Touching down after our flight from Kathmandu we headed straight to an ATM and then to the Tourist Information Centre at the end of the airport, these TIC have so much cool free stuff. Stocked up on maps and booklets and other information about Bangkok and the rest of Thailand, we headed down to the Sky train and into town. The BTS (sky train) was maintained at a delicious sub-Arctic temperature and we chilled literally and figuratively whilst sitting down and looking out the window. We made our way to Kao San Road, the tourist centre full of cheap hotels and found ourselves a cheap dormitory to crash in for the night. Locking up our bags in our wire bag mesh, we headed back out to check things out and get some grub. I left my camera at the hotel, I was too tired to take any pictures, but we wandered round the immediate area and got a bowl of noodle soup from a very friendly lady with very grey teeth. We didn't go back to the hotel till after a beer and another walk, I was utterly shattered but as soon as I lay down on my lumpy bed I was wide awake, not surprising considering the number of bars and clubs blaring out music until the not-so-early hours of the morning. Fortunately for me, staying awake meant I could flick away the invaders which appeared from no-where intent on sharing my bed.
The next morning we woke up late, and Djalma showed off an enormous collection of bites from bed bugs, I hadn't seen any before and had no idea what they looked like, it was only later when one crawled out of my camera bag and Djalma squashed it emitting a surprising amount of blood for such a little critter that we realised that they were bed bugs. Seriously? I thought they were made up to scare small children or, if they were real, that they were microscopic. I would never have been able to sleep knowing that bed bugs were creeping into my bed. We sat in our dorm talking to a particularly rough looking South African guy who was friendly in an arrogant kind of way, he mentioned a cheaper hostel slightly further out of town and so after breakfast we decided to head there.
Getting to 'The Overstay' was a mission rewarded by a gloomy bar with rooms just as gloomy above it, that stank of cat piss and last nights beer. Marvellous. The manager a skinny dread-locked Israeli who spoke English with a French accent took us upstairs to the storeroom which was the only place they had available. After making such a trek over town we decided to take the box room and to my relief the awful smell departed with him, the only worse body odour I'd smelt was in Iran, oh well at least it wasn't a permanent fixture where we were sleeping. The tiny little room had a fan, a blue strip light and a mattress of sorts, he got us some sheets later. We dumped our bags, left the door unlocked – the rings for a padlock didn't meet – and left to get some lunch.
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| From Week One: Bangkok, Thailand |
We wandered round the streets near out hostel and over one of the bridges crossing the Mae Nam Chao Phraya (the big river) we sat under the bridge before crossing it – the breeze was heavenly and I decided to have a little snooze.
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| From Week One: Bangkok, Thailand |
We got a bus on the way back and discovered a... Tesco!!! It was then and there I fell in love with the city. I didn't realise who much I had missed modern conveniences. Djalma got a skewer of cold chicken hearts which didn't go down too well (but when do they?!) and we went inside the air-conditioned centre of paradise.
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| From Week One: Bangkok, Thailand |
Taking our time we went down each aisle savouring the familiarity of a whopping great big supermarket, the cherry on top for me was that it was part of the same chain of supermarkets a 10 minute walk from my Mum's house. We got a few things, stopped off at the freebie stalls giving out samples of food and drinks – there was even one giving out coca cola, nothing new or anything but needless to say we had some of that as well.
Over the next couple of days we chilled out reading in the blue box room getting headaches and cabin fever. The cat-piss bar immediately below us was pumping out music until 2am most nights and so we never woke up early, enjoying the pre afternoon silence.
On Thursday we decided to get out of our little hole, which by now was covered in prickly heat powder (something which I am now heavily in love with given that it keeps you cool for a lot longer and makes you smell much fresher than it is humanly possible to be) and got a bus down to the Hua Lampong Train Station with a mind to walking back through the city.
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| From Week One: Bangkok, Thailand |
It was a great day, well afternoon by the time we got out of our room, we started in China town which was full of Chinese style Wats and covered with colourful dragons. We walked down streets full of Chinese restaurants and pharmacies, past street vendors with cafés on wheels covered with a huge array of bottles to mix up iced coffees, teas, powdered juices or anything else you might want. There was even a Brookes shop showcasing some of the most beautiful vintage style bikes, we wandered round the shop dreaming about luxury holidays on tandem bicycles adorned with worked leather satchels and pannier bag, well I did any way.
