Bangkok (August 25th - August 28th 2006)

On Friday 25th August we were flying from Heathrow to Bangkok via Singapore. The flight wasn't until noon but what with the recently thwarted terrorist attacks we were expecting a time consuming check in!! So the plan was to get there early so Kamay's dad picked us up at 7.00.

A friend of Kamay's, Mukkarum, was flying to Kenya a couple of hours before us so we were hoping to catch up with him before he got his flight - NO CHANCE!! We were 3 1/2 hours early for our flight but the check in line was massive and the que for security to get into the departure lounge was nuts. Not sure if this will improve in the short term but one thing that they definitely need to do is to get some kind of theme park consultant in there. There was none of the normal ques where you get to a corner and think that you're near the front, but no it goes on for another 10 metres and... no it goes around another corner. At Heathrow you just walked all the way to the back of the line, so you could actually see how much misery you were letting yourself in for. I reckon it took about 5 minutes just to get to the back of the line. So we didn't get through in time for Mukkarum.

Then we were 1 hour late leaving which meant that we missed our Singapore connection - all because 3 people couldn't get onto the plane on time. Why is it though that you never get to see who they are? They should make them take that walk of shame to the back row of seats just so that everyone has someone to hate while they're sitting on the plane wondering if they're going to make their connection.

The flight was good though, we had 80 movies to choose from and they were all on demand so you could just fill the whole flight!! No need to sleep, I think that I got 5 1/2 films in so that could be the reason I was whacked when we got to BKK and it's also the reason I need to get to a place that is showing "The Sentinel" so I can see how it ends. We were supposed to be getting picked up at the airport but seeing as though we'd missed the flight we'd now be 2 hours late. So during our wait in Singapore we tried to email the hotel so that they could let the taxi driver know we'd be late. The taxi driver hadn't got the message though, she'd been waiting for 2 hours for us.... she was still smiling though!! Drove into town to our hotel - I'd forgotten how crazy the driving is here. There's quite often 6 lanes painted on the road but 7 lanes of cars by the time people are straddling lanes or driving on the hard shoulder. And then there's all the crazy under-taking, over-taking, cutting up and yet no horns or any signs of anger. I just read that two of the accepted rules of the road here are that you give way to the bigger vehicle (I guess this makes sense) and that the person that sees the accident is responsible. So this second rule means that you can slowly creep over to the lane that you want to be in or pull out of a junction as long as you don't make eye contact with any other drivers. And they do it!!! You see it all the time. I have no idea how we haven't seen more accidents.

Amazingly we got to the hotel in one piece. And what a hotel. We'd decided to treat ourselves while we were in town and Kamay had found a great place, The Old Bangkok Inn. It's more than we're likely to spend anywhere else on the trip but it was soooo worth it. The hotel is close to all of the major tourist attractions, some good cheap food and is easy to get to other areas of the city by public transport. They call themselves a "boutique" hotel, although I'm not sure what that means, but it was a really nice room with traditional old Thai furniture, internet & PC in the room, DVD player, 4 poster bed and really helpful staff.

After freshening up a bit we went off to explore the area of Khao San Road. KSR is a sort of traveller Mecca I guess. It's where a lot of the budget accommodation is and it has all of the traveller friendly places, so you can sort out visa's, book buses, excursions, buy cheap souvenirs, English books, eat western food, watch a movie. All in, it's pretty nasty, but it was close to where we were staying and you have to see it at least once, and besides there was some good vegetarian food to be had on one of the side streets. After a day and a bit on the road (and all of those movies) we were back at the hotel and asleep by about 7.00!!

