So then! Here we are in Bangkok, our home for a week or so. The antipode of Bangkok is about 350 miles off the coast of Lima so we’ve almost literally come to the other side of the world from where we were last time. Leaving sunny England behind, we were feeling a lot more relaxed than we were the last time we waved bye to Mum at the airport. I don’t know whether it was the fact that Dave has been to Asia before or that we’ve been travelling for a while now, or perhaps it was those lovely tablets I got from Superdrug, but there’s definitely been a lot more of a chilled out vibe heading into these next six months, as well as a lot more room in our backpacks.
Fully anticipating to be knocked sideways by the heat, it was a pleasant surprise when we stepped off the plane to find that it wasn’t THAT bad; comparable to when we first arrived in Lima. We shuffled down to the taxi rank, took our number and showed the nice taxi man where we wanted to go, having been given the advice from some friends we met travelling to have the address in the local script as well as Latin characters, which proved to be the right thing to do. Despite this we didn’t quite manage to get right to our hostel (U-baan Hostel run by the delightful Joy) but got close enough that the final 50m or so walk wasn’t too much of an issue, even in the 33° heat. We were greeted by Joy and quickly shown to our room on the 4th floor (EUGH); a basic double room but comfortable and with that all-important air-conditioning. By this point we’d been travelling for over 24 hours and with Etihad’s in-flight meals not being nearly as good as United’s, we hopped along the road to a restaurant recommended by Joy as being easy and quick, exactly what we needed. Our first meals in Thailand were fried fish with various vegetables/salad and was probably one of the best things I have ever eaten. Off to a good start. Accompanied by two very cold beers, we were two very jolly, but very tired, westerners. Stopping at the local Tesco Lotus on our way back to the hostel for some much needed giant bottles of water, we quickly fell asleep on our unexpectedly hard bed. Upon closer inspection, the mattress seemed to be made of very hard foam with the sort of material that PE mats at school were made of, around it; not ideal, but it would do for the next 7 nights.
There are 7/11s everywhere in Bangkok, they seem to be the life blood of the city, providing not only lovely lovely AC but also wi-fi if you have the right sim card. Public wi-fi isn’t so much of a thing here as it is in other places but I’m sure we’ll manage. Our first day I awoke around 9am to find that Dave had been up for hours (thanks jetlag!) and had already planned our first day – woohoo! Having learned from previous trips that trying to do too much in one day is a recipe for grumpiness, our first task was to obtain breakfast, then head up to the Museum of Siam, grab a late lunch and then head back to the hostel via the water bus and the Metro. We’ve heard that as long as you eat right and walk a lot you should lose weight in South East Asia so that’s part of the plan, as well as avoiding too many banana pancakes and coconut ice cream. Naturally this meant we had milkshakes, waffles and honey toast for breakfast – exceptionally not healthy but really really yummy. To be fair as well, we were planning to walk 40 minutes in the midday heat for some unknown reason afterwards so we’d surely burn it off. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that Thailand is hot, really hot. It’s not until you get here however that you realise why when you tell your Hostel host that you’re planning to walk half way across the city, she looks at you like you’ve just told her you eat only nutmeg and live in a shoe. Put another way, I can see why there are no walking tours here. As any *ahem* larger person will tell you, sweat is a common occurrence when faced with heat of any kind and normally you just learn to accept it, but flipping heck, I think even a skeleton would sweat here.
We arrived at the Museum of Siam to find our good friend air-con in full force and took a minute to bask in its glory (All hail the AC). Established in 2007 in the old Ministry of Commerce building, the purpose of the Museum is to explore Thailand’s national identity and what it means to be Thai. According to their website, their philosophy is play + learn = plearn – no really – so apart from exploring what “Thainess” is, it also appears that they have invented a new word. Armed with our audio guide which promised to “tickle our curiosity gland” we were led through various rooms and presented with different facets and salient debates regarding Thailand’s identity. Credit where credit is due, the museum was highly interactive and it’s interesting to see how much of Thailand’s culture is a real mishmash of different parts of the world. It also explains why they are completely unfazed by foreigners, as people from all around the globe have been coming to Thailand for centuries. As well as their devotion to the Royal Family and the prevalence of Buddhism, it’s a real melting pot of cultures and influences, which makes it a really interesting place. We also discovered that they take their calendar from the year of the Buddha which, in hindsight, we should have anticipated, but as it was we stumbled in blindly with our Occidental mindset, standing puzzled as the date was listed as 2562, a minor 543 years ahead of the Gregorian calendar. We spent a good few hours attempting to decode “Thai-ness” but there’s something about 36° heat that doesn’t lend itself particularly well to in-depth analysis of cultural identity, even with a large fan and a cold drink to hand. Did I mention it’s really hot here? Anyway, to lunch!
