After 10 days in Paradise (Koh Phangan) and a "shitty day" in transit ~ pretty much any day in transit as a backpacker is shitty, but it's all good! ~ we made it back to Bangkok - oriental city - and I still can't get that blasted Tim Rice song out of my head!
"One night in Bangkok and the world's~your~oyster..." (Karlos has no clue what all this is about!)Despite our hotel having rude staff and not even basic facilities (like internet access), it was in a really good location - just off Khao San Rd. And for anyone who has travelled south east asia - you know it starts here in Khao San rd, right?! Khao San rd is the place Leonardo Di Caprio drank snakes blood ('The Beach') - and whilst there actually isn't any snake blood on sale here - pretty much anything else goes. No sooner had we stepped out of our hotel, we were greeted by row after row of market stall selling bags, shoes, bikinis, dresses - all very cheap, and all exactly what I needed! Hahaha. It doesn't matter if I have to currently SIT on my backpack in order to zip it up... there is always room for a new bikini... and a dress... or two... and I did manage to get rid of 3 books that I had collected and read - and scored 300 baht for them too! Anyone travelling south east asia - make FULL use of the book exchanges here. You can pick up lonley planet guides, novels for the long train journeys etc - all for a really cheap price. And when you're done - you can go to another book exchange and either sell them back, or swap them for a new read. Brillo.
Seeing as we only had another two nights in Bangkok (and the first was spent comatose) we were busting to get our errands done - in order to have time for a ping pong show at the end of the day! (I was perfectly aware it would be a bit disgusting... but when in Rome and all that...).
We had recently discovered that in order to travel into Cambodia and Vietnam (our next stops) we actually needed visas. We could get our Cambodian visa at the border, and arrange our Vietnam visa once we got to Cambodia - but firstly we needed passport-sized photos. Where on earth (or rather, where in Bangkok) were we going to get those done, I wondered... but after crossing the street, right in front of us, we saw - "PHOTOS" - and 5 minutes and 120 baht later - we had one tick off our errands list. Good ol Khao San rd! Also - Karlos and I exhanged photos, so I have now made it to his wallet. It only took 3 years!
More errands were carried out - we managed to get train tickets to the Cambodian border for just 48 baht! This is incredible - only NZ$2.50, for a 6 hour train journey! We were really starting to feel like proper locals at this point - we made a good friend called James... a Thai man who has been living in NZ on and off for the last 7 years or so. He used to work at Mai Thai, opposite Sky City Casino in Auckland - it's such a small world! He was also the first local we met that didn't want to sell us something. Needles to say, we liked James - and I felt it was the first time we managed to meet a local, below the surface of our tourist status, a true and genuine Thai.
This sense of local flavour led me to being exceptionally brave... and I ate food from a street vendor (gasp!). We had been eating some delicious food on our journey - but had mostly stuck to restaurants/cafes - so I felt it was time to expand my culinary experience. I found a little man with a cart - and pointed to speghetti style noodles out of his selection, an egg and "pork." He mixed all three ingredients, along with chilli and other flavours, and a selection of veggies, in a wok in front of me... and in moments I had one of the yummiest Pad Thais I have ever had.
That night we did the one thing we just had to do in Bangkok - we went to a ping pong show. It took some hefty bargaining with tuktuk drivers and doorsmen, but we managed to both get in for a fairly reasonable 300baht, including a drink. We were promptly ushered to the front row, on our arrival - and there we joined all the other grotty locals and curious tourists in the smoke filled club room. Woman after woman entered the stage - each one as uninterested and unsexy as the last... we watched vaginas open coke bottles, write letters, smoke cigarettes, shoot ping pong balls into buckets, darts into floating balloons, and bananas into the air. I even had a ping pong land on me at one point, falling to a stop in between my closed (thank god) thighs... and I would really recommend wearing trousers to any female travellers fancying a visit... But the worst, the most shocking of all the acts we saw on stage that night... even more so than the live sex show... was the woman who pulled a string of razor blades out of herself. Yikes. We decided to leave then...
Our taxi ride back that night was really cool - our driver was a young, friendly local who was really interested in where we were from, and if Karlos knew any women as beautiful as me that he may introduce him to. I really liked that taxi driver.... hahaha.
And so - our wild times in Bangkok were over, and we - never two to sit still for too long - were off once more. This time to Cambodia!
The adventure continues...
~ Comet xo
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