Category: Thailand

I ate a grasshopper – intentionally.

Days 84, 85 and 86, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday  28/29/30 March 2012, Bangkok

Wow today (Wednesday) I celebrated 5 months of being unemployed ! wee dram, alone in the room etc etc – but that was later in the day, honest !

Did sod all on Wednesday, got up late, my room has air con and wifi so there is no reason to go out, Bangkok is foul at the moment, hot and humid so not going to go out unless necessary. So blogging and email was all I did in the morning, mid-afternoon I caught the train to MBK mall with the aim of buying a couple of shirts, a pair of shorts and replenishing my panadol and bathroom kit. I could not find any shorts I wanted, nor a light weight running shirt – at a price I wanted so settled for a couple of t-shirts.

I had dinner at the yellow curry place at the end of the hostel street, $1 and it is great and then went back to the room for a couple of whiskies and more blogging, emailing etc.

Thursday morning I booked my flights on the 4th April to da nang – Bangkok to Ho Chi Minh City on Air Asia and HMC to Da Nang on Vietnam Airlines and applied for my Vietnam visa on line. I then left the hostel into the oppressive heat and made my way to the China Visa office. I was kinda thinking that this would be more straightforward than Myanmar as not many euros would bother trying to do a visa from here, what I totally forgot about was lots of Thai people want visas’ so there was a massive queue…

I know a few people who have China visas with no detailed plans to visit, no flights booked or accommodation reserved. My research on the internet suggested that this was OK, but it was not. I waited for almost four hours in queues to have my application rejected as I had no flight booked. I was disappointed to say the least. If I decide to go I will have to apply when I am in Vietnam but at least I will have a plan then.

A while ago I read a couple of crime novels by John Burdett that were set in Bangkok,  I recently discovered I had all four books on the e-reader so started reading them again, now that I  can put a few of the place names in context, the stories are a lot more interesting now. The lead detective’s mother runs a brothel on a street called Soi Cowboy, which I thought was made up, it isn’t !

I saw it from the train station at Asok when I changed from the Skytrain to  the MRT  on the way to the China visa office, so I nipped down to the street to take a photo, and no I did not go in,

The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent doing more blogging, they take so long to write so by the time I was getting to the last few days I have noticed the mistakes are creeping in and the sentences are getting shorter.

I had an email from Giovanni saying he was in a flea pit hostel up by Khao San Rd (KSR) and was meeting R n B up there tomorrow.  In Myanmar I vaguely committed to joining them up there and as I had not stayed in the area, and it is something that all back packers should probably experience –  and most under 25 do – plus a few unrepentant hippies, I agreed to meet him up Friday.

So Friday morning I checked out of my nice clean, air conned, wifi’d hostel and caught a couple of trains and the boat up river to KSR and checked into the flea pit Sitdhi Guest House. It is under a quarter of the price of my old place and the room is like a cell in the middle of the building with no windows, it has a single bed and a fan in the room. It is hot hot hot and humid humid humid.  It is not that close to KSR so hopefully will not be too noisy at night ( well that was  a stupid thought !).

I spent an hour or so slowly dying in the room due to the heat and then decided to go for a walk around and found a bar with wifi and have a beer under a fan and do some interneting. I took a walk out the hotel – it was almost cooler outside, even under the mid-afternoon sun, and almost immediately ran into Richard and Blothnard (R n B) who were picking up a bag they had left in Bangkok while in Myanmar. We made a plan to meet later and i went back to the Sitdhi to find G and let him know the plan. I lay dying in my room for a bit longer and then had to leave for that beer and fan. The four of us all met up at 6.00, had a beer and then went in search of some cheap eats and t-shirts on KSR.

We had a great noodle meal for a buck and then G bought a bag of bugs for us to share….

Grasshoppers, crickets and grubs – I thank God he didn’t get the cockroaches – they were huge. I tried one of each, they were OK, deep fried and almost like a chip, but I ate them hesitantly as you just don’t know if juices are going to explode in your mouth when you bite into them… a bad photo, but I am eating grasshopper ( not the one from Kung Fu 🙂 ).

