeping with Buddhist tradition though.
Day two we took a bizarre day trip which we booked through the hostel to a place called Kanchanaburi province. We saw the bridge over the river Kwai, and the war museum, as well as crazy things like an Aussie guy bottle feeding a leopard cub. The original bridge over the river kwai built by the POWs is only a little stub now, but there is a new version, which turns out to be fully functioning. Tourists trek up and down the brige for photos non-stop. The bottom of it is basically a few metal plates bolted together with train tracks either side, then rotting wooden planks either side of that. There's only enough room for one person at a time in the middle, so people walk on the wooden bits, a lot of which have big holes in, or just flip straight up when you stand on them. We were not entirely sure it would pass health and safety in the UK... not that that's always a bad thing, and to be honest it wasn't the worst offender of the day!
It turns out that despite the tourist traffic constantly on the train tracks, that the railway bridge still fully functions. We were heading back to the bus when a whistle started blowing. I heard Loz say, 'there's a train', to which I said 'no way' (or similar),
'I think it's gonna come on the bridge'
'There's no way they'd let it on the bridge, there's too many people'
'Cat, we've got to get off the bridge now, else we're going to be stuck and the bus will go'
A guy was holding a red flag in front of the train just before the start of the bridge. It stopped.
'See, it must stop there. I told you they wouldn't let it on the bridge, that would be ridiculous.'
We got off the bridge, and headed back towards the bus, just in time to see the train head over the bridge full of tourists, crowded down the sides.
'Jesus Christ. Now that definitely wouldn't pass HnS'
We got back on the bus, and were taken to a railway station... apparently most people in our group were taking the 'Death Railway' back to where we'd just come from (yes that's what it's actually called, hmm, I wonder how it got it's name?) We weren't, so we changed busses for the 3rd time that day, and headed to do some elephant riding in an open sided jeep.
My previous elephant riding experience in Chiang Mai was amazing. Really lush forest, torrential rain, walking through the river, feeding them bananas as we went. This wasn't the same. It was scorching hot, barren, there was nothing to see landscape wise, and nothing for the elephants to eat or explore on the way round. I felt bad. We bought them some bananas at the end, but I felt quite sorry for them as they didn't seem so happy as the other ones in Chiang Mai. Not sure bananas made up for it. The guy also tried to sell us something made out of elephant's teeth - 'for luck'. I'm sure it was an old elephant, that died of old age after a long, happy and healthy life, or perhaps a baby one had a visit from the tooth fairy... or perhaps I am both ignorant and naiive.
We headed for lunch, which was distinctly edible, and then went bamboo rafting. It was at this point having been in the sun for too long that I started to feel horribly sick. My water was warm in my bag, but I felt so sick I didn't feel like drinking it. I needed some aircon.
The tiger temple was one of those places which I wasn't sure ethically whether we should have been going or not. Advertised as a sanctury for rescued tigers, but with some dubious reports that that may not be the case, we were only inside for about five mins before we figured that we probably shouldn't have gone in.
It cost 500B for a start just to go in- about £10, which is very expensive for Thailand - most places cost us about 50B to get into. We were screamed at by the organiser, who marched us down the dirt track towards the tigers, telling us if we didn't hurry up they'd be going without us (charming). The tigers were all lying on the floor, looking pretty out of it. People where queuing for ages to pay another £20 for a photo with them. We decided to give it a miss, and headed round the corner, where there was a less drugged-looking baby tiger having his photo taken and getting decidedly fed up of having small children sitting on his back. Thinking it would be a step too far in terms of animal cruelty if we sat on him, Loz and I settled for a pat, and then wandered around to see a couple more tigers in the waterfall, and some bison... presumably bred for lunch purposes. That was kind of it - no sign of a temple, although the monks 'looked after' the tigers, so perhaps that's where the name comes from... or perhaps we disliked the place too much to go and hunt for one. I felt bad about going there actually - more so than the elephant place even. All in all, not sure we had the best day ethically that day!
The following day we treated ourselves to a lie in, before heading out to the sky bar at about six to see the sunset. Last year when we attempted to visit the skybar, we were inproperly dressed for the occasion, and wound up taking photos in the toilets, stealing some sanitary bags and heading home. I was determined we would make it in this time. We donned our poshest gear - which frankly is not very posh, and we even dug out the little make-up we have... which is basically a mascara and some eyeshadow, AND I got my perfume out so we didn't smell of elephant. We really had made an effort, and it paid off... we got in!
The hotel was very posh, and we had to take out more money to afford a cocktail (incidentally our first alcohol since the free saki in Japan). Mine was a lovely strawberry coconut one with real strawberries, and Loz's was some sort of chocolate and malibu thing - both very tasty, and we enjoyed both them and the view of Bangkok from the 64th floor. Nom nom.
After this, having not been market shopping yet (which has to be a criminal offence for Thailand), we headed to Pat Pong market... or Ping Pong market as I prefer, due to the amount of guys trying to sell you ping pong shows as you wonder round. These have been highly recommended to me in the past, however we gave it a miss, and proceeded to blow the budget on presents.
Having been allergic to the cheap watch I bought in Kuala Lumpur, I decided to find myself another... a DKNY don't you know. They're so well made I couldn't possibly be allergic to one of those. I also found an authentic Louis Vuitton wallet (new design, very good quality, she give me good priiiiiice), and some real pandora charms. We did some particularly good bartering - Loz got some T-shirts, and some real thai silk scarves. We did well... before we headed home skint.
The following day we'd planned to go to Ayutthaya (ancient capital of Thailand, which is now mostly ruined temples). We were doing it on a budget of about 50p after the market shopping, and got the third class train with no aircon, and the dead chickens! We were knee to knee, packed in with the local yokels, but when it's 60p (compared to first class which is five entire pounds) for over 2 hours on the train, one cannot complain! I managed to sleep on the window sill, despite getting my hair attached to the outside of the train several times, and we arrived just after lunch.
A tuk tuk driver started to try to sell us a tour as soon as we got off the train. We had pretty much no money - although a lot of the temples were far apart so it would have been useful to take a tuk tuk tour. In typical thai style the guy launched into his sales pitch 'maaany many tourists go with me, looky looky, read my book, how much you pay?' We told him repeatedly we couldn't afford it but he was very insistent. We got him down from 1600B to 300 - nothing improves your bartering skills like complete inability to pay any more. He was also very nice - he said 'maybe I have friend, you go inside temple for free, maybe I not have friend, you see outside.' Luckily his 'friends' were out in force today, and we got free entry into all of the temples... we're not entirely sure he knew them, and we have no idea what he said to them (probably told them we were special needs or something) but we didn't care. We went to the giant gold buddha, one with a buddha head growing in a tree (looks a bit like grandmother willow from pocohontas), the giant sleeping buddha (which seemed even bigger than the last), and finally a Cambodian Angor-Wat style one, where we got to do some climbing again. We were really pleased we went, and headed home happy where we took a dip in the pool and headed to bed for an early start in the morning. Next stop Hong Kong!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment