One thing I would like to point out that is not in the travel brochures – Bangkok is a little SMELLY! And the intense humidity, food flavours (not all thai spices are good!) and the pollution. Hehee, not very positive, I know. But I have to say after venturing out for a day, we soon adopted the lifestyle (only as a tourists), and made good shopping progress… bartering is great! I think the western society has a lot to learn from this technique. In retrospect, we were quite lucky that our hotel was surrounded by all the cheap market stalls – able to drop the items back to the hotel quicker. I’m sure at the start Brendan and I overpaid for our ‘genuine rip-offs’ but we soon copped on. A puma bag for $8 NZD, puma shoes for $20 NZD (I am now seeing why…) and Diesel watch(es) – yes plural, for $4-6 NZD and plentiful t-shirts managed to find their way in to our bags – great, even heavier, poor Brendan… muscley Brendan!
The department stores were amazing – MBK centre for example, I think we spent about 3 hours looking at cell phones and electronics on the one floor (I think I was quite patient!!) before leaving with a new cell phone cover for Brendan…
The food was lovely and spicy… though the golden arches (and I don’t mean from a thai palace) was our saviour from the dodgy food vendors.
We also did do some proper sight-seeing, not just Patpong, but on an actual tour. We went to The Golden Palace. Amazing! We took loads of photos and no doubt we will upload them as soon as possible. Gold leafed buildings, jade buddhas and ornate designs, all handmade by the people of their Kingdom. And then of course, and this was probably the reason why we never did another tour, was that you always ended up at a ’store’. In our case, we went to a jewellery manufacturer were we watched a video in their theatre room on how the jewellery was made. A very cheesy but not proud presentation was pitched to the western people. Then we were given a tour lady per couple, who was secretly not actually a tour lady but a evil pushy sales person who made Gwen try on different rings with big diamonds and various flashy gems that were way out of Gwen’s budget (being unemployed at all). So Brendan and I did a runner…
I have to say, the tuk-tuk rides are well worth doing. No need to go to a fancy amusement parks for crazy dodgem rides, just hop on one of these things for like $1.60 NZD (be only .80 if you let him take you to a ’store’). Brendan and I were so impressed with one driver we tipped him 100 BAHT (which is only like $4.00 NZD but sounds impressive). I think it was because we made it back to our hotel alive. He took on rush hour and zig zagged his way through, narrowly escaping traffic without even flinching and still managing to make polite conversation.
And now for Patpong… well, I have to say that the Patpong markets are fantastic. I was not impressed by all the ‘nudie’ bars surrounding them. Especially when they won’t leave you alone. So unfortunately, as all red blooded males, Brendans ‘curosity’ won the better of him… to put it politely. We ended up going in to a club. A huge swarm of ‘employees’ surrounded us and were not shy. So they offered us some beers and Bren accepted by saying ‘open them on the table’, which was quite smart of him to remember because we have heard of dodgy stories where they have messed with the drinks. The average beer in Bangkok costs about 55-100 BAHT (so say $2.00 to $4.00) depending where you go, so when Brendans new friend came back saying 800 BAHT for two, we were a little surprised. We were even more surprised when the lil thai lady lost it at Brendan demanding her money for the beers plus a ‘tip’. Brendan reached for his wallet in sheer terror to get the harrassing gaggle away from us, he told and showed that he only had 800 BAHT (good guess lady!) and that that was too expensive for the beers. So she snatched the money in disappointment and her and her feely touchy fleet deserted us. I was still trying to figure out what had just happened and feeling slighty vunerable. Then before I had even had a sip of my $16 Heinken, a thought crossed my mind… if they have taken all our money, how the hell are we suppose to get back to our hotel room which was like 4kms away?? So Brendan drank both the beers because I was spewing at what had just happened and was ready to throttle someone, when a western couple game in and were fleeced the same way we were. We managed to see a bit of the show which was NOT impressive and quite frankly disturbing. So we left and flagged down a taxi which we arranged to pay back at the hotel at double rate but who really cared, I was just stoked to get out of that situation.
So that was Bangkok…