And so we start. Day One and Day Two (24-25th July 2009)

Day 1 – 24/07/2009

Arrived in Bangkok a 15:00, R needs the loo (again), wait for our luggage but where’s the guitar? First bit of lost in translation – it’s somewhere else. Declare Springbok hide – very difficult to describe what a springbok is (did not learn Thai for springbok).

Can’t find person with cab – R left directions and reservation at home. E goes off in search of R’s name on a piece of paper. Found them through luck as there is no number for different arrival spots. In the meantime R found the number on his phone. Its 32 degrees outside and very humid.

Cab to hotel which is called Thong Ta Hotel Resort and Spa. Not a very nice area and will prove later, quite hard to find! Nice little food stalls very near the hotel. Checked in and went to room. Massive bed and stunning furniture. R loves the smell of the wood, E thinks it smells like ear wax.R decided to go for a quick shower to freshen up (it’s meant to be morning but is in fact now almost 17:30). Of course the shower head breaks off when he picks it up. Great. Now we have to hose ourselves down, literally.

After the shower we decide to go into town really quickly just to get a bite to eat and to see something of Bangkok. The Lonely Planet Guide shows us a lovely restaurant in the Sukhumvit area called Thong Lee and we decide to take a cab there. First cabby tries to charge us 1000 Baht for a return journey, refuses to turn on meter and then take us to his ‘friend’s’ restaurant instead. Tell him no way and he drops us back off se we can get into a proper metered cab to the restaurant.

After sitting in the Friday evening rush hour traffic, it dawns on us where we are and we feel a bit wobbly. We start seeing the skyscrapers with their distinctly Asian red, purple and green lights flashing all about us and the biggest onslaught of street food we can ever remember seeing. Every corner, every kind of food you would wish for. Arrive at the restaurant but it’s closed for dinner so we leave the cabby and eat at a street vendors and have the best Thai food in ages. We just uttered ‘Goy Teo’ to the lady who rustled us up two steaming bowls of rice noodles with pork on top, garnished with all kinds of herbs, and a cold tea drink. What more do you need then a box of spoons, chopsticks and toilet roll to make you feel at home as the rain above hits the umbrella protecting us. All this for 70 Baht which is 1.50!

Feel much better after food and some walking – we head along Sukhumvit and meander along the sweaty, humid stalls selling anything from t-shirts to CD’s, etc. We see ladyboys, ‘sexpats’ and abject poverty. We smelled ‘The Smell’. As we decided to turn the corner for a beer we saw our first Thai elephant just standing on the street corner uttering a very strange trumpet sound. E nearly has a heart attack. The heat starts to get to us and the dehydration sets in, heads suddenly spin. We find somewhere with aircon selling cheap-ish beer, have out first Namanau (a type of hand made lime drink) along with our first Singha in Thailand and reflect.

We decide to check out the Sky Train which, compared to the tube in London, is great as it has aircon and television in the carriages. It takes us to On Nut station where we find a large food court, with more stalls selling even more variety of food as someone plays guitar through a mic to a student crowd sitting in an open air bar. The Thai youths of today have changed and seem to be aspiring to a more Western ideal in terms of clothes, haircuts and drink. We are the only Westerners here, however, which is refreshing after Sukhumvit. We dig into sticky rice with BBQ chicken wings and sweet chili sauce and decide to go home.

Cab drives us through a residential area and we get our first proper taste of Bangkok off the beaten track. Food stall’s and open air bars rule here. Cab gets horribly lost, drops us off in the middle of nowhere, however after an hour we manage to find a charitable bunch of people who offer to drive us to Thong Ta Resort. When E told them she was South African, the woman didn’t believe her and pointed at her white skin. Oh, and packs of dogs are everywhere – one of which defended their territory so we had to turn back.

Any Thai we learnt before we arrived here just disappeared into thin air when we needed it the most. Altogether a very active but strange, exhausting and mad day. We looked like rabbits in the headlights for most of it but are incredibly excited and I’ve just realized my grammar has completely gone out the window on our very first post…ah well, it’ll improve!

25/07/2009

I, R, am actually writing this at 1:46 am Sunday morning as our bodies have decided its time to wake up. Oh how I love jet lag. We’re starving but if we eat now (18:46 in the UK – dinnertime!) we’ll never get over it but if I don’t eat I won’t sleep. Anyway…

Woke up and had our complimentary breakfast where the tea is served with powdered milk and you have to spread a tiny packet of jam over four pieces of toast. Our fresh orange juice was in fact something akin to Tropicana. Think we’ll go for the ham and eggs option later…ooh, ham and eggs…

After spending too much money on cabs on our first day we ask the staff at the hotel (who by the way are very friendly, helpful and very willing for us to practice our Thai on them) what other options there are in terms of transport from Lat Krabang to central Bangkok. I enquired about the train station at Lat Krabang however they mention the bus stop just round the corner. Well, just because we’re ‘farang’ doesn’t mean we have to live in air conditioned cabs, so we do it. I’ve never done this before and neither has E, obviously, as it’s her first trip out here. In hindsight, however, it’s probably the best way to start your travels in Bangkok. You cruise along a bumpy road with your feet on a wooden floor, fans hanging from the ceiling to keep you cool and windows wide open to let air, dust and exhaust fumes in. Perfect. The fare was 8 Baht each for a 35 minute journey to On Nut train station where you can then connect to the rest of the Sky Train. Compare that to 200 Baht in a cab (4 quid) for the same journey. If you want to immerse yourself and aren’t afraid of being the only farang, then start your day on a bus. Ok, it's not ideal and yes everyone would prefer to travel by cab. But what's the point in travelling if you don't at least try everything once or twice, eh? Don’t forget to keep you arms IN the bus!

The bus drops us outside Carrefour and we decide to just get in there to buy stuff we need (adaptors, sim cards, flip flops, etc…). We don’t fancy doing much today and leave to wander the streets of On Nut to sample the delicacies. We buy a fruit called Mangosteen and some Thai sweets made out of bean curd.

The Mangosteen is a great fruit with a white center however there’s never enough of it.

We find the bus stop to take us back to the hotel, get off to soon thinking we overshot, got on a bus going the opposite way, realize what we’ve done and then just get a bloody cab (only 50 baht, fair enough). We buy some Kow Niew Gai Lang (BBQ chicken with sticky rice) from a street vendor and eat everything back at the hotel. Some of the meat wasn’t cooked and I’ve never eaten ‘chicken’ served as ribs-on-a-stick before…best not think about that.

As the hotel has a spa, we venture down for a half hour ‘Tension Massage’ by two female Thai masseurs and it’s exactly what we needed. I counted about 8 bones in my body cracking as she massaged London out of my shoulders and poor E was in serious pain as her masseur went to work on her calves with her elbows. Either way, it was fantastic and if you stay here we highly recommend it.

We eat around the corner next to the main road and head home to chill for the rest of the night…