Tuesday 30 June 2009

day 4-Silom, Bangkok

So i'm writing up yesterdays post because i got so wasted last night that i couldn't even stand up let alone type a blog.
We checked out of HQ hostel and took a cab to our next destination, Trang hotel, which was pretty sweet! air conditioning, en suite, pretty clean. We met a girl in the lobby called Daisy who turned out to be from our town, small world eh! Me, Emma and Daisy all needed to get on the net and the hotels computers were down so we needed to get to an internet cafe...this 'really nice man' stopped us and wrote down all these places to check out and we thought he was super nice, he told us to get a tuk tuk and that it'd only cost us 30 baht (about 70p) so we got in this tuk tuk and the guy took us to this little temple-sweet, that was cool, then he took us to a tailors... tuk tuks are basically a scam to tourists to get them to buy suits and dresses so that the driver gets shit loads of commission, which we didnt know, but the tailor guys were really funny and one of them was totally inked up to his eyeballs with some lush tattoos!
finally got to an internet cafe, did our thing then headed back to the hotel.
Decided we didnt want to go on the tour that we'd paid 300 quid for because apon arrival we were asked to pay another 300 dollars! plus emma's foot was bad and everyone in the tour group was younger than us so we felt kinda wierd.
Met the guys, and headed out to Kossam Road (party central) Emma put a condom on her foot because she decided it'd be more effective than a plaster, we went to the first bar, drank some 'buckets' - literally a bucket with a whole bottle of whisky in and some red bull, went to some other bars, danced on tables, danced in the street, Emma almost got started on by this midget woman because she spilled her drink on her foot, everyone was singing happy birthday in the street it was awesome, and i got to meet some more people from around the world.
Got absolutely hammered, stumbled all the way home in the rain, fell over in the lift, fell over in the hotel room and was laughing so loud that I probably woke up everyone on our floor.
Best night out I've ever had.

Sunday 28 June 2009

Day 3- Silom Bangkok

Todays been mostly a chilled out one. Me, Emma, Jono, Kim and Rory all decided to check out the Great Palace, which involved a short train ride and then a nice little boat ride down a really smelly river towards the palace. The pavements and roads in Bangkok are all pretty messed up, there's craters in the ground all over the show and as a result of this Emma tripped over and smashed her toe, there was a big ol' chunk of skin flapping off and blood started pissing out all over the floor! Emma's super squemish, she looked like a ghost and the heat and lack of food probably didn't help so she ended up laying on the pavement for about 20 minutes... in a nest of red ants.
Eventually she got it together and we headed off to the palace.
We started off by checking out the 'reclining buddha' which is a temple with a massive gold buddha inside and by massive i mean bigger than my house! We had to keep covered when inside the temple, cover up pretty much any visible skin and remove our shoes which sucked because it was so damn hot.
The novelty wore off after a while and we went for a little wander, took some silly pictures of eachother with the temple guards and headed back to the hostel.
The plan for tonight was to go out and find some crickets to eat but after dinner the heavens opened and it's been raining now for probably the last two hours, so myself and Jono (a crazy Irish dude) are checking out sweet tattoo artists on the net, listening to cheesy music and educating eachother with our music tastes.
....... later on we wanted more booze so me and jono went to this bar in town, ended up staying for a few drinks. Something was going down with this massive californian guy and these ladyboys, they were all shouting and swearing at eachother and i was pretty sure one of them had a knife, it went on for ages and then the guy evetually walked away and came and sat next to me. Him and Jono didn't get along too well and I thought they were going to have a fight too but things cooled down and we were about to walk home until it started absolutely pissing it down with rain-and rain means rats and cockroaches! so we hung about a while, got pretty trashed and i eventually stumbled in at 5 o clock in the morning!