After the bugs we wandered for a couple of hours around KSR, it was pretty much as I expected, loads of cheap clothes and tourist stuff, and a load of noisy bars full of people drinking buckets of liquor ( a bucket is literally a small bucket, I would guess a litre, that is filled with cheap booze) and massive containers of beer. It was starting to get rowdy when we wandered off back to the quieter part of KSR and had a beer together before going back to our rooms. I grabbed a bottle of Pepsi on the way back and had a couple of drinks before lying on my bed sleepless for the rest of the night.  The room was not quiet !  Amazing how many people after a night out managed to eat something that upset their stomachs.

A day of travelling – Bangkok to Siem Reap

Day 57, Thursday 01 March 2012, Bangkok – Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Well it was an interesting day, and I wasn’t expecting that –  it was also a looooong day and I wasn’t expecting that either. However, it is South East Asia so I guess really I should have expected both.

I went to bed last night feeling a wee bit average but was Ok by morning, up at 6.45 and had coffee and cereal in the hostel before packing up and heading out on the next leg of the journey, another new adventure and another new country – and a day closer to seeing some of the awesome sights around Siem Reap, I just need to get there first. We walked up to the train station about 7.30, hoping for, but not expecting to have a fairly empty train ride. As we got to the platform a train arrived but it was so packed there was no way we could have made it through the door with our packs and day bags, so waited for the next train, which arrived very soon after and was not so bad –  though we went into different doors to fit in ! we took the train to the end of the line at Mo Chit.

At Mo Chit we spent five minutes trying to find a taxi driver who understood where we wanted to go, we weren’t sure if they had no comprehension of “north bus station” or if the fare was too small so they faked a lack of comprehension! Eventually we did find one and the ride to the station cost exactly what the hostel suggested it would, even if he is meter was ‘broken’.

We had a forty five minute wait at the bus station for our ride to Aranya Pathet, which is the border point with Poi Pet in Cambodia.  I had my first ever Dunken Donuts – I only had it for the coffee, honest !

The four hour bus ride took five and half hours and the bus seemed to be smaller than the ones in Malaysia so I was a bit more cramped, we stopped at a charmless gas station for a break. I always thought “Metal Mulisha” was a New Zealand thing, obviously not.

Just out of Aranya was passed a police checkpoint, the guy sitting in front of me did not have ID and was ordered off the bus, by the time the cop had got to the front of the bus (which had picked up ten or so standing passengers) the guy in front of me had been missed and was all smiles as the bus left again with him still on. Then we got to the army checkpoint, where he was not so lucky…

At the border town the bus was swamped with tuk tuk drivers offering to take us to the border, not knowing how far we selected one at random and he appeared to be charging the same price as the others at 80baht.

We piled on board and off we went. Sadly our tuk tuk driver, and the others carrying western tourists, took us the fake Cambodian visa office, I had read about the scam a while back so was semi-expecting it. It is basically an office a hundred metres from the border where you need to get your Cambodian visa, it is a total scam. If it was a visa office the guys would be uniform and it would be at the border, not a hundred metres away. I walked off with Mike behind me and we headed down to the border where we got our visa’s in Cambodia rather than in Thailand. We could have walked from the bus, it was only a few hundred metres, but ignorance is preyed upon as it is everywhere.

The border…

 

The boarder crossing for us tourists was a bit more normal, with passport stamps and customs checks.

Once in Cambodia we caught a free bus with about 20 other backpackers t to the main bus/van/taxi terminal. It was our intent to get a taxi the two hours to Siem Reap rather than the four hour bus trip, but there were so many touts and confused tourists it was pretty chaotic.  I think most of us wanted to get into groups of four to make the taxi only a couple of dollars more than the bus, of course the taxi drivers want to split the herd into smaller groups, which is what they did so well most of us ended up on the bus, so they lost in the end. The bus ride was slooooooow, at least it was airconned.

It is towards the end of dry season here and it is very obvious, it is very dusty and dry and the fields are fairly barren.  It is obviously not a wealthy area and there is an intresting mix of vehicles on the road.

We stopped for an hour for dinner, and to let the engine cool down, at least that is what I hope they were doing : )

It was dark after dinner and the remaining hour to town was pretty quiet, most people, like us just wanted to end their day of travelling. Once into town we were mobbed of the bus by tuk tuk drivers and just got one who knew where our guesthouse (Siep Reap Holiday Garden villa). It was a ten minute ride in, and I must say I enjoyed the tuk tuk experience – at least there is air.

