1st to 5th September - Bangkok
We arrived in Bangkok one night before Robin, Ingham and Ronchetti joined us on our travels so with one swift move of dropping our bags off at the hotel we shot out towards Khoa San Road, the main backpackers spot filled with food, drinks and live music. It had already hit 1:00AM upon our arrival the street was still booming where we met several interesting people, firstly a Thai guy who asked us where we were from in England, he then went on to show us a tattoo on his arm showing the hatred he has for Scousers! Odd but i’m not gonna argue with the guy! Our night only lasted a few hours as we had to get up early in anticipation for the others, so only a few beers down, we headed back. As we awoke we grabbed our things, laughed about the night before and set sail to find our new hotel and wait for their taxi to arrive. Sure enough within an hour here pulls up a taxi with three guys from the Ribble Valley… When you’re half way across the world and have been for near two months, seeing familiar faces is a very odd experience. Smiles and hugs everywhere to be reunited with our best friends and then we got straight out into the busy capital to show them the bartering, street food and generally colourful atmosphere that Bangkok has to offer. We spent the following two nights heavily intoxicated, I’m not going to lie. We travelled up and down the backpackers area meeting people, drinking, dancing and then finally doing something i’ve hugely wanted to try, eating insects! We bought a big bag and shared them out between us, the crickets are far too crunchy however the meal works are surprisingly good! Everything was soaked in soy sauce so the taste probably wasn’t how it should be. The one thing i’m still not to try are the tarantulas, this is a hurdle for another day i think. I keep telling myself to overcome my fear of spiders i must eat one, i’m unsure if this is good logic but you never know!
Bangkok was great fun and a brilliant catch up as we also met up with Josh and Jenna another two from Clitheroe who are travelling together but luckily we are doing Thailand at the same time. Then by sheer luck i saw on Facebook that Daniel, a guy i knew back from school was visiting Thailand and with a quick message he ended up joining us during the nights out. On the third morning me, Robin and Ingham decided that Bangkok obviously has more to offer and we set off in tuk tuk to see the local temples. Our first sighting was nothing great but we knew our driver had taken us to the wrong one! We asked to get dropped off at the Golden Mount and he thankfully obliged and we told him he can go. This temple was great, we set off walking up the steps and firstly saw all the large bells hung up along with a gong. We got slightly childish and starting ringing them all before moving further up the hill to the actual Golden Mount which was amazing to see but also the views from up here were crazy, we could see across most of Bangkok, i hadn’t realised the sheer amount of sky scrapers until this point. After this we got a new driver and headed towards Wot Pho, the temple of the reclining buddha which is build on a large area of land with loads of different things to see inside. The attention to detail across the complex was superb with monuments and large spears facing the sky everywhere. Then we finally got around to seeing the reclining buddha, i had seen photographs but never thought it was actually as big as it was! The thing was ginormous! Photographs just don’t do it justice. If i knew anyone visiting Bangkok i’d advise this temple, we spent an easy hour and half here and only left due to being starving.
The next and final morning we decided to do something where everyone talks about, the floating markets, its always a mixture of good and bad experiences at them and we hoped we would strike lucky but unfortunately the experience wasn’t great. When we arrived after the long drive our taxi driver told us we couldn’t walk around the markets and we had to pay for a boat, this is a lie and i knew it. We argued for a good 10 minutes before the other taxi driver came across and offered us the boat for a reasonable price, reluctantly we accepted just to get away from my driver! The markets themselves were too quiet and we spent hardly any time there before the boat heading back to shore. Not impressed to say the least! The taxi had waited for us and we jumped back in. He didn’t say a word for most of the drive home and i had fallen asleep during this time in the front. I woke up with this driver screaming in my face “GET OUT, YOU PAY NOW”, by far the worst wake up call i’ve ever had. We were 200m from our hotel and he refused to drive us forward and instead began grunting and screaming like a wild animal. I asked him several times to please stop shouting and it just didn’t seem to sink in. Even when getting the money out to pay him, he threatened to call the police! We did absolutely nothing wrong, he was simply angry because we didn’t fall for the tourist trap that he would surely get commission for. I’m very glad we didn’t encounter him again, could quite easily of put his windows through!
With that fiasco over and done with we had a small nap and then set sail for our last night in Bangkok where we met up with Megan, a friend from back in Sri Lanka and a few others she got to tag along. It was once again a great night full of laughter and i’m pretty sure at one point i started working for an insect selling stand, shouting out to foreigners telling them they’re ‘good’. “Step right up, step right up, best bugs in Bangkok”. With a couple of sales and my commission (a few crickets) i was on my way again to the next bar. Bangkok as a whole was so much fun but i felt like at times we didn’t do it properly, i wanted to explore much more than i did, hopefully i will make up for this on our next stop of Chiang Mai and Pai in the north of Thailand.
