Southeast Asia

Passed out last night and didn’t wake up until 8:30. Breakfast is provided at suk11 so i ate enough food to try and avoid lunch for a while. Spoke to a German girl who suggested i head to China Town for the day. Also met Derek, a crazy Irish guy.

Ventured out towards china town about 11:30, didn’t take long to find the subway station, it was only a 10 minute walk. i thought the sky train was easy, the subway is amazing. instead of a ticket you get a cool little token which you press on the machine to get through the gate. Took no time at all to get to Hualamphong station on the other side of town. Walked around for a while in search of china town until i stumbled across Wat Traimit, home of the golden Buddha. it was a good thing i had a long sleeved top in my bag because it meant i could go in and have a look. the Buddha is 15.5 feet high and 12.5 feet in diameter and is made of solid gold, it was quite impressive.

Left the golden Buddha still searching for China town. While standing on a street corner i was adopted by an old Thai man who worked at the hospital across the road, he told me china town would not pick up until after 3 and wrote me a list of places to visit first. He then hailed me a tuk tuk, told the driver where I was going and bargained the price for 50B for 3 hrs (exceptionally good). I was slightly sus, but he seemed genuine. After thanking him he said “no, you are very good person, you come to Thailand”. Everything worked out great. First we went to the old temple where i saw the lucky Buddha and a guy working there told me it was over 1000 yrs old. He also wanted to tell me all about his wife who worked for Thai airways and his trip to Sydney a few weeks earlier.

Just before leaving the temple I had a group of young school girls come up and tug at my shirt. They kept giggling and wanting their photo taken. My tuk tuk driver was still waiting when I left the Wat and he took me to China town where he dropped me at the end of one street and told me to meet him at the other end. Took about 40mins to walk the street through all the stalls and yet much to my surprise he was there waiting for me at the end, I guess he wanted to be paid. We then went to another part of China town where he dropped me off. I ended up giving him 80B. Chain town was amazing, much more how I pictured bkk; very busy, loud and weird food for sale everywhere you looked.

Started to get really tired and my eyes were sore from my contacts and all the dust and pollution. Didn’t take long to work out where i was but the walk back to the subway took forever. Took a combination of the subway and the skytrain home. i have noticed a lot of western men here with Thai wives & girlfriends.

Slightly ashamed to admit i stopped at starbucks on the walk back to the hostel (they are like McDonalds here, on every corner) for a caramel frappe that i had been craving. it was so good though and it had been a long hot day. felt good to get back and have a shower.

Went downstairs to see who was around and ran into Dave who had sorted out the lost wallet situation. We chatted for a couple of hours and then went and got dinner at a great Thai restaurant next door to suk11. Restaurant was so cute, we sat on the floor and there were gorgeous decorations everywhere made of flowers. The rice came with a little banana leaf cone and a necklace of flowers on it, as well as being really well presented the food was delicious. Had a cocktail with tequila, lime and pineapple. all up cost 300B ($10). Didn’t get back from dinner until about 9:30 by which time i was drained. it really take it out of you walking around in the heat all day. So far the heat has not been overwhelming.

Tags: Thailand

This entry was posted on Friday, December 9th, 2005 at 6:32 pm and is filed under Thailand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.