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Hiya,
So we are in Bangkok.
I guess i will start from the begining. Last week we left Koh Tao by ferry and headed to Chumphon-a city about the size of Colac situated about 500km south of bangkok-to catch our night train to BK.
We got the faster ferry from Koh Tao. So good! They had Mr Bean on the telly's for the whole hour and a half that it took us to get back to the main land. It was fairly choppy and rainy that day and we felt fine the whole way.
so this time Ty and i let's say 'decided' to get the tickets direct from the station, (We had looked online the day before just after we realized that we had to get out of Tanote Bay asap but you can only book three days in advance). So we were a little stressed that we wouldn't be able to get a ticket and blah blah. So we made a few calls to the station, and after many mysterious beeping noises and no one speaking english we found out pretty much nothing.
And so we made a plan. It was pretty simple really, it involved us getting a seat at the front of the bus which conects the ferry and the train station, me jumping out of the bus while it's still movng and buying the last remaining tickets and tyler carrying both our bags to the station. All was going to plan -apart from the bus leaking water all over my seat while i was in it- i got to the station and guess what all the tickets were sold and there was no more train for three days. Not really, the computer was broken. Great, the guy kept telling me 'an hour an hour' i kinda thought he wanted me to offer him money so that the computer would fix itself suddenly. But then after ages (cos i had got to the station so fast) other people rocked up and he told them the same thing. So we waited at the station for a while surrounded by lovely scrawny dogs, bums, cute little kids and other semi pissed off ttravellers. In the end we got our ticket. Yay.
We still had to wait for about five hours until the train arrived. We decided to get the latest train (about 11.30pm) so that we would arrive in Bangkok at a resonable hour not the middle of the night.
We put our backs in a locker and ventured into the town. Luckily we did because we came across a really good night market. We ate very spicy curry and funny little sweet coconut-srimp paste pancake thingos.
What next. Well we finally got on the train and into our lovely little beds that were neatly made and waiting for us. The next morning as we rolled into Bangkok a lovely little lady came around the train while we were still in bed and offered us hot chocolate, yummy...then she stung us for 40B, or in other words, welcome to Bangkok.
Rather than staying in the typical backpacker zone of Th Khao San, we found a cheap and basic hotel in Siam Square, much closer to the skytrain and Metro systems.
Over about a week we got to know our area fairly well and had found all the best places to eat. The fresh fruit man who set up his portable street stall was great for breakfast. A big chunk of watermelon for 35cents!
On one of our first days we visited 'Jim Thompson's house', the preserved house of the american entrepenur who set up a huge thai silk business in i think the 50's? Rather interesting life, he just went missing one day whilst trekking in Malaysia and his traditional thai style house in the centre of Bangkok has been preserved as a kind of museum. There was a very nice Thai woman who took us on a tour with a bunch of other tourists, including one particularly annoying American man who was quite rude and kept asking annoying questions just to show off! We felt sorry for his poor Thai grlfriend.
That night we went to the movies. Bangkok has heaps of cinemas ranging from old art deco styled ones to very moderns ones filled with love heart shaped 'couple seats.' We opted for the reclining style. very comfy and only 4 bucks each.
So we found Bangkok to be quite boring, it sounds crazy, but there wasn't really that much to do. So we ended up going shopping. Bangkok has a massive sale each july and august, around 70 to 80% off most things. I bought a great dress.
we also went shopping to chatuchak Weekend market. It roughly a billion times bigger than the Vic market. It is full of clothes and animals and trinkets. We got lost heaps but had a pretty funny day. There were aisles and aisles of puppies. So cute and with the puppies came loads of doggy clothing. Gus and Billie better be happy with our purchases. An all-in-one outfit for Gus and a cute pair of non-slip shoes for Billie. Hilarious!! We can't wait to take our puppies out in Melbourne all dressed up.
We did a fair amount of shopping in BK come to think of it. Our biggest purchase by far was our lovely little notebook.
We decided that it was worth it to get our wn computer seeing as there is free wi-fi everwhere and going to internet cafes is pricey and a pain. We went to Pantip Plaza to get it (A huge department store full of computer stuff).
Much drama was to be had there, i won't get into it. It was shocking. But we ended up with a computer and that's the main thing. We also bought DVD's, and have had to go back three times to get the covers (they just didn't include them), DVD's that aren't shcokingly bad quality and change a blank DVD for one with something on it. The jerks just made us wait and gave us the same d*** with nothing on it. We have given up. Nver go to the third stall on the right near the ATM's.
The area where we stayed was very central, but wasn't the most atractive place. It was full of dirty cement buildings and such. However there was a lot of public art, we were staying around the corner from the Bangkok Arts and Culture Centre. At night this area filled with young guys doing break dancing and girls preparing dance routines. Pretty cool. There was also a great night market that set up on our sky train staion every evening.
On our last day in BK we went to the Old Royal Palace. When we got there we were met by many a helpful stranger. According to them the Palace was closed for lunch, oh no, the monks were praying, or was it that we had to get tickets from this small entrance located at the back of the palace after we knock on the third brick from the bottom with our magc wands whilst visiting this ther temple and having lunch at this cafe. We were pestered by these 'helpful' men for about 40 minutes until we saw the massive sign that said 'do not trust friendly strangers.' point taken. So we got in to the palace finally and decided to go to the temple section where the emerald buddah is housed. It was a very hot day and even more so becuase we were all covered up and being respectful. Our visit to the palace wasn't what we expected. We couldn't go into the building, so all you get to see is the facade and a room full of ancient thai weapons. Hmmm. We were quite bitter that day. However we were very entertained by the statuesque guards that stood on raised platforms. They had a constant stream of tourists taking photo's with them and trying to make them move. We swear we saw one scratch his eye. We felt a little sorry for these guards. Imagine being in the Thai Army and being told that you had to guard the old palace, standing on a little box surrounded by snap-happy farang. Swell.
so that is our Bangkok in a very little nutshell (the first draft of this blog deleted itself shile i was posting it, grrrrr)
Until next time guys,
Love Mim and Ty
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