Bangkok

M As the airplane touched down in Bangkok we held hands and said a prayer. We were a little worried we might have problems getting into the country, as we had read that you should have proof of your flight out of Thailand to be allowed in, that or show a detailed itinerary. We had made up an itinerary that we would tell them, but we did not have names of hotels or anything. We saw the sign for visas upon entry and walked up. They asked us where we were from, and when we responded "Canada", they said we didn't need a visa! A little shocked at our luck, we approached the customs and passport control lineup. When we finally made it to the officer, we handed her our custom's paperwork and passports, and she didn't ask us a thing! We did have to stand on a little area and look at the digital web-cam as they took our picture, but moments later we were handed our passports and we walked into the baggage area. Easy as that. Prayer really works!

As soon as we walked outside it hit us, the heat. It was very humid and very hot, but after the cold days in Istanbul it really felt nice to be warm. Jes saw some other tourists with bottles of water in hand and sent me back into the airport while he waited with our bags. The Thai Baht was 30:1 to our dollar, so it felt a little strange paying 7 Baht a bottle for water. When I came back to the bus stop Jes asked how much it had cost for the water, and when he did the math we were shocked that we paid 50 cents for two bottles of ice cold water! It was the first glimpse we got about our time in Thailand, everything was cheap!

We hopped on the airport bus and after getting off a stop too early and walking a bit we finally found our hostel. By this time Jes was sweating so much I thought he was going to melt. lol Of course he was carrying his pack and we had socks and shoes on as we had just came from 5°C weather into 35°C. We were exhausted, so after a cool shower we had a nap.

J Later that evening we went out in search of dinner, just outside of our hostel was a street lined with food vendors. We walked quickly past them afraid if we showed much interest they would start with the "hello my friend" routine like in Istanbul, or worse they would not speak English at all and start talking to us in Thai. We hadn't learned any of our Thai words yet, and felt really foolish as we realized we would have to point and use English.

We weren't about to stoop down the pathetic McDonald's path just yet, not that we knew where one was. So after climbing the nearby stairs to the sky train platform we looked down at our little street with all the hustle and bustle below trying to make sense of it all. After a few minutes of people watching, we gathered our courage (prompted by hunger of course), and made our way down with a game plan.

We were happy to find that the locals didn't haggle us as we walked past, the most we heard was "Sawadee" which meant hello in Thai. Finally we decided upon some food, and with a little pointing we managed to get some fresh fruit shakes along with noodle soup for dinner. The food was great, albeit a little spicy, but between the two of us we spent about 4 dollars on dinner! We thoroughly enjoyed eating on little plastic tables and chairs, and despite it being 10 o'clock at night the place was alive with people hunting down their dinner. The food choices were amazing too, as there were probably over a dozen small stands all with several different options. We knew after that night we wouldn't go hungry while in Thailand.

M Back at our hostel we looked up some of our transportation options, used the internet, and most importantly listened to our World Nomads Thai Language Guide on the I-pod. By the end of the night we knew Thank you, Hello, how to be polite (kind of like saying please), our numbers from 1-10, sorry, and a hand full of other words that may come in handy like today, tomorrow, ticket etc. which we wrote down in our small note pad that I leave in my purse. We felt much more prepared to hit the streets the next day. By this time it was 1am and time for bed.

Setting the alarm was a bit of a joke as we had gone to bed so late and our bodies were still adjusting to the 5 hours time difference. After turning off the alarm and sleeping until 9:30 we dragged ourselves out of bed and downstairs for the free breakfast of coffee/tea and toast with jam from jars that were covered in bugs trying to get in. Then we were off to see the Grand Palace. We felt a little ripped off after getting a sky-train pass, as we found out after buying an expensive 20 journey pass, that we couldn't share the card like we had done in many places in Europe. Not only that but we soon found out the the sky-train pass was only good on the sky train lines, and not for the metro, which we needed to use to get to the Chinese embassy eventually.

The sky-train trips were quite nice however, as the cars were air conditioned. So after figuring out on a map where we were and where we were going, we took the sky train to the main pier where we jumped on an boat that took us to the heart of the old town, for 20 Baht a person. Having read our travel book we walked past many private companies wanting to sell us a faster boat ride, on a long tail boat, for 10x the price of course.

