We arrived in Bangkok about 3ish and went out to find a taxi. We'd been led to believe that there would be hundreds of people touting for our business as soon as we stepped off the plane but it turned out to be very well organised with a queue of people waiting to be allocated the next taxi in line. We were given a slip of paper with instructions in English about how we should pay, any extras we would be charged for and how to make sure that our driver wouldn't overcharge us. The drive into the city was pretty quick but as soon as we left the 'expressway', a toll road, the traffic more or less ground to a halt. It took about twice as long to get a couple of kms in the city as it did to get the 25 from the airport. It also didn't help that my written address instructions were obviously useless to the driver and he spent some time getting out of the car and asking people where our hotel was. It turned out that we were next to the Prime Ministers house so there were armed police eveywhere. We eventually found it and ended up paying about 500 Baht (just over 10 quid) for the ride. The place was called 'Himalaya Residence' and was apparently a 'nepalese Guest House'. We had heard that the Thai people were very polite and sweet and non-confrontational so were in for a shock when we got to reception. “What is your name?”, the receptionist shouted at me. “Hello”, I said. “Your name!”, she shouted. I was a bit surprised by this so told her my name and kept my mouth shut. She pushed a piece of paper over to us with the price on for the 2 nights. “Sign this!”, she said, “No refunds!”. This concerned me a bit so I asked to see the room first. “Why you want to see the room for?”, she shouted at us. We definitely wanted to see the room now so kept insisting until she gave in. She was moaning about having to go somewhere or something but she got some bloke to take us up to the room. We got in and it looked perfectly nice, everything worked, no problems, so we signed the paper. No idea what the fuss was all about. There was a sign on the wall saying that we would be charged 400 baht if we wanted a joiner in our room. I couldn't see any shelves that needed fixing or cabinets that needed making so was quite bemused by this for some time until Bindya pointed out that it probably meant if you wanted a 'friend' to 'join' you for the evening you might be charged an extra fee.
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| need a joiner? |
That evening we'd planned to go to 'Chakrawat' street as Bindya had been reading in 'The Book' that it was a 'Little India' with lots of restaurants etc. We have decided to write a book called, 'Indian Restaurants around the World'. We walked up the road until we found the Metro station and managed to negotiate buying the right ticket relatively painlessly. You get a little electronic token with the money you paid on it. We went to the end of the line, Hualamphong Train Station and were met by a load of Tuk Tuk drivers. We thought we should experience Bangkok proper so spoke to one of them, getting a price of 150 B for the trip. We were probbly being ripped off but only to the amount of a pound or so so we weren't bothered too much. He took us off on a pretty wild drive, us reenacting various James Bond and Indiana Jones chases, until he pulled into the quietest street we had seen and said we were here. We got out and looked around – no sign of life at all. We walked up and down a bit then checked the map. It turns out that I wanted 'Chakaphat' street, not 'Chakrawat' street... Igrabbed a passing European person and asked where we were. She didn't know. Bindya wanted to just get in a taxi again but I wasn't giving up. We hit the river and a big night market just setting up. Through a combination of luck and stupidity we managed to find Chakraphat street. We walked up most of it and saw three small restaurants. We went into some sort of shopping mall where there was meant to be a big food court but it was all closed off. By this point we were being followed by a group of Indians who obviously had the same idea as us and thought we knew where we were going. Eventually we went into one of the first ones we saw and had a perfectly decent Thali for about 150 B. Job done, we got a cab all the way back home, costing about 120 B on the meter – not a lot of traffic this time of night.
The next day was our big sightseeing day – up reasonably early and off to the famous Grand Palace of Bangkok. Breakfast was a fried egg. We headed back up to the main road and, since our cab was so cheap last night, decided to get a cab all the way to the Grand Palace. One stopped almost immediately, we got in, said 'Grand Palace please' and the driver looked at us like we were mental. He'd never heard of this 'Grand Palace' place. I got the book out and showed him the map, named the road it was on, the main road leading to it. Nope, never heard of it. We got out and tried again with another one. Never heard of it. The next one had heard of it but wasn't going to take us there. Same for the couple after that. By this point, we'd walked most of the way to the Metro so just got on that again. It was probably that the traffic was so bad it would take them ages to get there and back. We got to Hualamphong station and decided to get some train tickets to go up to Chiang Mai in a couple of days time. There were loads of English speaking helpers at the station who made everything very easy for us and we got a couple of 'second class air con' tickets for about 12 quid each – a 12 hour journey. Outside the station we got an ordinary cab who got us to the Grand Palace no bother for about 80 B.
