After an epic bus journey lasting over 12 hours from Siem Reap we arrived in Bangkok to a majestic sunset. Journeying into the depths of the city it as clear we were only going to see a fraction during our pitifully short stay. Aftre a short trek around the infamous Khao San Road with a quite probably high character trying to sell his friend's hotel with soe aneaky back-handed suggestions we managed to lose him and find ourselves a cheap and sparse home for the next two nights off a nearby Soi. We very nearly had to look elsewhere as the lack of plugs sockets and a range of batteries needing charging nearly put Blakey into panic mode, but reception allowed us to use a socket down there and all was well.
After such a long day we headed out bleary eyed but empty bellied and walked the festive and heaving Khao San. Market stalls selling plenty of tat and some good Tshirts were everywhere along with stalls for getting dreads or worse, braids (not whilst travelling- it's so ciche! Some people even had henna tattoos, fisherman pants AND guitars- that's just overboard!) On our way through from our Soi a short cut took us through a restaurant selling hummus and falafel, so we filled our bellies with garlicky goodness and were soon ready to crash beneath our pathetic yet noisy fan.
Next day it was up and out for the best of Bangkok! We headed straight to the cultural centre (after a suitably late, large and lazy breakfast) to see the Royal Palace and Emerald Pagoda. On the way a very nice man stopped to give us directions and chatted for a while, keen to tell us where to go and the scams to avoid, as well as pointing out the two colour number plate system on the tuktuks and taxi- one for trusted government run and the other for privately owned who may try taking you to a silk shop where pressure sales are the name of the game. he also mentioned that the palace was very busy in the morning, suggesting we head to the big buddha first and told us of the TAT- Thailand Authorised Tourism. Suddenly he'd flagged dow a tuk tuk and negotiated a 20 Baht fair for his suggested day and we were off.
Within oments it was clear that it was set up- just looking at the privaetly owned cars and public buses it was clear he had switched the license plate rule. Still, we took our time wondering around the Buddha and when our taxi driver took us to a "TAT" travel agency to get some"information" we did no more than that. Finding they charged three times as much as our hotel for onward transport and were desperate to secure a sale there and then ("why not pay now, we have special offer, today only!!") we soon left. Returning to our smiley driver, he soon didn't look so cheerful when his casual "so where are you going next in Thailand" was met with "we don't know". A short argument later and we managed to convince him there was no point taking us to another travel agency so we reached our destination for an extremely cheap price. Let's hope we spot all the scams out here!
The Royal Palace was yet again stunning. Brilliantly coloured glass glittered in the once again dramatic sky and plenty of photographs were taken.ome of the approaches to Buddhist philosophies were questioned when we saw decorative and expensive looking food bowls created for high ranking monks in this religion that advocates the rejsction of material possessions and a woman tried to sell us caged birds, with the promise that Buddha would bless those that free the poor creatures. Surely Buddha would rather bless those that do not fund the inital capture of the birds, so we turned her down.
After a long day traipsing around we returned to our hotel for a quick catch up on the blissfully air conditioned net and a good nights sleep. As we had booked a night bus for our onward jpurney we spent the next day doing exactly what Bangkok wanted us to, spending money. We searched all the stalls for the best T shirts and summer dresses and bargained our little socks off, coming away with planty and another parcel sent home. We made a short stop midday for a coffee in a very cute shop run by artists serving deleicious waffles and sat down just in time; suddenly an almighty thunderstorm, huge in volume of sound and volume of water ounded the streets and soaked passersby. We felt suitable smug as we nursed our warm drinks from dainty tea cups in the dry comfort of our seats and just stared at the amazing weather.
Day over it was time to journey on. We were goignt o sleep well tonight, tht is, until we realised that our night bus was a regular coach with regular seats and the loudest Australian girl on the planet. Thank God for iPods.
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