Back to Bangkok

  Bangkok, Thailand
Saturday, May 17, 2008

Yes, back to lovely Bangkok ! I am sure you are all wondering if I managed to break into my bag because of this very secure lock that was preventing me to do so...well indeed, I did manage to break it with a screwdriver that was lent to me by the webcafeman. But still no pictures though (the wire to my camera is in the guesthouse room and I am not in the same area at the moment) Sorry about this, next time.

You have left me in Bangkok and you find me again in Bangkok. Did a lot happen in betweeen the Tuesday Bangkok and the Saturday one? Not so much. Indeed, I left Bangkok a couple of days ago in order to head north towards the ex-capital of Thailand, Ayuthaya. I took the train to get there. Iit was a three-hour train ride and in order to blend in with the locals, I took the cheapest class. In Thailand, there are 3 train classes, which means I travelled 3rd class, and I enjoyed this real experience. You stand up most of the trip cause it is full of peole, there is of course no air conditionning, otherwise, it would be 1st class. You stand up for 3 hours in a very hot and humid environment surrounded by thousands of sweaty people and you have to move away every 3 to 5 minutes to let the people who are selling what seems like food pass by. Also they yell and scream to announce that they are coming, so you can not miss them. Most of the time, the smell will tell you they are coming (for example there is no way you can miss the dry fish vendors). A real cool trip anyway.

I arrived in Ayuthaya quite late and walked all over town with my backpack looking for a place to stay. Needless to say that I got a bit lost as well, until at a corner of the main street, I met up with a big group of backpackers (easy to spot), that were asking their way to locals who, by the way, do not speak a word of english except for "yes". Quite a pleasure, they always say yes to everything you say ! What a relief, here we are a big group of jolly backpackers looking for a place to crash ! We eventually did and we had a really, really nice time together. Ayuthaya's temples are really amazing, astonishing, fantastic. I can not describe it, the pictures will talk for themselves...when they will be uploaded...and...here they are!

Buddha's image

Ayuthaya

The next day, I left with my entire crew for the famous natural park of Khao Yai. Same train ride again, but with 10 backpackers this time, instead of just me. A blast ! All countryside landscape, mountain and green rainforest all around. Once there, it was lunch time. The entrance of the park was in a tiny little town which appeared to be deprived of foreigners and restaurants. As we are all starving, we stop at the first place we see. It was no more than a couple of plastic baby chairs in the street : one to sit down and one that works as a table and here you go: we found a place to eat. Well, of course, you see rats running around (big rats). One of them was actually sliding in the wok. As a rat, you can imagine that a wok would make a great slide. I have to say, it looked quite disgusting, especially when the 3 big rats were trying to eat the meat that was lying in the sun in transparent plastic bags. But hey ! we are all starving in a town where this is the only place to eat and we all agreed that in this place, we could see the rats because we could see the kitchen, but in other places, it was exactly the same, except we could not see the kitchen, hence nor the rats, but they were still there ! So we stayed. Nobody ordered meat, and we had ....food.

After this lovely lunch, one of us had the crazy idea of renting motorcyles to drive around the park, so we did. They were actually tiny old fashioned, retro, all broken scooters but after the plastic stools on the street eating with rats, what did we expect ? So here we are, about 10 of us, driving around the park all day, stopping here and there to let the monkeys pass by as they were casually scratching their butts in the middle of the road. Amazing waterfalls, deep green rainforest, hot, humid, beautiful park. Had a little hike in the forest and that was quite impressive. It was full of mosquitos and other creepy crawlies that you have never seen nor heard before.

Hike in the jungle

We were supposed to give the scooters back at 9 pm, but as you are all expecting it........... one of the scooter broke down, otherwise, it would have been too simple. For some reason, they put me in charge of fixing the problem, one way or another. I stopped a pick up truck so that we could put the scooter in the back and bring it back to the rental place. and it worked ! no problem. The pick up truck left with one guy and all the rest of us were ready to drive off to follow them, but no ! one of us had as flat tire. Here we go again. Stopping another pick up truck to put the scooter in the back and drive to the rental place. We checked all the others, yes, they were alright and ready to go. Back to our beautiful hostel with coakroaches in every corner. The biggest ones I've seen so far.

We are still alive the next day with half of us taking the train to head north, the other half taking the bus to go back to Bangkok. I followed the second half as my bus to Cambodia was leaving from Bangkok.As most of them have already been travelling for a long time, they are very familiar with Bangkok and the good places to be : eating, sleeping, drinking, partying, shopping, they know it all and I have just spent the last 2 days really enjoying Bangkok and what it can really offer.