Bangkok, Thailand
May 06, 2014
We rolled into Bangkok at 5:30am on the infamous Khao San road. Probably the most famous backpackers street in the world and it was easy to see why once we started heading up there as there was an interesting collection of crazies still dotted about here and there. Lad’s who looked like they have been lost here for about 5 years in an opium haze, and some who looked like they wouldn’t live through the rest of the day. I got the impression the locals weren’t too keen on some of the Farang around here as one lad in particular who looked an absolute mess and was talking to himself was being used as target practice by a bunch of local blokes hurling bottles and glasses across the road at him. It was a good introduction to one of the craziest cities in the world.
I’ve been to Bangkok a couple of times before and we already had somewhere sorted to stay. Not on the popular Khao San road but further away downtown on Sukhumvit Road. Khao San road is canny enough but other than buses it’s cut off from the rest of the public transport here such as the skytrain and underground system and I didn’t fancy shelling out for overpriced tuk tuk’s all the time we wanted to get somewhere so we found a place right next to a Skytrain station that gave us better access to the city. At first we didn’t know what to do as it was still dark and the taxis and tuk tuks were asking for crazy money to take us to where we were staying so we hung out in a couple of places for a cuppa first whilst trying to decide how to get to where we were going. Eventually it got light and we haggled a price with a tuk tuk driver to take us to the nearest Skytrain station. We hopped in the Tuk Tuk and split the fare with another lad who also got off our bus.
An hour later and we were pounding the hot sweaty streets of Bangkok trying to find where we were staying. From experience it’s a right pain finding anywhere in the maze of streets here. You have a main road name, then a Soi number for the streets coming off the main road, then sometimes yet another number for the smaller soi’s off the main soi. It’s so confusing at times but after another hour in the 38 degree heat we finally rocked up at our hostel and showered away the grime from the long bus journey.
We didn’t go far the rest of the day. A few stops along the skytrain to the MBK center and some cheap good food at a place that I know of before heading into MBK itself. MBK is cool, probably my favorite mall in Bangkok as it has everything you would really ever need and it’s cheap….or at least it used to be cheap. Everything in Thailand seems to have gone up in price so much over the last few years and the people are less reluctant to haggle as much and they stand their ground. Times have changed and they realise they can charge a much higher price to the Farang than they used to as we will still pay it. The top floor of the MBK centre is a cinema and I haven’t been to the pictures since I left home so it seemed a cool place to break that habit and pop and see a film. With not too much out at the minute we went to see Transcendence which I really enjoyed. It’s a bit like a Michael Crichton style story so was right up my street.
The next few days almost blurred into one. We went to get our visas for Vietnam only to find it was Victory day so it was shut for the next two days, brilliant! So we hung around for that until we then realised we can pick the Vietnam Visa’s up in Laos instead so we didn’t even bother going back to the embassy a few days later. Instead we went for a general wander around town and through Lumphini park which was a really interesting experience. I had read all about the demonstrations earlier in the year ahead of the election here, but what I didn’t realise and haven’t read since in the media is that demonstrations are still continuing in Bangkok.
The whole of Lumphini park has been taken over by demonstrators opposed to the corrupt government that exists here. They have camped out and used every inch of the park for what appears to be quite some time now. People living out of their tents, but they are organized. We wandered through among it all and there were toilet and shower blocks, medical tents and pharmacy’s, even people selling replacement batteries and charges for mobile phones. It was like a small town in it’s own right. Food stalls set out to feed the masses and there was even a stage with a gig going on with musicians and artists supporting the protest. It was an impressive sight and very peaceful as well. Similar to when the locals forced their way into government buildings in January. The police were told to hold back and not intervene to avoid violence where possible and similarly in the park there was not one policeman in sight. A few army stands around the perimeter and some Army medical units were evident but that was it.
The people there were great and friendly with us, I don’t recall seeing any other westerners wandering about but they seemed happy that we were taking an interest in what they had to say and what their protest was about. The rest of the day was spent chilling and getting stuck into some ‘Black Cock’ whiskey! Well I say whiskey, it was the cheapest bottle of booze I could find and was most likely just white spirit in a fancy bottle, but hey it did a job for the night.
We had seen a few posters around when on the skytrain advertising something called ToyExpo. A quick Google later and we found it was some annual event that was being held at CentreWorld, the largest shopping mall in Thailand and the 6th largest in the world. So off we trotted the next morning to see what the craic was. The Expo was brilliant. Not your usual kind of toys that you would expect, but more your cult figures and crazy sci-fi driven imagery along with a few popular brands and franchises such as Star Wars, Disney and Spiderman.
