Bangkok - Third time lucky!

Our trip begins with a bus ride which we were told would be a big A/C bus called ‘Amazing buses’ from Cambodia through to Thailand. We were picked up and loaded onto a bus full of backpackers and back packs to the brim. There was no A/C but that made it more fun as we travelled with the windows and front door open. About 10 minutes in we drove past an overturned truck carrying several trailers, and since it had fallen in a ditch the last trailer was pointing straight up. It was like a scene from a Simpsons episode as the truck had been carrying about 20million sacks of rice, and there were people with spades trying to shovel it all back in.. yet the truck was still upside down???

After 10 hours we made it to Bangkok. This place is a little like Vegas - it doesn’t sleep and is a lot of fun! You can get anything you want here and the Thais are into having the latest and greatest.. Hot cars, motorbikes and technology. . Whatever.
The bus disembarked on Khaosan Road, and after talking to our new Danish friends - we decided against staying there and instead caught a taxi to a Scandinavian hostel on the other side of town. We managed to talk the driver down to 200baht which is about $10 for a 25minute ride - not bad - but we knew you could probably do better if you haggled for half an hour.
We arrived at the hostel and were told there was only one twin room left - the picture looked O.K so we took it. Well.. The room measured 2metres x 2.5metres (no exaggeration). It had a bunk bed in it, but we took the top mattress down to the floor because the fan wouldn’t cool the top. With the top mattress down you couldn’t open the door to the room - which made it pretty funny for toilet trips.

We didn’t really mind the room at all - but knew we could do better - so the next morning we thought we would head back to the Khaosan area where we knew some nicer places were hidden in the backstreets. Our taxi back cost 150baht - cheaper than the night before, but we didn’t have desperation in our eyes this time. On arrival we hoisted our 20kg packs on and sweated into the back streets only to be disappointed by the absolute filth we were presented with on every guesthouse stop.. I swear you would be lucky if you didn’t see a rat living in your same quarters - plus a bathroom was rare - only unclean shared varieties. We weaved out of the backstreets and into a main road looking for Khaosan direct, knowing we may have to pay more but maybe you could get better?
.. This is the point directly when we run into our Bangkok scam operations..
The background. You are a tourist - you look a little lost, so you run into a nice guy who just happens to be hanging out and is really helpful and genuine. This is the problem.. There are no people out there to help - only people willing to make a $.

So - we run into this guy, man is he nice. I actually approach him and ask about Khaosan, with which he screws his face up and goes - why - why would you want to stay there.. ?? .. I agree absolutely, and we go on from there… he says to go and see the T.A.T (government run tourist agency) and they will sort out hotels, trains, accom in Chiang Mai etc.. and miraculously a Tuk Tuk appears from nowhere to take us where we want to go.. Woah - that was good timing.. Off we go and arrive in the middle of nowhere to a office that doesn’t have T.A.T written on it anywhere.. It does have tourist suckers come here branded on my head somewhere though. After a while we decide on doubling our accom budget and accept what this guy is offering to us.. He even chopped the price several times, which I figured was weird for a government run place, but were 2 hours in the sweaty heat with our packs and this is what happens.. You just do it (as nike says). The hotel actually ends up being really good for the money - bland, but quiet and in a really good area for getting places.. So we weren’t too upset by this.

The hotel had no English channels on the TV which was really good as we were forced onto the streets to find our entertainment - we literally spent 12 hours each day walking around sight seeing and eating.. Crashing back at the room which would spit us back out there the next day.. All good.

The fish in the hotel lobby - hard to take a photo of scale - but she is one big mama.. and kind of lonely looking.


This is our view from the hotel window.. luckily the curtain did black it out.. and we were double glazed... so no noise either - surprised when you're used to the opposite.


This abandoned car is outside the hotel. Bangkok has cool abandoned cars everywhere - more than often they will be a desirable classic in NZ. I saw a really cool lowered tinted Austin 1300 with mags.. covered in dust.. a citroen and even a jag.

After we checked in we found our first mega mall called MBK - it is truly awesome - having had no in your face technology at all for 8 weeks, we welcomed this overpowering stimulating consumer paradise. To kick it all off we had a McDonalds combo each - and we immediately felt sick, but satisfied by the processed nature of it. Then there was floor after floor of shopping.. I mean it was seriously out of control.. And clever - once you got up there it was hard to get back down.. They had actually made it like a one way trap… and trapped we were - as we had found the camera and cellphone level. It consisted of thousands of mini stall parallel importers competing against one another with giant calculators to show their best price. Desh gave us a mission to find a new camera for her which became a lot of fun. By about the 15th stall we had become experts at haggling and the model codes. We had found the camera and it was now time to research - so we navigated ourselves to the internet and cinema complex to see what the net could tell us. To our delight her camera had come in at $200 below retail with memory card and bag thrown in.. so we spent an hour trying to figure out how to get back to the floor below and pay for the new toy. Six hours later and square eyed we found the front door and tottered out to the sky train to hit the Night Bazaar a little down the line. These markets are fantastic, as you can eat in the middle with live music and then get lost in the catacombs later with 1000s of stalls selling everything. After the markets we took the raddest tuk tuk journey yet with our crazy driver belting it down the streets and around the wet corners flatout revving the little hotted up beast and shaking his fist at anyone following the road code.. It was all about getting to the destination the shortest way possible.