Sunday we were heading out to Chatuchak Market in the North of the city where you can buy pretty much anything you want, a bit like Harrods except that it's outside and it's cheaper and it's hotter and instead of a Rolex you may get a Ralex. There is a canal that ran really close to our hotel, Khlong Saen Saep, and this takes you right into the city centre where you can get the Skytain out to the market. So a quicker, more interesting and less polluted way to get around than taxi's, tuk tuk's or busses. (Tuk tuk's are basically 2 stroke tricycles that they use as cabs - they're really noisy are driven by maniacs and must be one of the major sources of pollution in Thailand)

Lots of good stuff at the market, Kamay fell in love with these Thai silk cushion covers, so we spent a lot of our time looking at these. The only bad bit was when we accidentally found our way into the pets section. They were selling pretty much every kind of animal you could think of, and all in really bad conditions.

After the market we took the Skytrain into the main CBD which is where all of the plush shopping malls are - basically we wanted some a/c to cool down in. Also, just around the corner is Jim Thompson's house. He's a guy who came to Thailand from the US after being stationed here during WWII. He started a very successful silk business and built this house in the centre of Bangkok. It's all built using traditional Thai building methods (which I guess involved lots of sitting around and eating satay) and materials and then he filled it with loads of Thai antiques and eventually opened it up to the public as a museum. Nice way to spend an hour or so, and beats the hell out of the malls.

The next day was going to be our day of proper culture, so first stop, after another great breakfast courtesy of TOBI, was the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew (Wat is basically Thai for temple and they have bazillions of them here). It's a relatively easy stroll from the hotel, well if you ignore the heat, smog and general grime and those pesky tuk tuk drivers that are trying to befriend you and give you "helpful advice". Every time that I've been around this area one of them has told me that the temple is closed today because of....... but they can take me on a tour of other places instead. And of course it's always a lie, so it was good to see that this Thai tuk tuk tradition of trying to rob the tourists hasn't stopped. These two attractions are both on the same site and it's huge, the Palace and the Wat covers an area of about 945,000 square metres and includes over 100 buildings, although we weren't allowed to see them all, thank god!!

The Grand Palace is actually closed to the public as I guess it's supposed to be where the King lives. Oh and by the way, they love the Royal Family here. The current King has been in power for 60 years now and you can't escape his face anywhere, I think that every building we've been in has had a picture of him or him and his wife. It's 60 years this December and for the whole year they are celebrating - it's a much bigger deal than Lizzies 50 years in the UK. Although we couldn't see inside the palace we could get access to an appalling weapons museum. It was basically just a collection of old swords and spears (no real historical significance of each individual item) with labels like "swords" and "spears". Nice for them to clarify that.

The rest of the place is amazing though. Inside Wat Phra Kaew is the so called Emerald Buddha. This is the most important Buddhist image for the Thais. It's a green Buddha image that sits about 75cm's high and isn't actually emerald although when they found it they thought it was (it's probably jasper quartz or nephrite jade, whatever that is). It was made some time in the 15th century and spent a bit of time travelling around Laos after it was captured by some Laos invaders in the 16th century. The rest of the complex is made up of tons of fancy buildings, a lot of which we could only admire from the outside, probably best though because we would have been here for days.

Next up was Wat Po, which is famous for being the oldest and largest Wat in Bangkok, has the largest collection of Buddha images in Thailand, was the earliest centre of education and is home to the largest reclining Buddha (supposed to represent Buddha passing into final nirvana). This Buddha was the bad boy that we were here to see more than anything else. This monster is 46m long and 15m high. It's made of plaster and is covered from head to toe in gold. Another good reason to come to Wat Po is for the massage. It is actually the centre for the traditional Thai massage, so you know it's going to be good and you know you're not going to be offered any "extras". The massage system combines characteristics of massage, chiropractic and accupressure in order to balance the functions of the four body elements, earth (solid body parts, skeleton, muscles, tendons), water (blood and bodily excretions), fire (digestion and metabolism) and air (respiration and circulation). [Thankyou Lonely Planet Guide to Thailand]. Well anyway we signed up for a bit of this and it hurt like hell. Then it was a trip up the river and back to the hotel.

Tomorrow we leave Bangkok. Not a bad thing really, I like the place, but Kamay isn't that big a fan. It's hot, dirty and plays havoc with her asthma. So it will be good to get out of the grime.