Bangkok - Khao San Road
Trip Start
Aug 31, 2008
1
22
47
Trip End
Apr 30, 2009
Bangkok,
Thailand
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
By the time we got there it had just turned dark outside. Kao San Road was filled with lights and street vendors with tourists walking around everywhere. The road is closed to vehicular traffic at this time, so Lisa and I grabbed our bags and started heading down it looking for a place to stay for a couple of nights. I was surprised to see such a high concentration of young western people in Bangkok because almost everybody except for the street vendors was farang.
Within a minute I noticed a small alley with signs indicating that there were rooms for rent and we ended up staying at the very first one that we looked at. It offered a small and basic room with a private bathroom for 350 baht a night. Since it wasn't very hot outside, we figured we could live without air-conditioning for the two nights we were going to be in Bangkok. It was named Harns Guesthouse and it seemed to be run by a Chinese family. Besides having rooms for rent, there was also Internet service for 30 baht an hour, a tour agency for destinations in the Bangkok area and drinks for sale.
After unloading our bags and having a quick shower, Lisa and I walked down Kao San Road in search of dinner and entertainment. There are lots of options for fast food, from street vendors selling the regular Thai fares to McDonalds, Burger King and Subway. We picked up some Pad Thai with egg for 35 baht each and then got a couple Beer Changs from 7/11 to accompany it. We sat at the far end of Kao San Road where some jugglers were putting on a show. For dessert I found some chocolate banana roti from a nearby street vendor for 25 baht.
Although Kao San Road is only a few hundred meters long, there must be six different 7/11 stores and a Family Mart along it. There are also areas where plastic chairs and tables are crammed in to a barren part of the road where alcohol is served. Touts hold signs listing "Very Strong Cocktails" for around 80 baht and beers for 50 baht and try to usher in people passing by. They were surprisingly successful because most of the places were pretty full despite the fact that they offered very little ambience or comfort. Lisa and I sat at one that was playing some good house music but we are sad to report that the very strong cocktails really offered very little alcohol in them. Considering that you can simply buy your alcohol from 7/11 at around one third of the price, I don't really understand why so many people would pay for the use of a crappy plastic chair.
The main things being sold on Kao San Road was alcohol, food, clothes and tattoos. After Lisa and I had a couple of the large Beer Changs each, we decided to go to the night market in Pat Pong instead. Although we thought it was close by, it turns out that it was a fair distance away. Fortunately metered taxis in Bangkok are really cheap and it only cost 70 baht to get there anyhow. Once there I started shopping for a new kinetic watch and although I talked one vendor down to 700 baht for one I liked, Lisa said it was ugly and I didn't buy it.
The Pat Pong night market is on a street lined with Thailand's go-go bars. Many of these places had open doors and you could see girls in bikinis dancing on stage. As Lisa was filming her experience of walking down the street, she pointed her camera at one of these open doors and got security really upset with her. They put their hand over the lens and that upset Lisa as well. However after exchanging a few nasty comments to each other, we continued on our way down the street with no real harm done.
Besides the go-go bars, there are some less savory places on the small alleys lining the road. These are the places that advertise "ping pong shows" and other related shows. Since they were advertising beers for 100 baht and no cover charge, I decided to go to see what all the fuss was about. Lisa didn't join me but I was surprised to see other western girls already in the bar ahead of me. The place only had maybe 10 patrons with two or three girls dancing on topless on a stage. These were not amongst the more attractive girls I have seen in Thailand, but this was also a very seedy place.
Shortly after ordering my beer, I was brought a container designed to hold a bill, only it was empty. I was quickly joined by a transvestite that tried to get me to buy him/her a drink. I asked him where my bill was and he said not to worry about it until I was ready to leave. It was easy enough to shake him/her though when I mentioned that I was not going to be there beyond finishing my beer. I didn't get to see anything involving ping-pong balls, although I did see an act that involved blowing out the candles on a happy new year's cake.
