Bangkok

Trip Start May 08, 2008
1
25
Trip End Ongoing


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Flag of Thailand  , Bangkok,
Thursday, May 8, 2008

So is Bangkok actually a great city or did it seem like it relative to the Indian cities we'd seen previous to arriving there? I think its more the former than the latter but we'll know for sure on our return to catch our flight to Bali in late July. Certainly its many steps up from India, with a gleaming airport the first sign that things were going to be a little different here. This was reinforced by the complete lack of hassle in getting through the airport, baggage and immigration were smooth as could be and we were in a taxi bound for the centre less than an hour after touching down. Culture shock! Even at home its more hassle than this. Add in the fact that the infrastructure is impressive, the cars are mostly decent Japanese models and the impression of a high tech place, and its fair to say we've been impressed so far.

We spent 4 days in Bangkok pondering our route. We decided on going east first through Cambodia to Vietnam then moving north through that country. Then we intend to move west into Laos before turning south to eastern Thailand again. Once back in this country we'll go to the north around Chang Mai and Chang Rai before returning to Bangkok to complete the loop.

While in Bangkok we didn't do a whole lot except eat well and browse through the shops and stalls, and from the looks of it we'll do some shopping on our return! The sights such as they are will have to wait until our return. The food is fantastic here and there are little shops, restaurants and stalls everywhere. Cheap as chips but so good. No food poisoning yet either which is a nice break to get, long may it continue.

One thing we did was go to the Muay Thai or Thai boxing at Lumpini Stadium which was excellent. Much better than we expected, probably the fact that fights were only five rounds each helped. Anyway good times and I got a picture with the champ!

Its been very warm so far here but there are also some showers in the evenings. We'll get plenty more of that over this leg of the travels as the monsoon kicks in properly, but hopefully that'll be restricted to the evenings and night time. If not we'll spend a lot of time getting drenched!

First stop out of here is the island of Koh Chang off the south coast near the Cambodian border for a few days at the beach before we get back on the road properly.
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