Siem Reap is a lot different to what I imagined, on the edge of town there are a lot of big (huge in some cases) hotels, the roads are good and it is pretty clean. The centre of town is a bit more like your average SE Asian town centre, crowded with cafes and bikes and people in all directions. Our guesthouse it a ten minute walk from the main tourist area of Pub Street, which suits us fine.

So the journey took almost thirteen hours and went – walk, Sky train, taxi, bus, tuk tuk, walk, bus, bus, tuk tuk .

We went out to one of local eating houses for dinner, I had a very nice Khmer curry and rice and a beer for about  $5 NZ. The curry tasted quite similar to the Balinese curry that I make, though slightly different ingredients.

At night, our part of Siem Reap seems OK, we have a karaoke bar at the end of the street, but apart from that it all seems quite quiet here. The guesthouse appears to be almost empty. We have a big room with two king size beds, air con, TV with 100 channels (I just watched England lose to Holland in a football friendly) and a decent hot shower. All for $10 a night.

The Music bit

Ah, The Mint chicks, sadly defunct, but I must admit I wasn’t excited about the last album and their new direction. But in their heyday in the mid 2000’s they were awesome. The album “F**k the golden youth” is a great great album and live the Mint Chicks were fantastic, one of the most entertaining live bands Auckland has produced. This track “take it, I don’t want it” is from that album and captures some of the live manicness.

Wat Arun and a Myanmar visa

Day 56, Wednesday 29 Feb 2012, Bangkok

Leap year this year, huh – Wahoo, 0ne more day of travelling!

Today we go back to the Myanmar consulate to (hopefully) get our visas. We have booked flights to Yangon from Bangkok on the 12th March, with me returning to Bangkok on the 27th and Mike flying to Kuala Lumpur to head to Europe.  In the meantime we will do a quick tour of Cambodia and head off by bus to Siem Reap tomorrow morning.  The consulate opens at 3.30 so a slow start to the day.

I spent some time on the internet this morning, updated the blog “The Plan” page with the new details and caught up with a mass upload of photos to Flickr, as I was way behind, all this interneting is time consuming, and I still owe a few people some emails – so sorry!

We left the hostel around mid-day and stopped at a hawker stall on the street for an absolutely delicious banana and chocolate crepe, for the massive sum of about 40 cents. Auckland really needs to have this sort of street food – of course it would be against some food or health regulation ! We took a couple of trains back out to the Chao Phraya river and caught the ferry again up to the Wat Pho stop like the other day. This time we jumped on another ferry that just went back and forth across the river to Wat Arun.  Not sure if I would eat this guys catch to be honest.

Skippering a ferry across the river is not that exciting obviously, when we set sail and were aimed in the general direction of the far bank, he continued his knotting and steered with his knees.

Obviously nothing sexist about the dress code! Personall,y I think shorty shorts should be encouraged, with conditions attached of course.

Wat Arun translates to temple of the dawn, and it would be fabulous to be there at sunset, though I think I would really struggle to get there at the moment, cannot get enough sleep and feel really groggy in the mornings. The Prangs (the large towers) were built in the early 1820’s and are decorated with shells and bits of porcelain. We spent an hour or so wandering around the site. There is info  on it here.

http://www.watarun.org/index_en.html

In the cloisters, under the encircled buddha figures are hundreds of photos, I am assuming of people whose ashes may be in the cloisters, I could not find any information about it, the site itself has very little information available in English sadly.

Climbed the very steep staircases, it was great to be to get close to the detail.

For some great views over Bangkok.

I took a lot of photos of stone heads again; they had quite a few different ones to Wat Pho and the Grand Palace. I have posted these in a prior post as there were a few : ) but I do think they are cool.

We then caught the ferry back to the other side, had a quick lunch and caught the ferry back to the  train and the train back to the Myanmar Consulate where we got our visas – Yes !!! mission accomplished, a day later than planned, but at least we have visas and can now fly to Yangoon in 12 days knowing we wont get kicked out at the border.

After the consulate it was a train back to the hostel and some lying down, very tired tonight, we had an early dinner. We were planning on going back to the place we ate at last night as it was so good, however it was closed. I really wanted rice as I had a noodle dish for lunch, but none of the rice options appealed so we went to the cafe we had dinner at a couple of days ago. Sadly it was not great, very greasy pad thai. I left feeling bloated and blah – hope it is not something coming on, as tomorrow morning we leave for Angkor !!  Early night.