The area of the Grand Palace is pretty big and surrounded by a massive white wall. We had various people outside tell us that it was shut and stuff but we'd been told to ignore them as it is just a scam to get you to go somewhere else where they are on commision. We eventually found our way in, paid our entrance and found a place where we put our names down for a free guided tour in English. We had to wait a little bit first but there was plenty to look at, especially an enormous mural of The Ramayana painted around the entire inside of the wall.
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| Ramayana mural |
Our tour guide was called Jeffrey and was very funny. As well as explaining the history of all the buildings and stuff, he gave us a background on Thai Buddhism. For example, he explained that one of the rules was of not drinking alcohol and he would respect this by only having one drink per day, one very big one. We saw the Golden Temple which is entirely covered in gold leaf and only The King is allowed to go in (not Elvis, the King of Thailand).
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| Jeffrey, our guide |
We saw a few other temples and a scale model of Angkor Wat, then he took us to the temple of the Emerald Buddha. This is an important Buddha statue that is made entirely out of jade and has been back and forth to Cambodia during various wars. I'd never realised how much fuss these two countries had had between them, and still do. It used to be up in Chiang Mai before finally coming here.
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| Temple of the Emerald Buddha |
They dress him up in different clothes depending on the season. After that we went past the new Grand Palace where visiting Heads of State get to stay and various other buildings with interesting stories behind them that I have forgotton. We had started to get annoyed by other tourists at this point because of the lack of basic common respect shown when visiting temples, especially wearing inappropriate clothes. It wasn't like there weren't signs everywhere asking people to cover up.
After the main temples we went to see a museum that had all sorts of gold and silver artifacts of the kings and queens then headed over the road to Wat Pho. This contained some sort of enormous reclining buddha. We spent a while wandering around the temple complex, looking at various buddhas, in various poses, of which there were hundreds, before we eventually found it and it was bloody enormous, about 50 metres I think. There was this weird tinkling noise all the time we were in there looking at it and it was only when we got behind it that I realised it was because people were dropping tiny coins into a long line of metal pots as a kind of offering. We changed 20 B into change and joined them
. We tried to get a taxi after this but, strangely, none of the meters worked in all of the taxis in the area. We walked along for a little bit until a roving taxi stopped with a meter on. It took us all the way back across town to our hotel and only cost us about 150 B (less than 3 quid). That night we went out and had a few drinks and looked at Patpong night market.
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| Specially for Andy... |
The next day we had to move hotel as our place claimed to not have any rooms left. We had put some laundry in the day before and I had had to go and find various missing stuff. When we checked out, the laundry bill had come to over 500 B (10 quid). When I checked the bill they had charged us for 9 skirts, 2 pairs of jeans and various other stuff that we didn't have. This took up a good 20 minutes of gentle arguing until we got it down to a reasonable 200 B. We got to the next place, just up the road, and the owner, who was Dutch or something, said the room wasn't ready yet and that it was 'a bit small'. We said it was OK and went out to find some food. I had chicken and fried basil leaf which turned out to be extremely spicy – my first introduction to how hot the Thais liked their food. When we went back to check in to our room we discovered that it was 'a bit small' because it was a single room. We couldn't be bothered to change it, although I did have to go down to find my missing bag. We chilled in the area that day, going for a wander later on to find some food but most of the places were Chinese or Korean restaurants. We just ended up eating at some fairly expensive pub type thing.
Next morning we decided to get a cab up the the train station as it had been so cheap the other day. It was around 7 in the morning and it took us 30 minutes to get about half a km up the road, the traffic was insane. Worried we would miss our train, we got out near the metro station and got on that. We had decided not to do this originally as they have metal detector arches in the stations and we didn't want to have to open up our tightly packed bags for inspection. When the security guard asked me to open mine up, I just opened the top a little bit to show it was all clothes. She seemed to find it hilarious that I had a can of mosquito killer in my bag but just waved us through, We got to the station, had time to buy some breakfast from 'Mr Bun' and got on the train. We got food and drinks on the train and it was relatively pleasant apart from the fact the air con was a bit too cold. A little girl sat across from us kept staring at us and I noticed her mother was as well. We weren't sure why but it might have been because we were hugging and I was stroking Bindya's head, which apparently is a bit rude to do in public. We rolled into Chiang Mai about half nine to be met by my old pal Simon Robson at the station...
A BIG THANK YOU to Lidja for her wedding gift of Entrance to the Grand Palace, Wat Pho, dinner and drinks!!
Pictures of Bangkok -