MBK - you really can't miss it!



The next day after breaky we thought we would find the Grand Palace and visit this wonder we had wanted to see for some time. Our pessimistic taxi driver a few nights before had claimed that only half of it was made from real gold, and I have a strong feeling he is right - but I like to pretend it is all real for the absolute imagination power.
The Palace of course is cursed for us as we had tried to get there on our last day in Bangkok 3 years ago and had failed due to a scamming taxi driver telling us the road was closed that day and we should take a $100 boat ride instead.. To which we were dropped off in the middle of nowhere, with just enough time to get back to the hotel and fly back to NZ.
Today would be different though, we could feel it. We walked out of our hotel with map in hand and evaded all the Tuk Tukkers hassling us, as we would commandeer our own way to the other side of town - oh yes we would. Our first stop was the train station to buy tickets to Chiang Mai, where we would be greeted with a scene like Slum Dog, with thousands of Thais waiting for their train out.. Here we met a cool station worker who supported our quest to find the Grand palace and affirmed our walking directions to the ferry terminal.

After several kms we reached the terminal and took a express boat down the river to Wat Po terminal (a temple close to the Grand Palace) for $0.50c and it was awesome. The drivers belt down the river flat stick, and when they go to moor up at terminals they just crash into the tyres at speed and then ram the boat up to let passengers off before gunning it out like they are super late. You also get to witness sucker tourists (like us last time) taking $100 long tail boats overpowered with turbo diesel truck engines - seriously cool - when they gun it they leave a rooster tail about 100metres long.

A long tail boat.
Your average long tail power plant.
Express boat
They are always packed.


So we start trudging down the street to the Grand Palace with full confidence - we can see the place fine and it doesn’t look too busy - but it is a public holiday today.
This is when we run into the same problem as the day before. We meet this really nice guy on the street who looks at me in shorts and Desh in a skirt and singlet and says we have 2 problems.
* the first is that we are under dressed - you can’t visit the temple looking like this - which is true - but we also know you can hire clothes there - so it doesn’t really deter us.
* the second is that it is a public holiday and only Thai people can go in today.

So what we could do - grabbing our map, is go to this temple here called Lucky temple and this temple over here called laughing Buddha.. Which are both free today.. And we say to him .. Mmm nah we are OK we will just go walk around here anyway.. When low and behold a tuk tuk turns up right on cue with the driver backing up the same stories. The friendly guy says -- hey - I can get this guy to take you to all these places for 20 baht ($1) which is soooo cheap… and he starts negotiating with this stranger until the tuk tuk goes yeah OK - no problems. So for some weird reason we pile into this tuk tuk only metres from the grand palace and take off with him. Our first stop is the lucky buddha which was sooooo incredibly lame, but we didn’t want to offend his religion, so we told him it was cool. We get back in thinking, sweet we’ll just go to the laughing buddha and then we’ll hit khao san to buy a cool tshirt I’d seen. He stopped outside this shop and said to go in.. then we knew we had a problem. This guy welcomes us and gives us a cup of water each and these baby little straws and then takes us to a negotiation room. We sit down and are thrust catalogues of suits.. I look so disinterested that he says “ you aren’t interested are you?”
“nope, not really, we don’t even know why we’re here”
So he takes us downstairs and tries to sell us this lame bar of soap for $10.. Which we just walk out on.
We’re not too happy with our driver, but he swears there is only one more stop to make at a jewellery shop and then we can go where we want. He tells us we have to pretend for 15minutes and look interested.. We kind of like the idea of this sudden role play opportunity and decide to do it so he can get his 5 litres of gas (that’s why they take you around, the shops offer 5 litres for tourist drop offs). As we enter there is a sign in the lobby saying “has your tuk tuk driver taken you here against your will? If so tell us and we will drop you back” - we took one look at it, sniggered and stepped into our new roles. I tell ya, we were so good that we almost ended up buying some pretty expensive fake stuff there.. But we remained intact and exited with our bank balances sitting at even.
Our tuk tuk guy was excited and so were we -- we stepped in and said Khao San please.. He paused and said - first we must do one more stop. Well, we flipped out and just let it rip.. But they don’t care they’ve seen it all before. We got out and told him to piss off.. Which meant we were now in the middle of nowhere walking down the streets where people were so confused to see us that noone would hassle us - not even the tuk tuk drivers which was really weird. After a long time hobbling about we saw a smelly local bus and hopped on, pointing at Khaosan on the map - to which there was an affirming grin.. So off we went down the strips on the outer regions of our tourist maps. The gears were grinding hard and the ride was cheap as dirt, but sure enough in a babbling of Thai we were told to get off now.