The music bit…

As promised – The Subliminals.  I first got into The Subliminals through Michael and Chantal, two of my bestest friends.  Jared, the bass player was a friend of theirs and after hearing their EP and seeing them live I was hooked.  The music speaks for itself, just fabbo!, lots of droney post rock, with the odd vocal track thrown in.

This clip is from the recent Flying Nun 30th anniversary gig and I am still kicking myself for not going to this show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiCEU0vlrNw&feature=autoplay&list=AVGxdCwVVULXeE02xMfqJG3Z-xzf_DvPIa&lf=list_related&playnext=1

Down day in BKK

Day 55, Tuesday, 28 Feb 2012, Bangkok

Woke up feeling a wee bit jaded but not too bad, the worse thing was it was hot last night so I did not sleep in the sleeping bag liner and am now covered in itchy mosquito bites, thank goodness for tea tree oil or I would have removed a fair chunk of skin from my foot, it was that itchy.

Today was planned to be a down day so we didn’t do much in the morning.  I was talking to someone over breakfast about the sunrises and sunsets over Angkor Wat and she has convinced me to not send my tri-pod back to New Zealand, I would be kicking myself over and over if I did. I did package up a few things I no longer use to send back and will get them in the post tomorrow.

Late morning we caught the train back to Siam Square so I could have the mandatory jaded McDonalds and do some basic shopping. After numerous failed attempts I finally tracked down some more zip lock bags, yes ! it has been a mission i can tell you. They are not as good as the trusty Glad Bags but at least I can get my phone and mp3 player in one so they don’t get damaged in any sudden downpours. Also picked up a whole bunch of other bits and pieces on my list, so shopping all done – except a new umbrella, haven’t found one yet, bloody Cebu airport! We had a walk around the square and I photographed a few of the sculptures.

Awesome, a special place for the indy kids to hang !

I just loved this piece of art on the wall outside the gallery.

This guy was really good, he got some great sounds out of these buckets.

After the mall and Siam Square it was back to the hostel and booking accomodation for Siem Reap in a couple of days and flights in and out Myanmar – just hoping those visa applications are approved! The smoothie  cart near the hostel.

After getting flights booked and some basic plans made we went and checked out another of the food stalls up the road from the hostel, think this may have been the best food in bangkok so far. A very tasty yellow curry.

The music bit…

Yesterday I said I would do a bit on The Subliminals, however last night over a few plastics (in lieu of glass) of cheap whisky I found the below link (actually i was looking for illegal downloads of a couple of NZ bands – though I do own the originals, honest!).

Jay Reatard RIP (1980 – 2010). Jay did a show at the Kings Arms in Jan 2009, which I photographed for the cheeseontoast website. It was a great show, two awesome bands.  I really enjoyed Jay’s slice of poppy punky music, some of his songs reminded me of the best bits from the Mint chicks (oooo, must mention them soon) . Jay’s untimely end was a real loss to the music scene. Jay @ Kings arms hotel in 2009.

I didn’t know this track existed till tonight.  This is a Toy Love song, Chris Knox was the vocalist (and well deserving of an entire blog post), I think this track may have even preceded Toy Love and may be an Enemy song, whatever it is a stone cold NZ classic punk track.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ClsZo3T9yU

Toy Love –so good ! and as much as they hated it, the album was awesome.

Holy shitballs, Youtube is great! here is The Enemy on Radio with pictures (the best NZ music show ever) and I was right – it was an Enemy track.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ntB_b0BYMs

A day at the embassy

Day 54, Monday 27 Feb 2012, Bangkok

Grrrrr, lousy sleep again, so tired again today, I really wish I could just go to sleep any where and any time and sleep till I wake up or the morning – whatever is more important at the time. It is so frustrating.

Today was Myanmar visa day, so Mike and I set off soon after 8.30 to the Myanmar embassy, it is conveniently located close to the Surasak Skytrain station which is the station before Saphan Taksin, where we caught the boat yesterday, in fact the skytrain almost goes over the top of the embassy. (subtle hints for anyone thinking of a Myanmar visa)

In rush hour being a monk would be a good thing, as long as you were first on.

