Our late arrival into the Survanabhumi airport gave us our first experience with BK weather, it was 30 degrees at 2am which is completely alien to us. It also gave us the chance to acquaint ourselves with a very friendly Taxi driver who serenaded us with the Thai version of Amazing Grace whilst speeding down the motorway.
Anyway our first day in BK was on the back of a mere couple of hours sleep after our 10 hour flight from Australia and we were understandably tired and maybe a fraction cranky, so our day was more a case of getting our bearings or in this instance getting obscenely lost, trying to find your way in this very foreign city is difficult when the road signs are meaningless to us. Though it was interesting to get lost down all the streets and see some of the real Thai markets and it seemed we were the only westerners in the whole part of this city. Anyway after tracking our way back and getting lost again and being very tired we decided the best bet would be to hail a taxi and head back to the hotel. It’s here in the hotel grounds we resided for dinner and for two amazing meals (probably better then anything we ate while in NZ) two beers and one juice it cost us the unheard of sum of £7.
Our second day was a day of shopping- we had landed in Bangkok in perfect time for Chatuchak’s Sunday market, Thailand’s largest and most popular market. Anything that’s made in Thailand can be found here. The market itself is amazing and also amazingly busy and easy to get lost in the small and claustrophobic alleyways.
It’s a great experience and one I would highly recommend, after spending a couple of hours walking round and of course Jen shopping away- though she struggled as there was so much to buy I’m not entirely sure she was knew what to do with herself. She tried her hand at bartering for the first time, and got the stall holder down by the vast sum of 20 baht from the marked price before parting with her money. But hey we all have to start somewhere.
A brief stop off for a coconut.
And then onwards to our next shopping experience for the day- this also gave us the chance to hop on to both Bangkok’s underground and Sky Train public transport, a good bet considering the rush hour was kicking in.
Our next stop was Siam (the former name of Thailand) Square and the MBK centre, which is a sharp contrast to our earlier experience; an air conditioned, ultra modern mall and a slight or in some cases steep increase in prices. Though it’s still definitely worth going, it’s interesting to see markets set up in a modern mall next to shops like McDonalds and Boots.
A view of Bangkok’s Sky Train system and the modern Siam area:
A slight difference from the older, more authentically Thai area we were staying in- Banglamphu:
Day three was one of our most anticipated days during our whole experience, though it unfortunately wasn’t as amazing as we were hoping- our visit to the Grand Palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha which was originally, up until the reign of King Rama VI, the palace grounds and home to many government buildings. I’ll start with the negative; unfortunately the heat was more oppressive than before and we were very hot so we were moving around the area at a very sluggish pace and not really soaking it all up. Secondly and more frustrating- as soon as we exited our taxi we were shepherded away from the entrance by a very official looking man who informed us the palace was closed until later, not really knowing what was happening we were led to a man who tried to get us to take a Tuk Tuk ride round Bangkok with him until the Palace opened. Clearly realising this was a scam we politely said no thank you and walked past the official looking man (who gave us a look of failure) and straight into the entrance to the ticket stand. Unfortunately this was a reoccurring theme for the rest of the day, by the end of which we had really had enough.
Anyway the buildings themselves are absolutely amazing and the architecture is like nothing we’ve ever seen before, though the grounds really don’t give much information about what everything is about, in retrospect we really should have done the audio tour but of course you don’t know about the lack of information until you’re in.
After our visit to the Grand Palace we stopped off at a small café not far away for a quick snack before the many scammers got us to the point where we begrudgingly headed back to the hotel. Looking back on the whole experience I believe our naiveness to the situation led us to overreact which led to the unfortunate dampening of our spirits; if we went through this again I’d like to think we’d be tougher and more resistant to it- though unfortunately at this moment in time we weren’t.
Our fourth and final day in Bangkok gave us the chance to recuperate with a late lie in and an afternoon spent relaxing at the hotel grounds/pool.
In the evening we decided to head for Khao San Road, famous for it’s eateries and well cheap beer (the equivalent of 3 pints cost about £2 as opposed to £7.50 in the UK). The street itself is very very small, so we did a return walk and sat down to eat our food for the evening. Jen had a Masaman curry (yellow curry) which she informed me was very nice, I however was struggling with my spicy pork salad… the key word being spicy WOW was it hot, I’ve never eaten anything with that sort of heat. Our evening ended with a very wet walk back to the hotel- when it rains in Asia it really rains.
This concludes our somewhat unsuccessful stay in Bangkok, there was so much we had wanted to do but for a variety of reasons we did not. Here’s hoping Malaysia is a degree more successful.
Onwards to Penang we head, of course we have our 24 hour train journey first.
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