Saturday 27 June 2009

Day 2- Silom, Bangkok

Today has been INSANE.
We checked out the map for some places to go and decided an art gallery might be a chilled out place to visit, oh how wrong we were, we took a taxi to the first gallery-which sucked, then were advised to visit some photography exhibition, after wandering around the streets of Bangkok for four hours in the blistering heat, we gave up and headed back to the hostel.
One of the hostel workers said we should go to some food joint with a crab logo to get dinner which we found pretty easily, the menu was like nothing i've ever seen before... fried goose feet, pig entrails, whole squid, and any fish you wanted-ALIVE. No thankyou, i had some noodles.
As we were eating it started to rain outside, which soon turned into a monsoon, we got absolutely drenched and apon our arrival back to the hostel, a casual ciggarette outside turned into me having cockroaches literally crawling across my feet!
We dried off and chilled out downstairs for a while, as we were about to go to be some irish guy and a few others asked if we wanted to go for a few drinks... we hadn't actually met anyone yet so we figured why not.
To get to the bar we walked down some alley ways and backstreets which were absolutely packed with ladyboys (who I think are probably more attractive than the Thai women) and then we finally got to the bar, at which point the 'leader of the group' the curly haired irishman decides that he likes my tattoos and thinks it'd be a cool idea if he gets one- funily enough the dodgy little tattoo shop was right next to the bar so we head on in and tell the guy that this irishman (for some reason) wants to get the words 'jack & coke' tattooed on his left ass cheek...
Now this tattooist looked about 18 years old and took about an hour to do this tattoo which looked pretty terrible even though the tattooist had apparantly been tattooing for 8 years when infact he was quite obviously an apprentice.
After a few more drinks we decided to head home and I wish we'd gotten a taxi because this was the most horrific 5 minute walk of my life and i'm pretty sure i'm going to have nightmares tonight...
Rats. Rats absolutely everywhere, rats and cockroaches, two of my least favourite creatures on this planet, not only rats and cockroaches but as we walk down the street I hear music playing, and I can see in the distance a man holding a microphone with some sort of speaker attatched to him, and a thai woman leading him down the road, as we get closer I realise that he needs a guide because his eyes are completely missing and he'd quite obviously been a victim of a horrific act of torture in order to make money. I am absolutely mortified and the only thing stopping me from bursting into tears is the fear of ruining this experience for my best friend by making a scene.
So i've come to the conclusion that I really don't like Bangkok and i'm hoping and praying that tomorrow when we visit the grand palace of Bangkok we'll have a great time and i'll forget all about the man with no eyes.

Friday 26 June 2009

Travelling day one-Silom, Bangkok

Where do I start...?
Our flight was 11 hours which was completely bearable as we thought it was going to be 17, and I got to watch some cool films so- bonus! When we arrived we took a bus into Silom, Bangkok which took 2 hours instead of one due to the traffic, during which we saw some poor guy puking out of the cab window looking seriously pale! We were told to get off on some random street... totally lost. We didn't have a map, just a piece of paper with the name of our hostel on, which no-one seemed to have heard of, so we walked around with our 13 kilo backpacks on, in 33 degree heat for an hour getting majorly sweaty, the humidity here is like nothing i've ever experienced before!
The streets of Bangkok are friggin nuts, atleast every 10 steps someone would point and ask about my tattoos, shove a flyer in our faces about a sex show, or ask if we wanted to go for a ride in a tuk tuk (a little motorised cart) so it was pretty hard to get through the crouds, along with that the roads are all smashed up and theres chunks of concrete everywhere, definitely not a good place to be wearing flip flops.
Saw some disturbing things as well, a man was dragging himself along the floor on a skateboard using his mangled hands because he'd lost a leg and the other one was bandaged and bloody, another man had lost both his eyes and was also begging for money so this kinda freaked me out!
The streets at night are packed with people, market stalls, bright lights, scooters, people selling jewellery and clothes, also some bizzare looking food which i'm definitely going to try at some point this week (I hear crickets are a local delicacy!) The different smells of the food are amazing but when your away from it all, pretty much all you can smell is the sewer or your own sweaty armpits.
We're staying at the HQ hostel, which is really nice and clean with a massive communal bathroom but it's pretty expensive and the rooms are tiny (although the beds are big and the pilllows are comfy!) but the 'included breakfast' is just a small bowl of cereal. The games room is cool though, looks a bit like an ikea showroom and there's free internet, massive beanbags, dvds and even a playstation 2 -sweet!
We also noticed that the pictures printed on ciggarette packets are so disgustingly repulsive that I can't even bring myself to buy a packet! Maybe this is something England should think about...

Off to check out the town, catch some rays and take some snaps!