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| From Week One: Bangkok, Thailand |
We passed by so many beautiful temples or Wats that we decided to actually go in one and have a look round, it was very quiet although there “luck” machines that wouldn't have looked out of place in a Vegas Casino. The buildings and the gardens were beautiful, the amount of decoration, colour and mouldings was unbelievable and it was by no means a one-off. We walked past Wat Po where the famous reclining Buddha rests but neither of us were appropriately attired and so we decided to save it for another day, continuing on we headed for a toy market.
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| From Week One: Bangkok, Thailand |
It was market for everything, the number of stalls selling things like fake flowers, beads, sparkly things balanced the number of fashion clothes and shoe shops. There were things for Djalma too, namely FOOD.
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| From Week One: Bangkok, Thailand |
We tucked into a kind of sweet potato baked so that it was all hot and soft and then bathed in syrup, using the facilities in KFC to clean up afterwards,as well as abusing the free air-con to cool down while we decided where to go from there. The evening was closing in along with some pretty heavy looking clouds, so we made our way onto the nightly flower market.
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| From Week One: Bangkok, Thailand |
Wow, the place was crammed with roses and carnations wrapped in newspaper filling up endless buckets, with oriental orchids bunched up in small mountains, warehouses of chrysanthemums and further on rows of women and girls making small scented garlands to be used as offerings in temples and shrines. It was colourful and beautiful and although it smelt good it didn't really smell of flowers, not until the garlands anyway.
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| From Week One: Bangkok, Thailand |
It was dark by now and we decided to stop and rest while the rain came pouring down, we sat on the steps of a bank and watched as the flower business continued despite the rain, people put on their makeshift hats and carried on working and chatting.
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| From Week One: Bangkok, Thailand |
After the rain eased off we continued on our way past a monument at the end of bridge, glistening in the light and reflected in the water collected in front of it. One more stop in front of some huge golden Buddhas to pinch their hard gold nipples and stroke big yellow bellies before our aching legs and feet urged us on home.
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| From Week One: Bangkok, Thailand |
The following day we moved into a bigger room with a window! Of course the window was broken allowing in mosquitoes, attracted by the stagnant puddles of water on the roof outside, to feast on our vulnerable sleeping bodies. I followed a yoga video downloaded from the internet, less of a yoga 'workout' and more of an aerobic one but it was good to do something which felt vaguely healthy. After a shower and a lunch of beef noodle soup from a street vendor which we ended up going to almost every day, we jumped on a bus to Sukhumvit, the main shopping road. We had planned to do a lot more exploring but we were so tired after a day of almost solid walking that neither of us were really up to it, so after looking round one of the huge shopping centres, Central World, we decided to watch a film and make use of the free air-conditioning.
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| From Week One: Bangkok, Thailand |
The shopping centre had a big cinema complex on the top floors, we bought tickets for Thor and entered a whole new zone of freezing air-conditioning. We sat through some adverts before a video of the King came on and we, along with everyone else in the cinema, stood up and watched his life play out in photos set to some very loud emotional music before we were allowed to sit down and watch a truckload of trailers (which by the way – I love doing, it feels like you get more movie for your money). The film, like most films from Marvel, was great - very funny and we resolved to make the most of Movie Wednesday and come back mid-week for the cheaper tickets. Feeling cold but still slovenly we went to get some food, I wish I could say that we didn't but we did, McDonald's for a great big dirty Big Mac Meal, Ugh, so wonderfully disgusting. Getting back out into the muggy real world and warming up we wandered past a huge shrine built because the shopping centres birthday wasn't the most auspicious in terms of it's horoscope. Right. It was impressive though, covered with a myriad of marigold garlands left by passers-by and, I imagine, people who were so busy shopping they couldn't make it to their local Wat.
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| From Week One: Bangkok, Thailand |
We went back to our little hole after that, with a mind to start looking for a place of our own so we could settle down in this beautiful city for a bit longer.
Which we did over the weekend, on Saturday Djalma worked on his CV while I came to the difficult conclusion that I actually didn't want to teach, we both watched a couple more films, Easy A and How to Train a Dragon, not intellectual stuff but fun. On Sunday we went to Chatuchak, a HUGE weekend market covering 35 acres, and spent a good three hours buying Djalma, shirts, trousers, shoes, a tie and a belt. Painful but productive.
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