We arrived in Bangkok one night before Robin, Ingham and Ronchetti joined us on our travels so with one swift move of dropping our bags off at the hotel we shot out towards Khoa San Road, the main backpackers spot filled with food, drinks and live music. It had already hit 1:00AM upon our arrival the street was still booming where we met several interesting people, firstly a Thai guy who asked us where we were from in England, he then went on to show us a tattoo on his arm showing the hatred he has for Scousers! Odd but i’m not gonna argue with the guy! Our night only lasted a few hours as we had to get up early in anticipation for the others, so only a few beers down, we headed back. As we awoke we grabbed our things, laughed about the night before and set sail to find our new hotel and wait for their taxi to arrive. Sure enough within an hour here pulls up a taxi with three guys from the Ribble Valley… When you’re half way across the world and have been for near two months, seeing familiar faces is a very odd experience. Smiles and hugs everywhere to be reunited with our best friends and then we got straight out into the busy capital to show them the bartering, street food and generally colourful atmosphere that Bangkok has to offer. We spent the following two nights heavily intoxicated, I’m not going to lie. We travelled up and down the backpackers area meeting people, drinking, dancing and then finally doing something i’ve hugely wanted to try, eating insects! We bought a big bag and shared them out between us, the crickets are far too crunchy however the meal works are surprisingly good! Everything was soaked in soy sauce so the taste probably wasn’t how it should be. The one thing i’m still not to try are the tarantulas, this is a hurdle for another day i think. I keep telling myself to overcome my fear of spiders i must eat one, i’m unsure if this is good logic but you never know!
Bangkok was great fun and a brilliant catch up as we also met up with Josh and Jenna another two from Clitheroe who are travelling together but luckily we are doing Thailand at the same time. Then by sheer luck i saw on Facebook that Daniel, a guy i knew back from school was visiting Thailand and with a quick message he ended up joining us during the nights out. On the third morning me, Robin and Ingham decided that Bangkok obviously has more to offer and we set off in tuk tuk to see the local temples. Our first sighting was nothing great but we knew our driver had taken us to the wrong one! We asked to get dropped off at the Golden Mount and he thankfully obliged and we told him he can go. This temple was great, we set off walking up the steps and firstly saw all the large bells hung up along with a gong. We got slightly childish and starting ringing them all before moving further up the hill to the actual Golden Mount which was amazing to see but also the views from up here were crazy, we could see across most of Bangkok, i hadn’t realised the sheer amount of sky scrapers until this point. After this we got a new driver and headed towards Wot Pho, the temple of the reclining buddha which is build on a large area of land with loads of different things to see inside. The attention to detail across the complex was superb with monuments and large spears facing the sky everywhere. Then we finally got around to seeing the reclining buddha, i had seen photographs but never thought it was actually as big as it was! The thing was ginormous! Photographs just don’t do it justice. If i knew anyone visiting Bangkok i’d advise this temple, we spent an easy hour and half here and only left due to being starving.
The next and final morning we decided to do something where everyone talks about, the floating markets, its always a mixture of good and bad experiences at them and we hoped we would strike lucky but unfortunately the experience wasn’t great. When we arrived after the long drive our taxi driver told us we couldn’t walk around the markets and we had to pay for a boat, this is a lie and i knew it. We argued for a good 10 minutes before the other taxi driver came across and offered us the boat for a reasonable price, reluctantly we accepted just to get away from my driver! The markets themselves were too quiet and we spent hardly any time there before the boat heading back to shore. Not impressed to say the least! The taxi had waited for us and we jumped back in. He didn’t say a word for most of the drive home and i had fallen asleep during this time in the front. I woke up with this driver screaming in my face “GET OUT, YOU PAY NOW”, by far the worst wake up call i’ve ever had. We were 200m from our hotel and he refused to drive us forward and instead began grunting and screaming like a wild animal. I asked him several times to please stop shouting and it just didn’t seem to sink in. Even when getting the money out to pay him, he threatened to call the police! We did absolutely nothing wrong, he was simply angry because we didn’t fall for the tourist trap that he would surely get commission for. I’m very glad we didn’t encounter him again, could quite easily of put his windows through!
With that fiasco over and done with we had a small nap and then set sail for our last night in Bangkok where we met up with Megan, a friend from back in Sri Lanka and a few others she got to tag along. It was once again a great night full of laughter and i’m pretty sure at one point i started working for an insect selling stand, shouting out to foreigners telling them they’re ‘good’. “Step right up, step right up, best bugs in Bangkok”. With a couple of sales and my commission (a few crickets) i was on my way again to the next bar. Bangkok as a whole was so much fun but i felt like at times we didn’t do it properly, i wanted to explore much more than i did, hopefully i will make up for this on our next stop of Chiang Mai and Pai in the north of Thailand.
The bells at The Golden Mount (Wat Saket)
At the top of Wat Saket
This huge, reclining Buddha is at Wat Pho, it totals 46m long!
I also became quite obsessed with the temples attention to detail, including spears from their roofs
The entrances are guarded by huge Chinese warrior statues
Some of the guys in front on their boat at the floating markets.. Not that impressive of a place
The only passable photograph i captured whilst there
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