Chess

Bangkok, Thailand

It's been a little while since I embarked on TG 320 from Nepal to Bangkok, I've been taking a rest since writing those huge posts below!

In truth, I've done awfully little since arriving - worth talking about here anyhow! We got out of the airport on Tuesday night and planned to go live it up for the first night in a decent-ish hotel before heading to the backpackers institutions. Though on the bus, we got chatting to a guy called Wes who was able to recommend a good place to stay - just far enough from the Kao San Road (Blackpool Promenade stuck out in Thailand!). The place we're in is pretty good and I think I've stayed in worse Travel Inns in the UK. We both pay about 2 Pounds Stirling per night which is pretty reasonable I reckon!

The first night seems a distant haze already as we learned a quick lesson in how easy it is to drink till '?' O' clock in the morning. By midnight, Wes, Nick and myself had already played some pool after eating Thai curries, and maybe a few beers. The pool place closed so we moved on elsewhere - we were initially told that beer had stopped being served! But not to fear as we could still order spirits... pretty soon after this, we were told we could only order a 'bucket' of booze for the 3 of us to share! 4am rolled around and it was time to crash. Only problem was the next day seemed to have gone by the time we ventured from the room.

Since then we've had time to learn how to turn down all night drink sessions and even made it to a few sights... yesterday!

Having visited Bangkok once before when I was 14, I had some idea of what to expect. The Temple of the reclining buddha was a little dull and the buddha itself was undergoing repair work. We thought things would get a little more exciting at the Crocodile pool housed in the same grounds. Closed.

So then on to Budsit Zoo - we were there all of about 5minutes when the rain started to fall. We hung out in a food court type area as long as we could stand the boredom... finally the waters eased off enough for us to shoot around the various animal enclosures. Bare in mind we're in Thailand in it's late-monsoon season - the zoo wasn't very busy in terms of people or animals, the reptile and nocturnal houses both shut. But hey - just as if those little rascals in Kathmandu weren't enough weeks ago, the monkeys were still cheerfully swinging from tree to tree here. Some Giraffs and Meer Cats filled our sightseeing thresholds for the afternoon.

(I fully recommend avoiding the two above tourist sights if you should ever go...)

We headed over to Siam Square to check out the shopping and also got in some noodles. Stuff here is pretty much as expensive as back home so we returned empty handed but planned to go to the big weekend market the following morning. Siam Square does have a gorgeous shopping mall sat under a sky-scraper that sadly wouldn't let us take photo's - so you'll have to visit for yourself!

We'd also since learned how to have a better time of an evening here, so we dined in style at a restaurant called "Cabbages & Condoms" - named for it's policies for promoting anti-HIV in Thailands villages (and I guess - the promoting of eating cabbage). I had an awesome pork curry with Jasmine rice. Afterwards, we thought we'd try our hands at Table Tennis.

***

The market today was pretty cool, I picked up a few new T's and other bits n pieces. Most notable was the absolute barrage of rain we witnessed - many of the main roads were flooded with 10cms of water which we hear is quite a regular thing during monsoon season - just a shame the season seems to have be dragging a bit this year.

So tomorrow we're looking to head off and get this travelling lark underway proper. Next destination - Ayutthaya