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Bangkok
My experience of Bangkok was both awesome and awful. The capital of Thailand is just crazy. We stayed on Khaosan Road, surely the most chaotic corner of the world. All day and all night the street is lined with stalls and crowded with tourists.
Paid 2000 baht each for ringside seats at the Muay Thai boxing stadium. I was shocked to be watching terribly muscley and scary 10 year olds kicking the shit out of each other. I learned they start training at about 6; I felt terrible for them but it was very exciting all the same. As the fighters grew older & bigger I devised a system of picking the winner... whichever fighter was hotter. This system was accurate 4 of 5 fights.
Visited a few of the thousand temples on every corner of the city, the Dusit zoo which had every animal you can think of (including panthers.. I'd never seen real live panthers. They were stunning... and sad). Watched a python swallow a chicken... well mostly, it was taking simply forever.
The day we were due to fly to Surat Thani (our connection to Ko Pangan and its full moon party) we slept in because I had lost my mobile phone (our alarm clock). On the way to the airport (our taxi driver zipping in and out of traffic jams like the world would explode if we missed our flight) I realised my iPod was missing. Oops, I guess I hadn't actually lost my phone, I guess someone with a key to our room had BURGLED US. And we missed our flight.
So instead of the full moon party, we visited the tourist police... who laughed at us as they translated my statement. The next day we were consoled by a visit to the floating market, River Kwai bridge and tiger temple... and spent many, many hours on a squeaky, rattly, not air-conditioned mini-bus. It was grand fun. The floating market was just as in the postcards, but with a few hundred more tourists thrown in. We piled into a flatboat paddled by two insanely cheerful Thai ladies who conversed good-naturedly with everyone we (slowly) passed. Many rickety wooden houses backed onto the canals, each with an unsafe looking pier and boat. People washed their dishes and clothes, children swam, coconut shells were thrown out... all in the canal. It was fairly amazing.
The tiger temple was... interesting. Around 10 or so tigers chained in a canyon with a line of tourists waiting their turn to be photographed risking death, or something. 1000 baht for a photo of a tiger's head in your lap. The money being used to construct a natural habitat, in which the tigers' offspring will be raised wild, so they can be released. Does the end justify the means? I thought it was fair, I suppose, being that these particular tigers had all been rescued from poachers, sickness or injury.
Next stop, Chiang Mai.
Paid 2000 baht each for ringside seats at the Muay Thai boxing stadium. I was shocked to be watching terribly muscley and scary 10 year olds kicking the shit out of each other. I learned they start training at about 6; I felt terrible for them but it was very exciting all the same. As the fighters grew older & bigger I devised a system of picking the winner... whichever fighter was hotter. This system was accurate 4 of 5 fights.
Visited a few of the thousand temples on every corner of the city, the Dusit zoo which had every animal you can think of (including panthers.. I'd never seen real live panthers. They were stunning... and sad). Watched a python swallow a chicken... well mostly, it was taking simply forever.
The day we were due to fly to Surat Thani (our connection to Ko Pangan and its full moon party) we slept in because I had lost my mobile phone (our alarm clock). On the way to the airport (our taxi driver zipping in and out of traffic jams like the world would explode if we missed our flight) I realised my iPod was missing. Oops, I guess I hadn't actually lost my phone, I guess someone with a key to our room had BURGLED US. And we missed our flight.
So instead of the full moon party, we visited the tourist police... who laughed at us as they translated my statement. The next day we were consoled by a visit to the floating market, River Kwai bridge and tiger temple... and spent many, many hours on a squeaky, rattly, not air-conditioned mini-bus. It was grand fun. The floating market was just as in the postcards, but with a few hundred more tourists thrown in. We piled into a flatboat paddled by two insanely cheerful Thai ladies who conversed good-naturedly with everyone we (slowly) passed. Many rickety wooden houses backed onto the canals, each with an unsafe looking pier and boat. People washed their dishes and clothes, children swam, coconut shells were thrown out... all in the canal. It was fairly amazing.
The tiger temple was... interesting. Around 10 or so tigers chained in a canyon with a line of tourists waiting their turn to be photographed risking death, or something. 1000 baht for a photo of a tiger's head in your lap. The money being used to construct a natural habitat, in which the tigers' offspring will be raised wild, so they can be released. Does the end justify the means? I thought it was fair, I suppose, being that these particular tigers had all been rescued from poachers, sickness or injury.
Next stop, Chiang Mai.