By the time I was half done my beer, a woman came and stood in front of me holding a sign that said "show and drink = 1000 baht". This made me laugh and I explained that there was no way I was going to pay that. She quickly brought out another sign that said "beer = 300 baht", which I again balked at. I told her that a guy outside of the establishment had gotten me to come in with a promise of no cover and beer for 100 baht. She tried to say that he didn't work for her which got me laughing yet again. Why would anybody try to bring in customers to this seedy place without being paid to?
Anyhow, I handed her the 100 baht that I owed her and she asked me to leave if I would not pay more. This was not a problem with me because I felt disgusted by the whole experience. I took my half drank beer with me and left. At least now I know why there are so many touts on the streets trying to bring tourists to this type of establishment. It could be an expensive scam if you were drunk enough to fall for it. After some more shopping and a little more drinking, Lisa and I climbed in a taxi and headed for home.
The next day we decided to walk around the Kao San Road area and take some pictures. We soon noticed that nearly all of the nearby streets were great places to shop. However since we knew that we would be returning to Bangkok in a few weeks and that our baggage was already close to the 15 kg limit imposed by Air Asia, we didn't buy a great deal. We found a Buddhist wat that was really picturesque and popular with the local people. After speaking with a local man, we found out that the Thai king had visited this temple the day before. He also showed us on a map which other sites we should see and that we should look for "government" tuktuks with two flags on top for an affordable ride to them. The second we left this temple we were approached by a tuktuk driver that matched the man's description perfectly and he tried to solicit our patronage yelling "government, government." Feeling that this was way to convenient to be coincidence, we turned down his offer and decided to continue walking around on our own.
On our way back we found a place selling homemade ice-cream for 20 baht a scoop and that was a delicious treat for a hot and muggy Bangkok day. Bangkok is much too large of a city to really see by foot and after a few hours of wandering around, we hadn't really seen much but we were both exhausted. Fortunately we knew we would be back in Bangkok again after our trip to Koh Phangan so we were content to just relax and shop in the Kao San Road area. The last time we were in Bangkok (3 years ago), we had gone to Big John's Guesthouse which was a completely different neighborhood. Although Big John's was a nice enough place, the area had very little in the way of facilities geared towards tourists. The KSR area was totally geared towards tourists and that makes life a little more convenient even if it feels like a less authentic time in Bangkok.
The main problem from a convenience standpoint is how Kao San Road does not have easy access to Bangkok's Sky Train or rail system. The bus system of Bangkok is not an easy one to figure out unless you are knowledgeable about the city's geography, so we decided to take a taxi back to the bus station when it was time to head on from Bangkok. Our next stop was to Ranong so that we could make a quick trip to Myanmar to have our Visa extended. Since it was a 10 hour bus ride from Bangkok to Ranong, we decided to go with an overnight first class bus ticket, which we had purchased when we first arrived in Bangkok. The bus was scheduled to leave at 20:00 from the Southern bus station and was supposed to arrive at 6:00 the following day.
The taxi ride to get to the bus station only cost 90 baht and we ate dinner at the mall attached to the bus station. There were a few fast food places and I found a large chicken filet sandwich, fries and soda for 85 baht. The shopping at this mall had some of the best deals for shoes that I have yet seen on our travels. The shoes that I left Canada with are looking quite tattered these days, but it is still hard to part with a comfortable pair of shoes that you can walk all day in without getting blisters for something new and unknown. For 200 baht though, I had a choice of plenty of suitable and attractive alternatives, so after I return to Bangkok I will probably be trying to break in a new pair of shoes.
When it came time to catch the bus, we came close to missing it. The bus arrived about 10 minutes late and at a different position than we were told. We were supposed to catch the bus in slot 62 or 64, which only seemed to have buses leaving for Phuket. Lisa was persistent with the station attendants though and we found our bus in slot 52 shortly before it was going to leave (without us.) Once we boarded the bus and started looking for our assigned seats, a bus attendant stopped us and directed us to the back. She had reassigned the seating so that everybody travelling by themselves could have their own two seats. This represented about 90% of the bus, so we didn't feel very lucky that we would not have as much room and were stuck in the bumpy back of the bus instead of our assigned seats between the buses axels.