Once we disembarked at our pier we followed the signs for the Grand Palace, there was a huge wall which surrounded the Palace, and as we walked up to what seemed to be an entrance we were approached by a professional looking man who was standing on the road leading in. The guy was quite friendly, and informed us that unfortunately it was a Buddhist holiday, and that only Thai people were allowed into the Palace, it seemed to make sense as Thai people were entering past the armed guards, and there wasn't a white person in sight. He pointed to the writing on a small white sign in the middle of the roadway leading into the palace, of course the writing was only in Thai. What luck we thought, first the Arch Bishop of the Orthodox church dies and messes up our plans in Greece, and now the Grand Palace is closed the day we arrive in Thailand!

As our new friend holds an umbrella over us to shade us from the heat of the sun he asks what we've seen and what we would like to see. He suggests a few places that are still open despite the holiday, and shows us on our map where they are. The most important landmark being the "famous" Lucky Buddha. He suggests that we simply take a tuk-tuk to all the places we want to go, and that we shouldn't pay more then 100 baht, at this he hails one for us.

By the way, in case you don't know. A tuk-tuk is a taxi that is basically a motorbike with a box on the back for a couple of people to sit in. They also carry food like this one.

We're all smiles as we walk toward the tuk-tuk driver, when all of a sudden Jesse stops and pulls me aside. He had read just that morning in our hostel an article warning tourists of con artists who will claim the place they're going to see is closed, and the next thing you know they are ushering you into a tuk-tuk. From that point they take you to places encouraging you to buy things, and the drivers get money for bringing tourist to these expensive stores. It was hard to believe but this sounded just like the scam we had read about, with a slight modification. After Jes explained this I totally agreed that we were moments from being scammed, so we thanked the guy who had been scamming us and told him we wanted to simply walk. He complained, as did the tuk-tuk driver, but they let us go as we hurried off to walk to the other side of the building.

After turning a corner we approached what was obviously the real entrance to the Grand Palace. We were being scammed! Luckily we saw through the deception. This entrance was much larger and had many people coming and going, including many tourists. As we entered we saw a sign that said in English "do not take rides from people claiming they will take you to the Lucky Buddha", we had to laugh.

Inside the Palace women must wear long skirts (which I had worn) and men must wear pants. Clothing is free to rent so Jes got some pants. He came out with his shorts over top of his pants. I laughed and said he looked ridiculous, but he said the lockers do not have locks and he did not want to leave his shorts with his wallet etc. out for someone to steal. Plus he didn't care how goofy he looked. So we walked up to the entrance where the 'fashion police', as I like to call them, are making sure you are dressed appropriately. One lady started laughing and said something in Thai to the other two people taking tickets, soon they were all laughing and looking at Jes with his shorts over the pants. Finally the first lady told him that he couldn't wear his shorts over the pants, he protested but headed back to the hut to change. Jes left behind his shorts but took his wallet and other valuables out of his pockets.

Once inside the Palace we were in awe! The beautiful gold-leaf covered buildings sparkled, and the size of the place, it was huge. Just as we started taking pictures, it happened.. our camera battery died and we had left the other one back at the hostel. We managed to get a couple more pictures after turning the camera off and back on and quickly taking the shot before it realized it was completely dead. Oh well, we'll enjoy the Palace with our eyes only I told Jes.

We went into our first Buddhist temple, and were surprised at the number of tourist's who did not know/care about the very offensive act of having your feet pointed towards the Buddha. When entering a temple everyone must leave their shoes outside and sit on the floor. There were many cool statues and shrubbery trimmed into different shapes on the grounds, as well as murals showing various Buddhas.

We found out that a large portion of the palace was indeed off-limits to the public, which was probably what the white sign outside had said. Apparently some princess had died a week or two earlier and was 'laying in state' for at least eight months. Military guys made sure that non-Thai's didn't enter the off-limits area of the palace.

We had enjoyed our time at the Palace, although we had paid for a joint ticket for some teakwood house, that was apparently 5km away, strange we thought, but we decided to see it another day as the ticket was valid for 5 days. After leaving the Palace we went walking in search of a drink, which we found easily. As we walked around several tuk-tuk drivers stopped and asked us if we needed a ride. We decided it might not be a bad way to get around, so we talked to one that agreed to show us to as many sites as we wanted, all for only 10 baht a head (about $0.60). It was an awesome deal.