Khaosan Road.


Welcome to Khao San Road. As soon as we entered the street we were 10 years too old. It is backpacker Mecca! Every bar is full of whities drinking hard and Thai staff pretending to have fun with them squealing with joy and taking the baht right out of their hands.

We had a quick late lunch and then headed to the back streets in search of my tshirt (which I never found). This is when we heard “Ladesha!” We turned to see an old friend of hers, Vinnie and his wife drinking at a bar.. That was a great surprise, and we chatted while ‘the beach’ played on DVD behind us (and plays every day at most bars continuously). It ended up being a great run in, as Joy, Vinnies wife works in the travel industry and offered us a 75% discount in train travel throughout Germany.
We hopped onto the rush hour ferry and navigated back to the hotel with ease. At this point we had figured it out.. You can get around Bangkok easily with sky trains, ferries and the public bus.. You Don’t want the tuk tuks because they scam you unless you pay premium to get no stops, and the taxis are on the same mafia system.

It’s now the weekend - and in the weekend is the chuttachuk markets.. Easily the best markets in Bangkok to get anything you want. This place is huge - it is a district by itself accommodating 200,000 visitors shopping per day from 6am-6pm.

The market as you walk around at any time - you can't see anything but people and what's being sold.

In the pet section they were selling chipmunks that wore little hats.. they must have been pretty warm - cause I was.

We loved it -- within 2 minutes I had bought 2 tshirts, and by the end of the day I had 4 t shirts, a singlet and a pair of shorts for less than $60.. Desh had bought a really cool skirt also.
Satisfied and dead tired from the day of markets we took the train to the Paragon shopping mall.. Aha - you can shop again if you are recharged with A/C. This mall is the upperclass version of the MBK I was talking about earlier.. It has all the big brands.. And even has a car dealership on one floor amongst the shops - I’ve included a shot… they had BMW M3s, Porsche turbos, Lotus, Ferrari Scuddarias, and a Lamborghini showroom tinted in black with a black lambo on the floor. The crazy thing is there were businessman in there making deals on the cars.
After dinner we went out to their show area to see the exhibit space - as you can see by the shots it is pretty cool, with this giant white manga like statue beside the stage. A water feature with flying seagulls and what you can’t see is a paddock full of bronze bulls lying and standing in different positions.


This was inside the mall on the 5th floor looking at the car showrooms.
We're in this really cool cafe here in the mall. See the round clear tube above me - it's called a sound tube - you plug your ipod in, and the idea is that sound blasts down the tube which you hear but it doesn't disturb anyone else.

Third time lucky! It is our last day, and we were intent on seeing this grand palace - we knew there was nothing stopping us this time. It was a stinking hot day and we are dressed to cover - jeans, socks, shoes etc.. gasping for air - but sacrificing comfort for show. This is pretty funny - we found a new ferry terminal and there is a sign there that says “there is no lucky buddha and the palace is not closed - be aware of scams” ….Off the ferry and walking down the same strip - being accosted by loads of agents telling us the palace is closed - not open today! Desh turned around and yelled at one of them “hey, have you heard of the tourist police?” .. he stiffened up and said “OK, I am the police” - laughing.. Well, I had to laugh at that one too - not bad.
We finally get to the gate - and guess what, it is a public holiday and only Thais are allowed in!!!
Luckily we were allowed to go in at 1pm - and it was 12.30 - so we found a shady spot and waited while watching other tourists fall into traps talking to street agents.. It really is a big problem here.. Cause we are all suckers and they are very convincing.

Luckily the palace turns out to be an incredible sight and we are awe struck by the brilliant gold finishes and drawn to the sparkling jewels like magpies.

We have a little time left so decide to go to MBK for lunch - damn I love this place.. I am a consumer junky.. One item that I was intrigued by was the iphone mini.. Which I thought must have been a genuine product from apple I’d missed out on until a shop clerk showed me one.. It had a TV inbuilt with a giant metal telescopic tv aerial to boot.. I laughed and backed away - these people can replicate anything - don’t be fooled… it’s fools gold in dem hills.

6pm and boarding a train for a 13 hour journey to Chiang Mai.. A laptop movie, some dinner, a valium and some sleep.

Just a random shot - they do anyone and everything over here
I thought this was quite a cute boy racer sticker.. advertising marine engines

Not your average boyracer car - but hey - they make do with what they can get.