Get out of Bangkok as fast as you can…

This is what we heard from almost every traveller we’d met (except for two german girls we met in vietnam who said they loved bangkok!).  we fully expected to arrive there, stay one night, and move on.  our bus from vientiane, laos arrived in bangkok at 5 a.m., which easily could’ve been mistaken for 11 p.m. because of how full the streets and cafes were with people still awake from the previous night.  i gotta say, i haven’t ever seen that much activity in NYC at that time of day.  i’d give bangkok the title ‘the city that never sleeps’ in a heart beat. 

we decided to stay in a neighborhood just east of famous koh san road.  it seems as if everyone thought it was a good idea to stay there because one guesthouse after the other was sold out.  sold out. ugh.  at 5 a.m. the last thing you want to hear is ’sold out’.  we finally found a guesthouse for way too much money but with a/c and took it.  the great thing about it though was that we checked in around 5:30 a.m. on saturday morning and didn’t have to check out until noon on sunday making it seem as if we got two nights instead of just one.  we slept until noon on saturday and woke up to the hottest place we’d been yet.  we spent the day feeling alittle off kilter from the crazy night bus ride, eating traditional thai food, and getting a feel for the city and our neighborhood.  since it was pretty unanimous that bangkok sucked we didn’t do any previous investigating as far as what to see and do there so we felt as if we were starting from scratch.  the one thing we did know about bangkok though was that if you see a hot woman, the chances are she’s a man.  we were intrigued by this and knew we wanted to explore the part of town that’s full of cheap street vendors and the infamous ’naughty shows’. 

the street vendors had nothing but junk and the ’shows’ were less than savory.  just walking around you could peek into the venues where girls were dressed in bikinis standing on a stage where they looked like zombies.  none of the girls we saw employed to perform did anything but stand there and their tricks were anything but that.  if anything it was really sad because we didn’t see a single girl that didn’t have stretch marks draped across her belly from having babies.  we wouldn’t suggest anyone even bothers with this part of bangkok.

we must say though, the rest of bangkok was absolutely stunning.  all of the rumors we’d heard about tuk tuk drivers being pushy, the streets being dirty, and the city being a quick stop over were so wrong.  drew made friends with a tuk tuk driver named Jai, who quickly became our tour guide for the town.  one night he took us on a night ride through the city and even got us snuck into one of the temples through the back door after paying off the security guards. it was incredible! we had the whole place to ourselves and they let us roam and take as many photos as we wanted!  the temples in bangkok were second only to angkor wat.  the bright yellows and golds and the immense size of the temples amidst the vast city was so impressive!  our secret night time tour was one of the best things we could’ve hoped for!  on our way back Jai bought drew a beer and gave me some thai balm for bug bites; a very sweet gesture!  the following day we went on another half day tour with him where he showed us even more of the city.  he could’ve kept going but at this point in our trip we weren’t as enthusiastic about temples as we might’ve been two months ago.  however, it was a lovely day and we owe it all to our great guide!

we tried to see some muay thai boxing and were all pumped to hang with the locals and watch it all go down.  we got to the box office only to find ticket prices a lot more expensive than we ever would’ve thought.  it was $30 for the very back and $60 for ring side.  now, i don’t know if it’s always this pricey because we heard it was a big fight that night.  if i were to go back to bangkok on a smaller trip i’d surely try to hit up some muay thai boxing again.  the thing is, we knew from bangkok we were going south to the islands to scuba dive which is another expensive venture and unfortunately had to pick and choose.  that’s the deal though on a three month excursion!

 

we owe jason a big ‘thanks’ for leading us south to koh tao!