Sarah & Richard's Travels

We arrived at the legendary or shall I say infamous Khao San Road in Bangkok where I promptly spotted three rats romping around in the gutters. What a great start!

Not having booked anywhere we were in our usual predicament of wondering which way to walk and where exactly in the area we were when a helpful Polish guy came up to us and walked us to a few guesthouses just away from Khao San Road (which is the old area of Bangkok) near where he was staying. Found one with a room - yay - and then headed straight back out and over to Khao San Road to have a look around as I didn't want to spend any longer than a night in that area.

It was such a typical backpacker scene...there were loads of people around eating and drinking at all the different places, loads of stalls selling all the cheapie fakes and a few other things complete with the 'who can play the loudest music' competition thus almost drowining each others music out. It was cool to get the buzz of the area for a night with great atmosphere, but one night was enough for me and the next day we moved over to one of the best hostels we've stayed at (Lub D) in the city area of Silom.

Exploring
We spent our time in Bangkok exploring the different areas and wandering around. One day we took one of the legendary Tuk Tuk's around town. The way they work is that they quote you a price which is ridiculously cheap (20 Baht per person which is around 0.50p) but then this includes a certain number of stops at various 'friends'. If you don't want to stop it can be pretty expensive, but if you're happy to stop at tailors or gem shops or travel agents it can be dirt cheap even though it takes you a little longer. At every place they stop they get comission, usually in the form of petrol vouchers, sometimes in other forms, which is how they make thier money. All you have to do is go into a shop and straight back out and they get thier comission! It seems a crazy system, but apparantly works for them so it keeps going. One tailor actually asked us why we didn't want to buy anything and Rich answered 'we come here because you pay the driver comission to come here, so we come because it's cheap for us and the driver is happy, but you get nothing because we don't actually want to buy anything' or something like that. And he didn't really know what to say!

We met up with an ex university lecturer of mine who was in town. Totally random to meet in Bangkok, but it was great to catch up and hear that nothing has changed!!!

Shopping
The shopping in Bangkok is amazing (though I can't wait until Hong Kong) and we spent a day exploring the 'central' area. This is simply not enough. There are three huge malls next to each other (as well as other numerous shops nearby) selling everything from paper to clothes to ferraris and furniture. There are numerous shops and restaurants inside as well as cinemas so you can be inside for hours, in air conditioned paradise. We also saw something pretty cool, it was kind of like a 'Young Enterprise Scheme' where loads of school kids were being entreprenuers and making and selling their owns crafts. There was jewellery, paintings and loads of other stuff and the area was buzzing with teenagers buying and selling and making a sucess of themselves, it was great! Thankfully we have another day or two in Bangkok before we fly to Hong Kong so we can check out some more shops...yahoo!

Bangkok from the Water
We spent a day on the water going from Khao San Road down to the city area and it was great to get a different perspective. It was totally east meets west with huge high rises and flash buildings next to little 'shacks' by the river and long tail boats buzzing about. There were loads of people from all walks of life crowding onto the boats and lots of Monks as well, who also had their own seating area. The thing is was most amazed by were the gorgeous little boats that the posh hotels like Mandarin Oriental and the Penninsula had ferrying guests about the river. They were beautiful, all varnished wooden boats with pagoda style rooves and the guys working on board had white navy style uniforms. I think when we're back we'll have to take a ride and just go for a wander around!!!