We managed to find a hotel that let us check in early. The hotel had a roof top pool which Tama immediately took advantage of but I still had to keep my burn dry! Then we went to bed for a couple of hours sleep as we didn't get much on the bus!On our first day we managed to fall hook, line and sinker for a jewellery scam and lost a fair bit of our hard earned money :-( There are con artists all over the place and being trusting kiwis we weren't prepared. Tip for anyone who comes to Bangkok, don't use tuk tuks, metered taxis are much better and often cheaper. Tuk tuks we have discovered are where a lot of the scams start. After finally finding some police that aren't corrupt (most of them ask for money in exchange for their help) we are trying to get some of the money back but it is proving difficult. Not surprisingly we started to form a bad opinion of Bangkok after our first day. However, we did see and do some great things there dispite our bad luck and stupidity.....
After the first steps of trying to recover from our loss we spent the next day walking round in the extrodinary heat, humidity and dirt. First we visited the Grand Palace which was beautiful. Everyone in Thailand seems to ADORE their king. There are huge posters of him everywhere.
This year is his 60th year as king and was also his 80th birthday. To celebrate these anniversaries half of Thailand (almost) is wearing yellow shirts with the royal
emblem on the lapel. It is lovely really, he has obviously been doing a good job as he is very popular. His palace was elaborate as you can see in the photos. We saw the Emerald buddha and his outfits, he was wearing his 'Summer Attire' but also has outfits for the 'Cold Season' and the 'Rainy Season'. All made of gold of course! Also saw a museum there with heaps the royal families jewels, gold wash bowls and spitoons etc! Lots of scary looking weapons too. After the Grand Palace we took a short walk to Wat Po where the HUGE reclining buddha lives. He really is enormous, what more can I say? He's a huge, gold buddha!
Most days we spent some of our time looking around Khao Sarn and the surrounding area as this is where we were staying.
We found some great restaurants, our two favourites were an Isralei one and an Indian one, both were so good we went back on another day! Some restaurants we went to played movies in the evenings which was a good cheap way to relax at the end of the day. All the movies were pirated copies of new releases, Spiderman 3, 300, The DeVinci Code, Pirates of the Carribean 3 etc. They play them with English subtitles and the translations are hilarious! In The DaVinci Code the 'holy grail' (what the whole story is based on) was traslated as the 'holding grill' all the way through and the 'fleur de lys' was the 'bleeding flute'! haha was so funny, all the tourists kept laughing whenever it came up. This partuicular night we ran in to our friends Michael and Leticia whom we had met in the Perhentian Islands in Maylasia, was great to catch up with them over a drink while the movie was playing. At one of the restaurants we went to watch a movie and the menu had lots of bad spelling mistakes, the funniest was New Zeeland Leam Shobs (we guessed NZ Lamb Chops!).
As is usual in a lot of Asian cities and towns, kids try to sell you stuff on the streets, it was quite upsetting here as there are kids, some as young as 5 with huge armfulls of single roses to sell. The saddest part is that they have to sell all of them before they are allowed to go home. We had a talk to a couple of them at about 4pm then after a night of looking around came back to find them still there with half a bundle of roses left at 2am, in the pouring rain. So sad but you don't know what to do. If you buy them you are supporting their parents/guardians sending them out but if you don't they have to stay out longer :-(On our third night in Bangkok we went for a tuk tuk ride to Pat Pong
which is an area famous for it's nightlife. It had a fabulous night market which took up a whole street. It's quite funny observing the backpackers from around the world because some of them buy so much junk! Then they end up wearing top to toe fake designer gear (Gucci, Prada, Versace. You name it) or they go to the other extreme and end up looking like a hippie even if they're not with about 20 shell braclets up each arm (and leg), braided or dreaded hair, over the shoulder tie dye bags with tassles and wrap around canvas 'pyjama' pants! We haven't gone to either extreme, you'll be pleased to know. Though we have been sucked in buying the odd T-shirt or bracelet. Tama got a Singha Tshirt and I got a Tiffany necklace to match my earrings Mum and Dad gave me, the earrings are real Tiffany, the necklace I'm afraid is not! But still real silver (I hope) and pretty all the same.All down each side of this street at Pat Pong are bars with girls who do the famous in Bangkok 'Ping Pong' show. The bars are called vulgur names such as 'Super Pussy'! They shoot ping pong balls, darts etc, smoke cigerettes, pull out strings of razor blades and all sorts (from you know where). Poor ladies :-(
On one of our days we did a day tour which was fabulous. First we stopped at a coconut factory where they made sugar from coconuts.
Then we went to the famous floating market which was pretty gorgeous. There are heaps of stalls and food hawkers in little gondolla-like boats on the river and you can go on boats through the middle of them and shop or if you buy something from land they send your purchase out to you on a long stick with a basket at the end and you replace it with the money! It was fascinating just watching the locals work.
The next stop was the Bridge of the River Kwai. It's a famous spot because 2 versions of it were built by English, Aussies, Kiwis etc under instruction from the Japanese in WW2. It was blown up by American bombers and the current bridge was rebuilt on what was left of the foundations. It was really sad to read about the conditions the soldiers were living in and was pretty moving to see the remains of the 1st bridge and walk across the 2nd bridge.
After stopping for a nice lunch at a roadside restaurant our tour continued on to the Tiger Temple. It was a pretty cool experience as we got to touch and even 
cuddle 
the tigers and get photos with them. We even got to play with a tiger cub! It was very touristy obviously and hard to know how much fun it was for the tigers but certainly an experience none the less. The aim of the project (run by Bhuddist monks) is to save endangered tigers and eventually reintroduce them to the wild. The enclosures there were fairly small, the ones we saw anyway, but they have a big plan to build a huge sanctury for them if they get enough money from the tourists! 
On our last day in the big smoke we went to The Weekend Market. We have never seen and will probably never again see such a HUGE market. You can litterally buy everything there, such as live sharks for example. We spent about 5 or 6 hours there and didn't even see a quarter of it and we were moving through pretty fast! We didn't buy much, Tama brought some shorts and I got a braclet but thats about it. Most of the clothes
are too small for the average Westerner anyway (let alone us!) We did do something we had said we 
would try to do in Thailand though and thats eat crickets! They were actually ok, just tasted really crunchy! We had to do it once!
I think that is about it for Bangkok. We had a mixed experience of this place, certainly won't forget it but have to make do with less money for the rest of our trip now :-(
Tama will continue the story soon and describe our next stop, Chiang Mai.
Love Olivia and Tama xx
No comments:
Post a Comment