Riding in the back of our first tuk-tuk was quite a rush as we weaved in and out of traffic. There are lines on the road, but tuk-tuks and motor bikes go anywhere they want. We arrived at the 'big Buddha" which is just a really really large outdoor Buddha. He was probably 90 -100 feet tall, it was pretty neat but after a few seconds we walked off.

Once again we were surrounded by street vendors selling freshly prepared food, so as our driver waited we grabbed some spicy soup and a rice/veggie dish. Back in the tuk-tuk we were on our way to the next location when our driver started to have engine problems. He pulled over after awhile and was inspecting the bike, Jes figured he wasn't making much progress so we told him we would run into the 7-11 to get a drink while he worked on the problem.

By the way there are 7-11's literally everywhere in Bangkok (in most of Thailand actually). You can walk 2-5 min in any direction and you will come across a 7-11. They are beautifully air conditioned and we often found ourselves just walking from one to the next cooling ourselves down as we browsed the store, usually buying at least a bottle of water before leaving.

So after loitering for a good 5 minutes we went back to check on our tuk-tuk driver. He was gone, nowhere to be seen. Oh well, I asked Jes to grab our map and we would ask someone where we were on the map and try to make our way to the next place. That's when we realized it. We had left the map in the back of the tuk-tuk! So there we were, lost in Bangkok without a map and to make matters worse, nature was calling. As we walked up the streets it became a disparate situation. We saw a massage place which had a picture of a western style toilet on the door as part of their advertising.

We knocked on the door of the place, but after a moment attempting to communicate with a very limited English vocabulary they got the point across that I would need to buy a massage if I wanted to use their toilet. So off we went. Despite the fact I still had to pee were were glad we had stopped as the brochure they had handed me had a little map on the back, and once again we had an idea of where we were! Minutes later we found our way to the Democracy Memorial, but by this time I thought I was going to wet my pants, so I was praying for any kind of toilet when, as has happened so many times on this trip, we saw the golden arches of a McDonald's.

Inside we found the toilets were not only free, but they were western style toilets. As I used the bathroom Jes soaked in the AC and bought us ice-cream's for 8 baht a piece. As much as we loathed McDonald's, we sure appreciated finding this one today.

From there we walked over to the famous KhaoSan road for some shopping. It was full of tourists and street vendors as well as shops. We wandered around, ate some dinner and after much bartering on Jesse's part I got 3 sarongs. To be honest, I hate bartering, but Jes seems to enjoy it, like it's a game. It was dark, and we had heard of night markets in Bangkok and wanted to go to one. After turning down many tuk-tuk drivers as they would only take us to the night market if we went to other places first or we paid them much too much we found one guy who agreed to takes us for 150 baht ($5). He said he could get us there in 15 min, we mentioned that the other guy said 30 min, he smiled and assured us it was not 30 minutes away.

He got us to the market in 15 minutes exactly, so we didn't feel like we paid too much as it was quite the ride in the tuk-tuk. To say the guy drove pretty fast was an understatement.
Picture Jes in the tuk-tuk with a hug smile on his face as we fly past people and me holding on to him as tight as possible. Once at the market we saw that there were three main isles, the middle one was fine and Jes bought 3 magic tricks from a guy after doing some more bartering. However as we moved along the market, mostly on the outside isles, we were constantly bombarded by people asking us if we wanted to see a sex show/ping-pong show. The shows lined the outside of the market. It didn't matter that I was holding Jesse's hand they still asked him over and over again. It was so annoying. We found that responding with a decisive "MAA" which meant "NO" often did the trick, but not always.

So after half an hour we left the market, attempting to find the closest sky train entrance. After asking a few locals they sent us off in the right direction, we quickly found that asking tuk-tuk and taxi drivers was a waste of time. Once on the sky train platform we were on our way home. Again we used the internet for a bit, called home, and ended up not going to bed until 3am. Oh dear we really needed to get into Thailand time!