It was obvious to see that this kind of stuff is popular out here as the place was heaving with the finest geeks that Thailand has to offer. I was in my element. I got to stand with a Stormtrooper and have my picture taken, a genuine full sized one, brilliant! The figurines and models they had there were fantastic and we spent pretty much the full day wandering around the ground floor of the mall taking them all in. Such detail and so many crazy looking creations there, the guys that produce this kind of thing really do have wild imaginations and I really like that. There were auctions being held as well with individual signed original art works going for £500 upwards so it really is big business for the enthusiasts here. After a full day trawling through the Expo we headed back and sat around having a few drinks before heading out for the night and along to a place called Soi Cowboy. Soi Cowboy is the original girly bar street in Bangkok.
It’s being going for a lot of years now and it’s a great place to sample the seedier side of what goes on in this crazy city. It’s only a small street but consists of nothing other than bar after bar, packed to the rafters with girls and lady boys. We parked up at a bar and sat back to take it all in. The scary thing here is that most of the time you really would not like to commit to saying if anyone was a dude or a lady. When blokes come to Bangkok for a few days and get involved with this stuff there have to be way more stories they are not telling you than those that they are. Out of around 50 or so girls working the bar where we parked up there were only 4 that I would have definitely committed to saying either way were a dude or lady, the rest I wouldn’t like to say for definite and most likely I was wrong with some of my four. The place is nuts…in more ways than one, I reckon there were a lot of nuts in there that night! We sat and chatted for a while with some lads from Leeds.
One who was all Yorkshire, Fish n chips n scraps (batter my bonny lad) who was canny as well as being canny hammered (again I’m sure he must have blown a few Bhatt here on a dude that he will never tell his mates about when he get’s home) and a younger lad who works in Australia a few months at a time and then lives and chills here in Bangkok for a month. This lad also has a girl (maybe boy) friend who used to (at least what she/he tells him) work at the bar we were at. She obviously still works there every night she is not with him. It was a good night and we eventually spilled out on to Sukhumvit road some hours later. From their it was a taxi back as all the street bars that were just outside Soi Cowboy wanted crazy money for drink and to be fair it was about 5am so a canny day was had by all, even Paul from Leeds apparently.
We woke the next day, late the next day as we were hammered and again we talked of moving on from Bangkok and where we should head but before we knew knew it we had sorted another night at the hostel and were headed off on the Skytrain down to the river to catch a boat along to the Grand Palace.
To be fair we hadn’t really seen much of the ‘sights’ yet in Bangkok and had just been enjoying mooching around and taking in whatever we stumbled across, which is exactly what you want to do in a place like Bangkok. You can’t get a feel for a place unless you hang around for a while otherwise it is just a glance at an old building, a quick photo uploaded to Facebook and off you go. The boat options up the river were a bit like that come to think of it. It was twice the price if you took the official ‘tourist’ boat compared to the local boat but what was the point when it stopped at the same stops and was exactly the same boat as the local one just that it housed a lot more camera clicking tourists and less of the locals and monks that were just trying to get to where they were going. I love being out and about when there are monks, to see the respect they command is unreal and they are as slight as a shadow the way they conduct themselves. If not for the orange robes and baldy heads they would be the quietest people ever on public transport and indeed anywhere in the city. You can’t get too close to Monks though especially if you are a woman and they pay nothing to go anywhere, they slide on….they slide off, like a religious Karate Kid of Buddha, impressive.
Several stops later and we got off near the Grand Palace. As we neared the place it does indeed look Grand. The complex and grounds around it are huge and eventually we found the entrance. We had came prepared for Temples and Palaces with our sarongs packed in the day bag and we popped them on before we started to head in past the security barrier. We got stopped though as I must have been flashing a bit of ankle or something and was told my sarong would not be enough and I needed full trousers on. We could borrow clothes for free from inside a little building near the security dudes so we stood in line with the rest of the shorts wearing westerners. Quite annoying in a way as I stood and watched many a person wearing less than my good self in sarong cruising on past the guards and into the main palace area.
