Thailand was amazing! What can I say..... OK there is heaps I can say and I am going to put as much as possible in here.... We did the thai experience in two parts, we spent a week initially in Bangkok and Chiang Mai before heading to Vietnam and then spent another 10 days on the way home in the islands! Fantastic!BANGKOK
This was the ultimate culture shock for me… We arrived in at about midnight and made our first ravel faux pa - we were swindled by a taxi driver... hello, wake up people! paid 700 baht where apparently we shouldnt have paid anymore than 250 -300 baht... ah the joy! Anyway we head off with our dodgy taxi driver and that was a blimin scary ride in itself - it was pouring with rain and we seemed to be going down some out of it back alleys (apparently that is just Bangkok in general) before finally dropping us off and telling us to get out of the cab - he ended up dropping us ages away from our hotel and we spent another hour walking around in the rain trying to find it! It really was a laugh or you would cry situation and as far as 'backpacking' goes this was salt of the earth stuff! We tried 2 cab drivers, seven eleven staff and then random people on the street for direction to no avail... finally the winner proved to be a stoned chinese rasta he gave us both directions we could understand and they were correct! The hotel was great, clean, cheap and actually proved to be in a very handy location after all of that!
We spent the next day looking at a variety of Wat around Bangkok on a tuk-tuk, this is an incredible way to travel - it is stinky and dirty, the drivers are crazy and zoom in and out of traffic but it was pretty fun! Only thing with the tuk-tuk drivers was that they were constantly trying to take you to dodgy jewellery/ tailor shops so that they could get petrol vouchers for their tuk-tuk's.... got a little bit annoying after a while! We met a guy who taught us a couple of thai phases, the best one though was 'pang pai' which means 'too expensive' - we used this alot... the market shopping was phenomenal! I ended up with a couple of pairs of thai fishing pants which we paid 80 baht each for (about $3 NZ) - my negotiating skills are crap, Shane's however are much better!
We also spent a day doing the major touristy thing! We headed to the Grand Palace, Emerald Buddha - this was incredible, the detail and sheer opulence of it all was amazing - particularly when there were people living rough right outside the gates! We then went to Jim Robinson's house - he was a silk merchant in the 50's who mysteriously disappeared but left behind this beautiful authentic thai house, really nice!
We also did a trip to the River Kwai, this was a day trip which took us from Bangkok north west about 2 hours. We spent some time looking around the allied cemetary - this is devoted to allof the soliders that lost their lives building the bridge over the River Kwai. We then went on to the actual bridge and stopped at the museum. The area surrounding the bridge is absolutely tourist city! We carried on from here and actually rode the death railway which crossed a number of rickety old wooden bridges - this made the NZ railways look like the flashest most high tech set of tracks! On our way back we stopped at a river and went bamboo rafting, this was crazy - we were sitting on this little pontoon type thing and the raft was sinking so we had water up to our knees almost... not the ideallic cruise ever! We also stopped at a waterfall on our way back which was fab, all of the school kids were there having a swim!
The next day we headed off to Chiang Mai - getting to the train station was a journey! We went on a tuk-tuk and the driver thought he was James Bond! This was the ultimate Bangkok exit - our driver didnt quite get the tuk-tuk on two wheels but her was pretty blimmin close! We got to the train station and piled into our first class cabin for the journey north! We ended up meetin up with a couple of kiwis and an english couple and spent most of the night drinking with them! Chiang Mai here we come....
CHIANG MAI
CHIANG MAI
We arrived into the train station and were met by Sam from our guesthouse... the guest house was supreme and the people are so friendly! Shane wanted to pack the little thai gardener and bring him home because the grounds there were immaculate! We spent the afternoon pretty kicked back and wandered around town,when the got very lost and managed to get a tuk-tuk to take us around... we visited a few temples, a lacquer factory (this was really interesting) before heading back to town, here we are on a tuk-tuk on a 3 lane motorway which had 5 cars abreast on it (almost as scary as Bangkok)! Anyway we got back to the guest house fine and headed to town to catch up with the Hasties!
Well 'a drink' at the hotel turned in to quite a few as we caught up and compared notes on our Thailand experiences so far! We had a fantastic night which included a bit of dinner, a bit of dancing and quite a few drinks... not to mention the tuk-tuk race back to the hotel! Glen, Jen and I decided that it was then a good time to do a spot of shopping and I tell you my negotiating skills get a lot better with a few drinks under my belt (well at least I thought they did!).
The next day we headed up to an elephant camp at Mae Taeng - this was the best! The elephants were incredible and this was well worth doing! We had a hillarious Manhut (elephant driver) who didn't speak much english but everytime we headed down an incline he would turn around as say 'oh my buddha' ... apparently everyone says 'oh my god' when the elephant heads down these tracks! very funny! All the way along our trek people were trying to sell us stuff and it was incredible the lengths that they would go to to reach you - some kids were up to their armpits in the river trying to get us to buy stuff! This visit to the elephant camp though was definitely a highlight of the trip so far!
We headed off the next morning..... next stop - Vietnam!
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