J The next morning, after sleeping in and missing our breakfast of toast and ant-invaded jam, we grabbed some waffles and an O.J. from vendors on the sky-train platform, and headed off toward the Vimanmek Palace. Our entrance to the site was a sold as a joint ticket with the Grand Palace, which was smart on their part because neither the sky train or metro lines went near Vimanmek, which meant taking a taxi, tuk-tuk, or using city transportation.

We were given instructions from our hostel about taking a city bus after the sky train and were well on our way to our destination, when it happened. According to the map we had, the entrance as just after the Dusit zoo, and I'm pretty sure I noticed us passing a zoo, (big tree's, a picture of a monkey, etc.) plus traffic was barely moving, so I thought it would be prudent if we got off and simply walked. Bad idea.

It was hot out (high 30's), it must have been close to 1:00 in the afternoon, and even the gardeners on the outside of the palace (or at least we thought it was the palace) were cooling themselves in the shade and having an extended lunch. We walked down the road for two minutes before coming to an entrance, which was of course to the zoo. If only we could have walked through the Zoo, but alas we weren't buying tickets to the zoo if we weren't going to stay to see the animals. So we ended up having to walk around the large complex to find the entrance to the Vimanmek Palace (and Teakwood Mansion).

About 15-20 minutes later we made found ourselves at the entrance. My shirt was soaked from sweat and water. We had bought two bottles of water at one of the many entrances to the Zoo, so after drinking half the water I simply poured the rest on myself to try and cool down. We enjoyed our time at the various buildings in Vimanmek, the Teakwood Mansion was extremely beautiful, and was furnished with exquisite furniture and rare items (that were left behind, so obviously not rare enough to keep in the current Palace). One neat item I remembered was an umbrella holder, made out of an elephants foot. Unfortunately there were no pictures permitted, and worse the house (being as old as it was) had never been outfitted with air conditioning or ventilation systems, so it was almost as hot inside as it was outside. Luckily the information pamphlet served as a nice manual fan.

Our biggest regret was getting to the site as late as we did (no thanks to my directions). We stopped for a quick lunch on-site after the Teakwood Mansion and found ourselves hurring through the other exhibits before having to leave at 4 o'clock as they were closing.

The other exhibits (all in their own buildings) were very diverse. One housed various Buddha statues and rare antiquities that belonged to the King, another had various clocks belonging to one of the Princesses. One of the most memorable was a two story building housing pictures taken by the King over the years, and below each one a caption that explained the significance of the picture. Quite obviously beyond explaining what the picture was of, each did a decent bit of propaganda for his Kingship. It was a bit over-the-top if you ask me. Alas, no photos of the photos. The last exhibit we visited was a large garage type area displaying the many types of carriages and portable thrones used over the years.

After heading back to the hostel we each had a refreshing shower before chilling out in the room (lying under the A/C unit) discussing where we would go after Bangkok. We spent a large amount of time that evening (and during the past two days) looking at different resorts on Koh Phangan island, but had yet to book accommodations. We finally decided upon a resort, but as we were planning on staying around the time of the famous (monthly) full-moon-party we found that our first choice had no vacancy. We decided after two days/nights eating at street stalls, it would be nice to go to a restaurant to eat. We went to one that was recommended by the hostel, a Korean BBQ place. We were a little taken aback by the prices, which seemed to be on par with restaurant prices at home (300-400 Baht for an entree). We were so used to getting a plate of amazing Thai food from street vendors for 50-100 Baht. The food was good, but we were sad to realize that the funny looking metal cover on our table concealed a burner, and that had we ordered any of the 'raw meat' options we would be able to cook the food in front of ourselves! Hence the 'BBQ' in the name of the restaurant and the higher prices, as it was a specialty restaurant. Our mistake.

M The next day we had plans to get to the Chinese embassy for 8am. The alarm was set for 7:15am, and after the 3rd snooze-hit as I call them, I simply turned off the alarm setting. We had stayed up late again, planning our holiday from our holiday, on the island of Koh Phangan. So after peeling Jes out of bed at about 9am, we headed out toward the embassy.

