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Tazu Sensei's World Trip
So, things didn't start out too well for me and my friend Johnny on our trip to Thailand. Johnny wasn't feeling very well when we arrived at the airport and by the time the flight took off at 1 am he was looking pretty sick. About two hours into our 5 hour journey Johnny got up to go to the bathroom and just passed out, he just dropped like a stone into one of the isles. The poor guy then spent the next 3 hours either sleeping or in the bathroom throwing up. He finally started feeling better just before we arrived in Bangkok at 5:30am and luckily he was ok after that.
We got a shuttle from the airport to the small beach town of Pataya, which is about 2 hours outside of Bangkok and arrived at our hotel, the Queen Victoria inn about 8am. The Queen Victoria inn was absolutely amazing www.queenvictoria-inn.com It had really nice rooms, a bar and restaurant down stairs, was really close to the diving school that we were going to and it only cost $15 a night! But it did have one minor draw back (maybe why it was so cheep). Like I said, it was an absolutely awesome hotel but it was on a street called Soi 6 which just happened to be the local lady boy street. The entire street was lined with lady boy clubs which was kind of amusing at first but got rather tiresome towards the end of our five days there. I have to say though the rest of Pataya is an awesome place to party.
Johnny and I spent our first day there relaxing, reading up on our diving course and sleeping. The next four days after that were spent with us diving during the day and with us going out and doing some crazy partying in the evenings. In the end Johnny kind of ran out of time as he was only staying for eight days. Turns out that you aren't supposed to fly for at least 18 hours after your last dive and as we only had three days left we decided not to go to Cambodia and instead spent an extra day in Pataya and the rest of our time in Bangkok. In the end it worked out quite luckily for me as it was just before the Thai new year (Songkran) and it gave me a chance to do some shopping and get some suits made before all the stores closed down for the week long festival.
The three best places to go shopping in Bangkok are the shopping mall called MBK, the weekend market, and the night market.
The weekend market is in a place called Mo Chit at the end of the sky train line and covers an entire city block. It's basically a maze of all these little stalls under these huge tin roofs which heat up during the day and push the temperature well up past 40 degrees. You can get some amazingly cheep deals on almost anything that you can imagine but especially on clothes, with a T-shirt costing around three or four dollars. Funnily enough even at three or four dollars for a T-shirt you're still paying double what a Thai person would be charged so you really do have to barter as they see foreigners coming and try to get as much money from you as they can. Still, at that price compared to back home, why complain.
The night market wasn't anything special, basically two short intersecting streets with stalls scattered along them. It's in an area called Patpong which is a notoriously dangerous strip joint area. In fact a guy got shot there two weeks before I got to Bangkok. All in all I wouldn't advise going there.
As for M.B.K. well it's basically the shopping Mecca. Six floors of air conditioned shopping mall with all the same stuff that you can find at the weekend market and the night market combined and all around the same price. It still pays to barter with the stall owners though as they are all competing against each other. The best deals for clothing can be found in section C of the third floor.
After Johnny had left and I had spent a few days shopping in Bangkok I took a bus down to Phuket to see my mates Lance and Sayaka. What a mistake that was. Never ever take the bus in Thailand. What was supposed to be a 16 hour ride on a comfortable luxurious "VIP" bus turned into a 21 hour bus ride from hell. The air conditioner was broken, the bus driver was a lunatic and the bus broke down because the driver left the hand brake on for over an hour while he drove around!!! On the plus side Phuket was beautiful and the hotel was stunning. If you're ever in Phuket stay on Kata beach at the Kata Minta hotel http://www.kataminta.com trust me, you won't be disappointed. The beach itself was incredible and Songkran (new year) was so much fun while I was there. Essentially Songkran is an excuse for a week long water fight during the day with massive parties in the evening. So after three days in Phuket relaxing in the sun it was back to Bangkok (this time by plane) for a night to pick up my suits, and then off to Japan for one night there. Sorry to every one that I didn't get to see, and thank you Marty and Kelly for putting me up for the night. Finally it was a nice long ten hour flight back home to New Zealand. Gotta say, its kinda weird to be back here with all the wide open spaces. No skyscrapers towering over me and no one walking right beside me when I walk down the street. Kinda weird but kinda nice all the same.
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