 The embassy opens at 9.00 and we arrived at 9.15, there was already a big queue waiting to get in.

The word on the street was to go up to a small shop just up the road to buy the visa form for a few cents so it can be filled in on the street while waiting. The shop will also photocopy the front page of your passport and take the required two passport photos (and sell you a pen) if you need all that stuff. It was a nice little business for them, and handy for tourists, so good for us travellers to support those who show initiative – and don’t try to rip us off…

It took about thirty minutes to get to the door of the visa section, luckily we were in the shade as it was hot already. Mike getting excited about getting into the air con !

Once inside we queued for another thirty minutes or so, just to get a number so we could sit and wait some more…. after almost another hour our number was called, we handed over the passport and the money and left, two hours after we arrived. Passport pick up was between 3.30 and 4.30. it was now 11.30 so Mike and I decided to catch the boat again and head up to the infamous Khao San Rd to check it out.  KSR is not infamous for its girly bars it is primarily famous as the backpacker hub of Bangkok, but for the beer guzzling, party all night type of backpacker, not the forty somethings interested in temples and stone heads type, hence we are not staying there.

This monk was obviously second on the train this morning!

KSR is a couple of streets away from the river and we stopped for lunch at one of the big backpacker cafes, I had a very nice chicken cashew and banana/coconut shake. We started to see the first signs of KSR habitués here, a few dreadlocked and tattooed teenagers drinking large bottles of cheap Anchor beer for lunch. It is definitely a more bogan area than the hostel we are staying at– and I imagine a hell of a lot noisier at night, though the day time liveliness is good. We only had an hour so it was a quick walk around.

Loved these phone boxes.

While waiting for the boat I had a wee walk around and found Phra Sumain Fort, built in the late 1700’s. As part of the defence of Bangkok –  a moat was built around the city, with fourteen forts at strategic points. Only two forts now remain – unfortunately you cannot go into them.

While reading some ones blog on applying for Myanmar visas this morning I found a reference to Bangkok’s ghost towers. Apparently there are (were) a number of unfinished and therefore deserted towers scattered around the city, they have collectively been called ghost towers and are popular with a certain type of photographer. We passed one today….

We got back to the Myanmar embassy just after 3.00 to join the (not so) happy throng waiting to collect their visas, it was stinking hot so we all gathered on the shady side of the road, away from the visa section door. At about twenty past a couple of people started to gather near the door and then there was a sudden rush to queue in the sun, luckily they opened the doors a few minutes early!

And here the story turns – well, not bad, more – frustrating.

After five minutes of queuing I got to the counter and handed over our ticket to collect our freshly visa stamped passports, and….. was advised that ours would be ready on Wednesday as we had paid for a three day turn around and not a one day…. F**K. There was not one single sign or notice of any kind inside the embassy advising on visa turnaround times or how much the visa cost, when I handed in the forms was I was told 1820 baht so that is what I handed over… Oh well, back to the hostel and hope we can get two more nights (we could). We had planned on another day in Bangkok as I want to do some shopping for travel things, insect repellent for instance and I also want to post some stuff back to New Zealand, all the clothes are clean mum – honest. Guess we get another day of sightseeing – yay more temples!

We headed back to the hostel and I managed to find a cardboard box at the local hardware store, I have tried a few places lately, so I can package up things to post – going to send the tri-pod back as it is getting heavy to lug around and I am not using it enough , along with some clothes and all the tickets and brochures and crap I have collected over the last few weeks (most of which I am sure I will toss when I finally get home !).

After a wee lie down we wandered up to the supermarket where I bought a bottle of whisky – no need to rush out of bed tomorrow and a packet of Pringles.  Though I did stop and get some satay chicken and salad for dinner on the way back to the hostel.

Another night in, blogging, emailing and drinking cheap scotch!

The music bit.

Loves Ugly Children were a Christchurch band from the late eighties to mid nineties, they released two or three great EP’s (I have two and may be missing one) and a couple of great albums and remain one of my favourite NZ bands.  Flying Nun records are apparently about to release a compilation CD, which I will look fwd to getting.  Their sound moved around a bit, but underneath the noisy/punky/thrashy sound was some great pop song writing. Simon McLaren has to be one of NZ’s best un-heralded musos, he was in The Subliminals as well, which I will do tomorrow I think. I will also confess to a wee crush on the bass player Fluff back in the day….

