Bangkok, Thailand (Part 2)

  Bangkok, Thailand
Thursday, August 21, 2008

The trip to Bangkok from Laos almost deserves a blog entry in itself. The bus picked us up from our hotel at 8am and I found myself sitting beside a Laos guy who was absolutely fascinated at the fact that I had hair on my arms. He kept stroking my hair and trying to pull it....weird! Asian men really have difficulty growing any sort of body hair, most have no facial hair and none have hairy legs, arms or chests so I guess the chap was just curious. Anyway, we crossed the border into Thailand without incident but about 30 minutes into our trip into Thailand the bus "died". Of course the driver didn't tell us what happened, what was wrong and how long he thought it would take to fix. He just ordered us off the bus and told us to take all our stuff with us. So we all got off and baked in the sun for about an hour, at this point the bus looked no closer to being fixed and we were starting to worry about catching our flight from Udon Thani to Bangkok. Some locals were pulling there cars in and asking for ridiculous prices to take us the 30 km to Udon Thani. Eventually a public bus pulled in and we bailed on, doing the rest of the trip for a mere 30 cent each! The rest of the trip to Bangkok passed without incident and we got to our hotel, wrecked, at about 9pm.

Pics from Flower Market

12-Pics from Floating Market

We decided we'd go for a bit of sightseeing on Friday afternoon, had a delicious red curry from a street stall for breakfast/lunch then took a river taxi down the river as far as Chinatown. Walked around there for a while then stumbled upon the famous Bangkok flower market, that was quite nice to see, Lydia loved it. Saw a few other sights along the way too, a couple of temples and Memorial Bridge to name a couple. In the evening we made our way back to our favourite shopping centre in the world, the Siam Paragon. Had some food, did a small bit of shopping then saw the new Batman film in iMax to finish the day.

Doug, Erin, Karl, Lydia & big Beer

Karl & Lydia in Rowboat

Went for a green curry from the same street stall on Saturday morning and went out to the weekend market. We couldn't believe the size of the thing, 250,000 visitors per day. We were there for about 2 hours and just saw a fraction of the "clothing & accessories" section, this is one of eight sections of equal size, I've never experienced anything like it. We bought a few bits and pieces that we didn't really need but the things were so cheap we couldn't resist. I got a new pair of shorts, a t-shirt and a new watch, total cost.... about eight euro! Lydia picked up a new bikini and a pair of sunglasses for about 5 Euro - great! Happy with our shopping we made our way back to the Khao San Road and were just having dinner and a beer at around 6pm when I saw a few lads in Dublin Gaelic Football jerseys. I asked if they knew any bars that were showing the Dublin V Tyrone quarter final and they said there was one but it was a good taxi ride away on the other side of the city. Then there was one of them "I know you" moments. They all live around Kilbarrack & Raheny and just recognised me from there. I didn't know any of them but they knew a load of lads I'd know. So we spent the night with them, watched the atrocious Dublin performance and a bit of english football then went home late, good night.

Lumphini Park

4-Pics from Floating Market

On Sunday morning Erin & Doug arrived at about 12:30pm (for those of you who don't know, we both worked with Erin when we lived in Germany, Doug is her boyfriend, they're both Canadian). We took them for lunch at our favourite street stall then took a boat taxi and the Skytrain to Lumphini Park, walked round there for a while then relaxed in a bar for an hour or so. Our intention was to go to a bar on the 60th floor of a skyscraper to watch the sunset but it absolutely bucketed down around the time of sunset so we didn't bother going up the skyscraper. They were both wrecked from their flight so they got an early night in. Me and Lydia weren't too far behind them either, still wrecked from the late night the night before.

43-Pics from Floating Market

Tuk Tuk

On Monday morning we left the hotel at 7am to go to the floating market, got there at about 9am and it was actually better than we expected. There was lots of women rowing around in their boats, selling fruit an vegetables and other bits and pieces. It was nice to see and then we took a speedboat around some of the backwater canals, this was good to see too, there were no other tourists around and it was a way to see how the local people really live. We were back in Bangkok at 1pm and took it easy for the afternoon. Went out for a few drinks on Monday night, ended up drinking Sangsom whisky buckets in the Shamrock Irish Bar singing away with the band, (literally microphones in hand and all). Great night, sore heads the next morning, me and Doug especially, think the girls spiked our drinks!

Aj & Karl

2-Buddha Statues

Did a little bit of sightseeing on Tuesday. Saw a couple of temples including the Golden Mountain Temple and we made our way to the Grand Palace but it was quite expensive to see inside and they were closing in 20 minutes so we didn't go in. We checked out of the hotel then spent the rest of the afternoon watching the Olympics on TV. Got our bus to Ko Tao at 9pm, it was really bad, not a wink of sleep and arrived in Ko Tao at 9am Wednesday......