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Sawaat dii Kaa!
Right then, we'd better get the blog up to date...
As you know, we arrived safely in Bangkok via Colombo, although Dave says that our five hour visit to Sri Lanka doesn't count as a new country because we didn't leave the airport... Sri Lanka is very nice though, if the airport is anything to go by - we could have picked up a wooden mask, a deep fat fryer and a car stereo all in one airport shop - and we also spent some time going up and down the escalator peeking at a lady who had fallen asleep sprawled over her cash till... after about half an hour she was snoring underneath the desk. Brilliant.
Anyway, first impressions of Bangkok, and Thailand, compared with India:
- it's beautifully clean and tidy
- the roads are filled with a fleet of angels who drive with a divine purpose and there are no highway-cows or white knuckle overtaking manouvres in evidence
- it feels much safer than India.
- in India, the impression was that people sat around for 90% of the time doing nothing, and spent the other 10% forcing some kind of random service on us; in Thailand, everyone spends 100% of their time both eating and smiling... everyone eats, everywhere, all the time
- there are lots of middle-aged-westerner-men with early-20's-Thai-girl couples... we have spent much time debating how we feel about this and not yet reached any conclusions... each to their own, eh
- it smells nice, mostly of food being freshly cooked (apart from near the main roads where the pollution is pretty bad)
- it's very relaxed
- the King rules the roost - there are pictures of the king and queen everywhere, everyone wears yellow t-shirts (the royal colour) all the time, and generally gives the monarchy a lot of respect, including standing still for the national anthem twice a day, every day
- there's a load more money over here; there are less beggars, and even the street dogs are fatter!
Now that we've had a few days away from India, and have spoken to other travellers about it, we both feel quite strongly that we were right to go on an organised tour, and that we love India a lot more now that we're not there any more! We'd go back there again, but maybe to Mumbai or up to the foothills of the Himalayas, rather than back to Delhi or Rajhastan... who knows.
We've checked into a comfortable guesthouse in Banglampoo, near the Khao San Road (thanks for the map Jenni!), complete with an out-of-costume ladyboy as a night receptionist, and are planning to spend a few days recharging our travel-batteries before heading out to explore the country. After so long on a tour, we're feeling a bit braver now, and ready to do a bit of planning for ourselves, and since Thailand is such an easy place to backpack, we're going on our own from here.
But first, to explore Bangkok; briefly, we've trudged the Khao San (Martin, Jenni - it's exactly how you described it!), just like a 24 hour festival without the mud and cheaper food; a trip to Jim Thompson's house (an American who turned up in Thailand, put Thai silk on the map, built a beautiful teakwood house and went missing in action on holiday) and saw the massive stingray and alligator fish in the pool in his garden; had a brilliant face massage, saw the Queen visiting a temple near our hotel, visited the posh shopping centres near Siam square, ate ice-cream and delicious 20 baht pad thai noodles in the street, rode a super-fast water taxi, went to a Muay Thai boxing evening (complete with comedy boxing match in the middle), browsed the massive Chattuchak weekend market, giggled at drunken Thais coming out of the bar along the road from our hotel, goggled at the fried locusts, ate banana pancakes, and generally pottered around, relaxed and read a load of books and watched a fair few rubbish films on our hotel tv.
We also bumped into Anton, who we'd been on the India trip with, and met a cool girl called Claire from Welshpool, who was just at the end of her year-long trip; both of them gave us loads of advice (accompanied by a few beers, naturally!), and after a lot of discussion between Dave and I, plus a fair bit of poring over the Lonely Planet, we came up with a plan...
...We would get our visas for Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam in Bangkok, rather than worrying about them at the borders. We had some time on our hands, as our passports wouldn't be returned with the visas in (fingers crossed), until 6pm on Friday 5th October, and today is Monday 1st. What to do in the meantime? As the Rajhastani puppet master would say, "Next Item!!"...
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