J Once at the Chinese consulate/embassy things started off well. We found we would be paying much less for a visa then our American neighbours, then discovered we had forgotten our photos for the application back at the hostel, luckily for a fee they took pictures and developed them within 10 minutes right there on-site. No problems. After filling in our applications we walked into the large waiting room, with little booths and the take-a-number system in place. So we grabbed a number, 087. Looking up at the numbers above the booths, 742,739,743,741 we realized we were going to be sitting there a long, long time. Part of the issue we soon realized was that approximately half of the people in the room were working for various tour companies, and many had boxes just full of peoples passports, and were obviously processing dozens of Visa applications.

After sitting for 10 minutes and getting a sense that we would be sitting there for hours, we decided to leave. Later we realized that the reason the office was so full, was that the consulate office had been closed the previous two working days because of the Chinese New Year. We were half way out of the building when I started wondering what time the office closed, as we figured we might return in 3 hours. The door had the working hours listed, 08:00 - 12:00. Noon!? It was 11:30 by this point, and I thought how could the place honestly close at 12:00 noon? So I asked one of the security officers if the hours were correct being that the room was full of people. He had seen us in the lobby and getting photos done, and knew we weren't done our with our application, so he pointed us to a lady standing beside the number machine. She asked to see my number, I showed her my slip with 087 on it and she looked at it with a smile, then she handed me a slip with the number 832! The woman was obviously working for the consulate office, so it seemed they knew what was happening with the number system and reserved a handful for individual applicants. The wait from that point was only half an hour and went by quickly.

We had hoped that when handing over our passports we would be given some sort of paper to say that we didn't have them, something we would be able to show at the airport when we went to fly to Southern Thailand the next day. Unfortunately my drivers license went missing at some point in the trip and I had failed to find it, so other then the passport I had no other I.D. We were surprised to find out that no such papers were to be given to us, so the option to wait a week for our passports to be returned was out of the question. The same day application ended up costing us twice the original price, but we decided to just forge ahead as we didn't have much of an option. On the plus side, it meant we didn't have to return to Bangkok after our vacation in Koh Phangan.

We spent the next few hours heading back to the old town of Bangkok, we took another express boat river ride on the Chao Phraya River, after getting off the metro and walking for 20-30 minutes (getting lost). We decided as it was our last day in Bangkok that we absoluately had to see the famed Wat Pho. Inside was the enormous Reclining Buddha statue, which, out of the 3 or 4 Buddhas we had seen, was definitely the most impressive. The Reclining Buddha is 150' or 56 m long, and 15 m tall. He also had the coolest looking feet, with a bunch of funky Buddhist symbols on the bottom. Apparently they represent the 108 auspicious characteristics of the true Buddha.. and I thought you just had to find the right tree to meditate under, hmm. On over the grounds of the Wat are these tall structures known as Chedis, we saw our first at the Grand Palace two days earlier. As soon as I read it, the silly Star Wars quotes started (poor Michelle).

At Wat Pho we witnessed something rare, a Thai working at the entrance lost his cool when some Indian (East) tourists attempted to go against the flow of traffic. In any other part of the world it would have seemed very normal for someone to react the way he did, however our guide book warned us in detail that we should never show visible signs of anger or raise our voice in public, as this goes against the 'Saving Face' principle of Thai culture. So far I've found it hard to get angry myself, I attribute it to the 36°C weather though, as it takes too much energy to think hard in this heat, let alone get mad.

After the temple/Wat we grabbed a Taxi back to the Metro, and even though we ran (Mich had to be sent ahead at the last minute) to attempt to get to the Consulate before 4:00pm sharp, it didn't matter. At about 4:15 we walked away with our passports, visa's inside them. The office, like most things in Thailand, was pretty lax about it's operating times. Phew.

The rest of the day was spent lounging at the nearby mall, enjoying the A/C and T.V. aboard the Sky-Train once last time. Then back at the hostel doing laundry on the roof-top laundromat/lounge area (we wish we had discovered it sooner), and grabbing a meal of Pad Thai and Noodle Soup at one of the nearby street vendors. Maybe some interneting too.

The next day we would be leaving Bangkok, a flight with AirAsia was booked. All we had to do was sell our half used Sky-Train passes, find someone to share a taxi to the airport with, and pack up our room before checkout. No problem.

The next stop in our excellent adventure.. tropical paraidse? or some run down hotel in Surat Thani?

Stay tuned to this URL to find out.