Sights, sites, pets and food

Day 53, Sunday 26 Feb 2012, Bangkok

Not my finest blog post, certainly not a post the day deserves, I really enjoyed the temple and the palace visits, but have run out of blogging steam tonight. Will let the pictures tell some of the story – so warning – lots of images in this post…

As I sat down to type this post and entered the date I realised that today is my second month anniversary of travelling – well done ME !  Five weeks ago I wasn’t sure I would make two months, but in a reasonable groove with it all now.

I had a good sleep last night for a change so up at a reasonable time, a quick breakfast and then out the door by eight for a day of playing tourist and visiting the Grand Palace and Wat Pho, two of the key sights in Bangkok.

We took a couple of trains to the Chao Phraya river where we waited a while to get a ferry bus up river.  The river boat was pretty full with tourists though it was a good ride upstream. Saw Wat Arun out the side of the boat which I will aim to see another day. Today was supposed to be 33 degrees and sunny, so two sights today was going to be plenty.

Wat Arun

We got off the boat near Wat Pho, and were fortunate to get there early enough to miss the worst of the tourists, though the same cannot be said for the Grand Palace later in the morning…

I loved Wat Pho, if it wasn’t so hot and there wasn’t so many people I could have spent the day there wandering (and wondering) around looking at all the stone statues, the buddhas, the stuppas and the buildings, it was just very cool.

It is the largest temple in Bangkok and its key feature is the temple of the reclining Buddha, the Buddha is 46 metres long and covered in gold leaf and was spectacular.

As you would expect there were many Buddhas!

More on Wat Pho – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wat_Pho

After a couple of hours at Wat Pho and suffering an increasing number of tourists, we took a walk up the road through a solid line of hawker stalls to the Grand Palace.  Mike is easy to spot with the bright yellow dive bag !

The palace has a strict dress code of no shorts or open toed shoes, so it was long pants and shoes for the day. It is rigorously enforced.

The Grand Palace was started in 1782 and was the home of the Thai King and the centre of government for 150 years. The detail work, both here and at Wat Pho was extraodinary.

It was really crowded here and I kind of gave up trying to get shots without hoards of people in them.

One of the key sights of the palace is Wat Phra Kaew, the temple of the emerald Buddha. The Buddha is carved from a solid block of jade and was made in the 15th century. The temple is the most sacred Buddhist site in Thailand. I am wondering if the hitting yourself on the head with a bit of wet fruit is a tourist thing…Painting the walls of the temple.

The walls of the ordination hall are covered in panels detailing Buddhist history, the murals are quite ornate.

I was trying to get a photo of this soldier and finally gave up waiting for this group of kids who individually getting a photo taken, so I shot them too.How’s my blue bandana 🙂

Mike decided to head back to the hostel and I wanted to return to the market from yesterday to see if I could pick up some more t-shirts and see the pet section as Mike heard about it last night and heard stories of snakes and baby crocodiles. We parted at the train station and I jacked into some headphones and gave my ear drums a blast of punk rock for a while. The market was more crowded than yesterday morning and a lot hotter inside as well, I was already pretty warm after the sweltering morning so it was a rather sticky hour spent wandering around the mass of stalls. SadIy I didn’t get any more t-shirts, only found a couple I liked today and nothing was in my size !  I did find the pet area, no crocs, but I did find some small snakes, and some piglets.  There were a lot of “no photo” signs, round the snakes so I grabbed a hasty and pretty bad shot.

After a couple of hours chillin in the hostel and getting a whole load of washing done and shooting a sunset, Mike and I went out for a meal at the local hawker stalls just up the road from the hostel.

 

Making my Pad Thai..

The hostel street from the Skytrain bridge.

Auckland band Kitsch have been around since the mid nineties and still gig now and then, a great pop-punk band, they deserve way more recognition than they ever got. This song 11 11 is off the great 2002 release “love songs for romantic punks”

Gallery – things tourists wear.

Seen at Bangkok Grand Palace

Two camers – each !!!  WTF are they the paparazzi ? was there something on I missed ? No – just photogs with too much cash, note one is Nikon the other is Canon.

