Bangkok

Hallo from Bangkok! Well what a culture shock indeed! I arrived about 6am checked into a guesthouse near the notorious backpacker area called Ko San Road then went for a coffee with a friendly German guy i met on the plane. The two of us had spent months in India and its really quite funny just how much you get used to that crazy place. I felt strange, very overdressed, all the girls (and a few ladyboys!) where wearing hotpants and hight heels, there where some drunken fellows stumbling down the street, roaring and singing to each other with bottles of beer in their hand, the place was spotless clean, flashy lights, smelt like perfume....we sat and people watched. It was nothing at all like my life the last few months....must buy hotpants!!!! .....joking!

The cute little dog from my guesthouse

It was EXTREMLY hot and humid here almost to the point of being unbearable a shower just did no good you where already just as wet from sweat before you got yourself dried. I couldnt sleep at all, i was a little bit of an insomniac until the monsoon kicked in.

Sooo wow the food in Bangkok is the best thing ever!! It possibly has a lot to do of months eating dhal and chapattis, oh i was in heaven just to get some plain steamed rice, some lightly steamed vegetables and some chicken with a light spicy sauce...so good!! The fruit here is delicious too for 10 Bhat (about 20c) you get a bag of melon, or snow apple (my new favourite) chopped up with a little bag of sherbety stuff to dip it into. The street food is so good and so cheap that it would be a sin to eat in one of the tacky restaurants on Ko San road.

Over the week i spent in Bangkok i tried as much new foods as possible often i had no idea what it was (this may be a good thing!!) some straaaange things in soups and strange things wrapped in leaves. So good to have such a selection...ok starting to miss India less and less! Oh yes i also ate CRICKETS, big ones!! It took a lot of courage but they werent that bad and although they werent that bad i am finished trying them!

Away from the touristy streets there are so many cool places to see. Bangkok has lovley little rivers running through it, it also has the tackist things for sale that ive ever seen!



As i was walking around this Chinatown area i couldn't help singing to myself...'I wanna take you to TACKY TOWWWWNNNN!' Check it out....where would you be going??? False teeth for sale on the street!


Tack


Chinatown tack


As the sex industry is quite big in Bangkok there are also many stalls selling 'love drops' and 'man pills' along with some dodgy looking aparatus!!

Its so organised and easy to get around here. Very patient driving not a car horn to be heard. I almost got hit by a motorbike as i am used to waiting to hear the horn when im walking then i move out of the way, here they just drive responsibly....will take some getting used to.

The Thai people are also growing on me, very funny people, great and very different sence of humour to the Indians. I went to visit the reclining buddha one day and met a very funny security guard who shoved some smelling salts container up to my nose while i was collecting my shoes after! Why i dont know!

This reclining Buddha is amazing! His smile is 5 metres long...what a smile!

45 metres long

I had my first encounter of a young thai boy trying it on at this temple. I noticed a guy following me REALLY obviously following me. I was doing circles of a pond just to check... it was funny making him do circles too! Well it was only my 2nd day in Thailand so i really wasnt sure did he want to mug me or what the hell! Well eventually i sat down outside and he sat beside me and asked did i have the time. I had no watch so he just sat there i knew he was waiting to ask me something so out of curiousity and to get it over with i asked him was he looking for something. I couldnt understand his english very well so i smiled and nodded for a bit then said thanks byeee!

He followed me when i walked around the back of the temple, i told him dont need your help thanks i like to be alone to look at the temple, he started saying 'Oh you sexy!' i wasnt sure if i heard right so ignored it. He asked if i was married i said ' eh....soon husbund!' goodbye! He was just following me. I left the temple and asked ok which way you going? He pointed right so i said ok byeee im going left. Well he kept following me! I asked again ok which way? He pointed left, i went right, same thing! I didnt want to loose my temper and it was nothing more than just damn annoying. I eventually got rid of him by standing like a mother pointing to a child who is in big trouble like the go-to-your-room point. Everytime he turned around i pointed again until he turned the corner. Ha ha ha how strange! Next time i will remember to say Yes im married! Gosh only out of India 5 minutes and forgetting about my husbund!!

Another funny things about Thailand is that they LOVE the king. A geeky looking fellow in a brown suit. Every restaurant has a poster of the king, and often a photo of the owner holding the poster of the king! Aparently the worst thing you can do here is disrespect this main man.

There just happened to be a Free Hugs campaign going on while i was there, organised by a guy from couchsurfing so why not join in! There is no point to it except to give out hugs on the street, its a nice gesture i suppose, cheered a lot of people up, made a lot of people laugh/run away/join in/buy us beer! There where the few people who were just too cool to get their free hug, many who kept coming back, i have to say it was a lot of fun, very rewarding when you gestured to a really bored shop lady to give her a god free (free hug in thai!) and whose smile just lit up! The expressions on peoples faces where priceless. You can imagine this guy in the picture above going for a free hug with an unsuspecting thai man...funny! Very sore arm muscles the next day!

There i am as pasty and white as the day i left ireland!

We went to a party afterwards in a place called the Overstay, run by another couchsurfer guy who converted an old brothel to a bar and a very cheap place to stay. Really cool place, great music, we lit a fire, someone cooked potatoes and smothers them in really good butter mmmmmmm. Just as we were heading to the party at the overstay I happend to bump into a guy called Peter that i used to work with years ago in Dublin! Oh it was sooo great to eat our potatoes and chat about Bertie Ahern, the north strand road and just good old irish banter! We certainly share a certain sence of humour us irish!

Goodbye now to Bangkok, excellent city that i could spend months in, and hallo to countryside!