We stopped at a small place called Manee near the river and had some more delicious Thai food (Shrimp Pad Thai & Stir Fried Vegetables), costing us less than £5 for two huge portions and two cold glasses of coke, before deciding to head back to our hostel for a good cold shower and then going out to dinner. By heck were we going to walk back, so we decided to take the river bus and then the metro – simples! Except we were on the wrong side of the river for the bus and there were no signs explaining this, just a rather long queue and lots of signs explaining it was 4 baht (10p) to get a boat to the other side. This brings me to a tactic which I feel is going to be employed a lot over the next 6 months, namely standing around looking confused until a matriarch comes and tells you what to do – wonderful. As it transpired, we would need to get the boat to the other side of the river in order to catch the boat to where we needed to go, but of course there was nothing explaining that! Nevermind, we saw some kittens while we were queuing so that made everything better. It turned out to be quite a laugh in the end actually. There’s something about speeding up the river on a boat that feels particularly exciting and it’s a much cooler (temperature) method of transport than sitting on a bus in Bangkok’s notorious traffic jams for 3 times as long. It’s also incredibly cheap, costing us just £1 for both of us to journey half-way across the city. The Metro proved to be surprisingly simple, the staff are happy to help and understand our terrible pronunciation, so we arrived back at the hostel feeling pretty pleased with ourselves! It is noticeably cooler from around 4pm, when a haze descends over the city, shielding it from the hot sun, so moving around later in the day is much easier. Showered and suitably refreshed, we headed out for dinner at a place called Jack Diamond’s for, you guessed it, more delicious Thai food. We forgot to order rice as we had assumed it came with it, but you know what assume makes! So, we won’t be making that mistake again.
Our second full day in Bangkok and our plan was to go and visit some of the temples around the city, going via a bar or two for a drink and to cool down along the way. May 18th this year is Buddha Day for many South-East Asian countries and Thailand is no exception. This day celebrates the significant dates in the Buddha’s life – his birth, his enlightenment and his death. Buddhists will go to the temples to pray and make offerings but most importantly of all, alcohol is prohibited from being sold or purchased. So instead of an ice-cold beer, we sat in a ramshackle wooden hut at the end of a pier and had two soft drinks instead. We also couldn’t help but notice that several of the locals at this bar were drinking beer, but maybe they knew something we didn’t, or had suitably bribed the waiting staff. We shall never know. Feeling refreshed, we headed off to cross the river in search of lunch and Wat Pho, a temple complex whose main feature is a huge reclining golden Buddha. Standing at 15m high and 46m long, the statue is intended to represent the Buddha’s entry into Nirvana, at the end of all reincarnations and is one of the largest Buddha statues in Thailand. We particularly enjoyed dropping coins into the 108 jars lined up along the left side of the hall which are intended to bring good luck and future happiness. Why would anyone be a Christian with a religion like this!? It being Vesak (Buddha day), many of the temples open much later into the evening and it was our intention to pop along to the Golden Mount Temple to watch the sunset. As evening approached however, it became more and more clear that as we were very hot and our feet were very hurty, walking a further 30 minutes definitely wasn’t going to happen, especially as we couldn’t even have a beer at the end of the day. We were also faced with another problem in that because our hostel is in a residential neighbourhood, many of the local restaurants had closed early so that the owners could go and pray, meaning we were left with no other option than to visit a burger place called “Sorry, I’m Hungry”. A phrase which often finds itself passing from my lips, but not one I’d have personally chosen as the name of a burger restaurant.
Now starting to get the hang of this whole ‘existing in the ridiculous heat’ thing, we decided that our 3rd day would largely consist of hanging around in a lovely park doing nothing much other than reading and taking pictures of the various wildlife. Our host Joy directed us towards the number 72 bus and off we went. I want to pause here for a second to talk about Joy. Joy is 38 but looks about 15 and runs the Ubaan hostel where we are currently staying. She has a delightfully dry sense of humour but this is often juxtaposed with a somewhat outdated twist. For example she maintains that the mantra “happy wife, happy life” is one to be adhered to at all times, and seems to particularly enjoy poking fun at both our laziness, our eagerness to walk places, the fact that Dave and I are quite big, and has a general, albeit self-confessed, distrust of English people. She’s certainly an interesting character. Exceptionally helpful and keen to offer suggestions for transport and restaurants but definitely an acquired taste, especially as we tend to be the sort of travellers who like to go off and do our own thing and make our own mistakes. Anyway, we arrived at the park to find a resident population of Water Monitor Lizards, ranging from around 1-4ft in length. Coming from a country where the most exciting thing you might see in a park is teenagers drinking cider or perhaps a seagull stealing someone’s food, this was particular enjoyable. We were also rather envious of them swimming about in the lovely cool water of the park, but as a breeze picked up into the afternoon, it became quite pleasant, both of us sitting there reading and enjoying some down time. Stopping off at a local shopping mall (AC – woohoo!) for a bite to eat, we headed back to the hostel and began to plan where we were going to go next, after all, we only had 3 days left in Bangkok…
Katy and Dave Avoid Adulthood 