Ok, I am sorry, I know I am no fashionista and photographing people purely to mock them is wrong, but come on guys, no-one should not wear hippy pants, yes it was friggin hot today, but you look stupid!

The worlds biggest market

Day 52, Saturday 25 Feb 2012, Bangkok

As seems to be the tradition lately I had a lousy sleep, if I  slept at all.  Up earlyish for an explore of the hostel and to see if they had free breakfast at or at least coffee –  they do.  The hostel is nice, roof garden, good views and a nice little shrine out the front. We are on the 4th floor, under the roof garden and there seems to be a good number of, mainly young, people here. It was a good choice I think, hard to choose hostels on the internet.

After breakfast I got the wireless log in and checked my email and had a message from an old friend Trudi.  I travelled Europe in a Volkswagon Kombi van in 1987 with Trudi, two of her sisters and my then wife, Deana. Trudi is Australian and is working for their immigration service out of Colombo in Sri Lanka and has come to Bangkok for the weekend with her daughter Bella. We made a plan to meet for a meal later in the day, it will be great to catch up as I have only seen Trudi a couple of times in the past twenty five years.

The plan was to go and see some of the key sites this morning and then head to one of the big malls for some aircon, lunch and for me to get a few things, zip lock bags, new board shorts, t-shirt and more USB drives being top of the list. However the hostel manager told us to go checkout Chatuchack, supposedly the worlds biggest market, which is only open on the weekends and a convenient ride away on the Skytrain – so we did…

The market is huge ! 9000 booths selling a mix of clothes, shoes, bags, shoes souvenirs, fake watches, jewellery, household items and general tat. I loved it and could have spent a day there perusing and shopping. The t-shirts were amazing, the best range I have ever seen of t-shirts that I would buy for ME to wear, I may go back tomorrow and buy a load to post to NZ, at about $5 a shirt you cannot go wrong. I did buy some new O’Neil brand boardies ($10) a t-shirt ($5) and a pair of shorts with zip pockets ($6), that I wore tonight and may be a bit small, damnit – i think it was all the beer 🙂

Not one of the shirts I would wear, but i did like it.

We walked around for a while and then stopped at a food stall for, what was an awesome, chicken noodle and cold drink lunch.

One of the things I really enjoyed about the market, especially after the Philippines, was it was entirely smoke free, even outside ! Bangkok – you are awesome.

We then caught the Skytrain to the MBK mall which was on the way back to the hostel, this mall is again huge with over 2500 shops!

But similar stuff to the market, though I did pick up another dry weight t-shirt for a couple of bucks and will send some other less useful clothes back to NZ tomorrow – though mum,  I will wash them all first time ! I sent mum a package from Miri in Malaysia with some not quite so clean articles in and it just arrived the other day, I think mum had to wait a couple of days to build the courage to open it.

On the subject of packages, earlier this week I also received an email from the shipping company in Auckland advising that the box of stuff I delivered to them before Christmas to ship to the UK (my good camera, laptop and winter clothes) finally left on Feb 24th!

 Outside the mall there was a group of what appeared to be uni students, doing something, not entirely sure what, there was a small march and some “singing” and dancing and some dressing up, I dont think all the girls were girls 🙂

After the mall we went back to the hostel and I did the usual catching up with blogs and emails and talking to friends. I also gaffer taped over the video record button on my camera as I keep accidentally pressing it and recording hours of video of the inside of the lens cap – and flattening the battery. I finally found a use for the small amount of gaffer tape I brought with me! Some bits around the hostel.The neighbours.

I caught up with Trudi and Bella at Asok station, couple of stops up the line from where I am staying, we had dinner in one of the local food places and it was the hottest noodles I have had – had to have a couple of Singha’s to wash it down. Great to catch up with Trudi and I am tempted to go to Colombo on the way over to Europe. I will see what flight options there are.

The view from Asok station.

After dinner I had a beer on the hostel roof with Mike and then called it a night.

A good first day in Bangkok, clean, easy to get around and reasonably hassle free – it was much better than I expected.

Auckland band Muckhole were around in the late nineties but I only saw them once. It is a big call but I think they are my favourite ever Auckland punk band, I mean I loved the Spelling Mistakes and the Scavengers, The Warners and a string of other bands, but these guys were cool and their records were well made and sounded great. Muckhole – Cool guy