Good morning and good evening to all, apologies for the radio silence, I would love to make out this was due to horrendous flooding situation but I literally only saw a puddle of water but plenty of sand bags.
We obviously arrived safe and sound in bangkok but have only now been able to get on wifi having arrived in Chang mai. Bangkok was slightly disappointing I have to say, didn't help that the place we had booked couldn't have further from the bagnkok city if we tried.pretty much Ipswich to Norwich, there were also some freaky looking people much the same as our Norfolk neighbours. Only thing around us was one place selling beer obviously I had to investigate this, very amusing as they were surprised as we were when we went in. They actually turned on their little neon sign saying 'bar'- think it was the first time it had been turned on in the last 5 years. But they served the local beer of 'chang' so we has a mutual interest. Hostel was nice and pokey and the shower tap was right next to the toilet, the first time I could combine having a number 2 while enjoying a shower.
Spent the first day looking around the area which to be honest was just local food markets, there is only some much you can eat really. We enjoyed a quiet drink in the hostel bar and as always met an 80 year old scouser(with a
London accent) who proceeded to tell me war stories for a about 2 hours. If we had to pick sides and he perched up next to me in battle I'd have to either change sides or just notch it up to friendly fire as our American colleagues often do. The guy was a drunk in the Simon west way of thinking, we should get them together like some kind of ultimate drinking and story telling machine. The guy was living in the hostel and marred 4 times, his Thai bride was flying in the next day- god help her!
The following day we got in a taxi and discovered how far away we were from Bangkok, also didn't help we had started to walk in the opposite direction as well. Bangkok central was nice to see and felt a bit like the film blade runner except without Harrison ford, has a ground level of very poor people and then you go up the stairs to their subway and suddenly affluent work day types. Tina enjoyed the markets and keeps going on about handbags, at the point I wished for another one of johns timeless war stories. Good to see Tina in the spirit of haggling bag prices and at one point she started smelling the leather, I thought she was about to take a bite out of it. We covered most of Bangkok it felt like and it was nice to find a park just to get out of it. We saw part of the sex area, well basically this was near the handbag Market so had no choice. To be honest we just walked through there but was amusing to suddenly see older English gentleman walking around, funny that. Nightmare to get a taxi back, got in a few but when we told them where we were staying one of them actually started laughing out loud for a couple of minutes then asked us to leave. Basically hostel was too far out for any taxi driver so had to negotiate the train system-this took most of the evening but we got back in the end.
The following day was more chilled
Out, we meet an english father and his 18 year son combo. Didn't start well when they asked me what league Ipswich played in and thought Dennis irwin played for them- moss I think you would have got involved at that point. They got on my good side by offering
Me some local rum and told me they had been chatting to this 80 year old scouser the night before, I told them "say no more I feel your pain". It turned out the dad was divorced and basically met some Thai girl on the Internet that he wanted to meet, who said romance is dead in the modern age! Tina got a foot massage which seemed to send her into chilled mood and then we prepared for chang mai.
Sorry for the boring blog and terrible spelling but rushing to catch up on blog. Now in Chang mai and it's amazing, we both love it already. I will blog later on as wifi is readily available and really feels like holiday has started. Just seen some beautiful temples and close to bars- cultural And social mix, thank you Chang mai already. I'm loving saying thank you by bowing my head and putting hands together in A prayer
Motion. Ed I know you would do this but really want to say my name is Daniel, so I can do the thank you and then they say "thank you Daniel
Son"- when it happens then I'm done with everything I wanted from the holiday.