Southeast Asia

Despite the fact that last Monday was a pubic holiday for the kings birthday, so too was today. This made it very difficult to get organised to move on to Ayuthaya since I couldn’t cash any travellers cheques. Spent the day walking around the city and the new shopping centre. I bought a new alarm clock (sorry mum, the other one broke) and a few items like tissues and soap because its easy to stock up in Bangkok. Had lunch in the new shopping centre at a really expensive restaurant, the food was good but it cost 450B.

Spent the evening doing laundry and packing up a bit. Wasn’t particularly hungry for dinner and didn’t want to spend the money, particularly after lunch, so I went without. Watched ‘Dodgeball’ with Derek, Dave and a Welsh girl.

I have a really bad cold, which I caught on the plane, but I managed to keep it at bay by taking the Keflex for my eye. The problem is now that I’ve stopped taking it; the cold has come on badly. I have noticed that it doesn’t take long to learn to talk in disjoined English. You start asking questions like “where boat go?”, “do metre?” and pointing to a map whilst saying “I go here”.

I’d also have to say that whoever created traffic lights that count down was not the sharpest tool in the shed. As the light reaches the final ten seconds before it turns green the swarm of drivers all squished at the front with about 20 bikes thrown into the mix all rev their engines and begin to inch forward into the moving traffic in order to be first off the mark. However, even worse than red lights that count down are green light that count down which encourage drives to put the pedal to the floor and screech around the intersection in order to make it through the lights in the last 1 or 2 seconds. There also seems to be a rule that if your not talking on a mobile whilst driving then your not multitasking. Also of note is the fact that lanes here are really more of a guideline and any vehicle can drive anywhere they want at any given time, provided nothing bigger comes along. This is all alright of course as long as you have the standard Buddhist alter on the dashboard.

Well tonight its goodbye to the chaotic heap that is Bangkok and hello to the former capital Ayuthaya. I’m going to miss Suk11. I have had such a good time here. Paid the bill which came to 2700B for 6 nights including air con and breakfast (approx $14 per night).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 14th, 2005 at 2:30 am 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.