As we neared the front of the queue I spotted a sign that said there was an entrance fee of 500 Bhatt each to get into the palace…..500 Bhatt!! It’s only a tenner each but when you get used to paying fairly little amounts to do things £20 between you suddenly seems like a lot to see a palace especially when your traveling through so many countries that have a temple or a palace on every street corner. So we hung around for a while seeing as much as we could without actually going in properly then we went off on wander to see what else was nearby.
Just next to the Palace is a beautiful temple named Wat Pho. It’s also known as the Temple of the reclining Buddha due to the massive 43m long reclining Buddha statue that it contains in one of the main halls. The statue is huge. 15m high to the top of the head and feet the size of a squash court. It is quite impressive just because of the sheer scale of it and it takes a good few minutes just to walk around it as it fills the hall it is in.
It’s one of the oldest temples in Bangkok and the current version was rebuilt in the 18th century as restoration of an even earlier temple that used to be on the site. The grounds around the various rooms are beautiful with some great craftsmanship involved in the small details that are everywhere. It’s a really nice place, so calm and peaceful and much less crowed than it’s neighboring palace. We wandered around and relaxed in the gardens and before we knew it we had been there around three hours and it was getting close to sunset. We also wanted to try and squeeze in seeing Wat Arun another old temple just across the river from where we were but weren’t sure how to get there or if we would make it so off we ran in search of the nearest river boat jetty.
By a stroke of good luck we found the local jetty nice and quickly and better still another smaller jetty with a ferry across to Wat Arun for 6p each, bargain. For 6p you get a 60 second river crossing on a boat that leaves every minute as there are two of them and it saves you about half an hour compared to crossing the river over the nearest bridge, bargain. Wat Arun is impressive, and is one of Thailand’s main icons. It dates back to the seventeenth century originally although various Kings have later added parts and restored it at various points but it has that ancient world look about it. It rises out of the ground and the climb up gets steeper and steeper the further you go. The top is encrusted in coloured porcelain and once as far up as you can go you get a decent view back across to Wat Pho, the Grand Palace and then following the river down towards the high rises of downtown Bangkok and the business district. The stairs up there get crazy steep and signs are there to guide you up one flight then back down another set but unsurprisingly some folks couldn’t understand simple green arrow signs and big red crosses so it was an interesting free for all navigating our way back down.
A couple of hours later and we had made our way back to Sukhumvit road via river, rail and road. We got showered and sorted to head out for the match. It was the Man Utd game and we had arranged to head out with Kealsey and Michael a couple from down South who were staying in the same place but I think they were still ruined from the night before. Many late nights drinking made the week in Bangkok a crazy blur, I guess that’s what it does to you. But the match needed to be watched so wearily we headed back along to Soi 11 to park up in a wee sports bar and watch us win at old Trafford washed down with a few cheeky beers. The match was cracking and it was fun to look around at a bunch of multi-national Man Utd fans all sat in silence haha Great result and well on our way to safety now. Once back we drank yet more local whiskey downstairs and chatted on with Jason a bloke from Canada who has been living in Bangkok for a couple of years.
I spoke to him quite a few nights but tonight was a little special as he told me of the time he tried to hold up his local bank with a pool cue much to the bank staffs amusement when he was losing the plot on drugs. He was a bit of a character Jason, with many a tale to tell and I wondered two things. How true these stories were but more likely how messed up was Jason still after supposedly many years now without drugs? You meet some interesting people in some interesting places and Bangkok is most definitely one such place. You could get lost there for months just drinking, eating and people watching, the city has that kind of character.
Eventually, one week later, several bottles of whiskey, lord knows how many beers and bowls of noodle soup we needed to move on. Bangkok had swallowed us up for way longer than we had intended and it spat us back out as we left. I’m not a city person but it’s up there with Hong Kong for being one of the better more interesting ones I’ve experienced. There is always something going on in Bangkok, it’s all around you. Every tiny little Soi that you look down has something happening or some interesting looking characters roaming about. The food is immense, some of the best Asian food you will ever have and if you hunt around enough you will still find some cheap whiskey to wash it down with if you don’t mind being on the street as opposed to the now over priced bars. It’s been great fun but it’s time to move on me thinks.
We slept in yet again the following day but eventually we packed ourselves up and headed off in search of Bangkok Noi railway station. A few hours later we spilled out of a taxi at the smallest train station I’ve seen and hopped aboard an old rattler headed towards Kananchanaburi. Kananchanaburi is where the river Kwai and it’s famous bridge are as part of the death railway which was constructed by the POW’s so I’m looking forward to experiencing some of the history around it despite the atrocious nature of it all.
