Day 3 - Bangkok

  Bangkok, Thailand
Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Today was either a very chilled day, or a total write-off, depending on how you look at it.

After last night's frivolities and a bit of jet lag we eventually woke up at 1pm (?!), convinced that my watch was lying to us and it was actually about 9am.

Sadly it was the right time, and even then the only reason we woke up was that the hotel were knocking on the door to check if we were still alive/intended staying another night!

The late start pretty much set the tone for the day.

After getting ready we walked round the corner to a beautifully constructed and famous Thai house built by a guy called Jim Thompson, who apparently helped raise the profile of Thai silk globally and became a multi-millionaire in the process. Nice work if you can get it...

 

The house itself was huge, I think they said it was 3 or 4 regular sized houses joined together!

We joined a tour to have a good look round and found it pretty interesting, even if it did seem that they'd crammed as much junk as possible into a rather odd multi-levelled layout.



The basement level was a bit odd, there was loads of space down there and a few statues or paintings dotted around.

The photo below shows a venerated buddha statue 'obtained' from Burmha (Myanmar).

 

The treasure trove of 'valuables' on show left a bit of a sour taste to be honest, it seemed like this rich westerner had bought up loads of religious artefacts from around the region and transported them to his big flashy house for his own amusement, away from the people who probably worshipped them and to whom they had a strong spiritual attachment.

I lost count of the number of times our guide said "Mr Thompson did not follow the Thai way of doing this"... or "he persuaded the local monks to part with the statue"... it was all a bit unsavoury really.

That said, the Jim Thompson foundation are apparently a big charity over here, so maybe I should give the guy a break.

He eventually went 'missing' in Malaysia in the 60s, probably knocked off by some of the enemies that he no doubt made in his new home country as a result of his business activities...

When we got back from the hotel we spent HOURS on the internet booking cheap flights around Asia for the next month or so... it was pretty painful but worth it in the long run hopefully.

There are plenty of low-cost airlines in South East Asia, but as in Europe you need to book ahead to get the best prices, otherwise you don't end up saving much money. 

After a quick bite to eat we headed to Patpong, an area of Bangkok best described - for those that haven't heard of it - as an 'entertainment area' for gentlemen. I guess it's famous for it's seediness, in a similar way to Roppongi in Tokyo, although without the vending machines with schoolgirl's underpants!

Like last night there were market stalls lining most of the streets, with absolutely nothing worth buying in any of them.



We then walked into the wider streets with all the girlie bars and neon signs and it was pretty busy.
 
Every few steps we had some of the most bizarre 'menus' that I've ever seen thrust in front of our eyes while we walked down the main street. 



All I can say is that they must have some very clever 'cats' over here, the menus suggested that they were able to smoke, play ping pong and even shoot darts?! ;)

Miraculously I managed to keep Katie out of these salubrious establishments (errr....) and we headed home at a sensible hour because we have all our packing to do before taking a very early train north towards Chiang Mai tomorrow morning. 

All things considered it was a pretty boring day today; we didn't achieve much, so we can't wait to get out of the city tomorrow and see a bit of the country.


Love to you all,


Al & Katie xx