Bangkok - Tuesday

We stumbled in from the night before at around 4am, and slept until 11, waking in just enough time to book tickets for a river cruise through central Bangkok.

Our minibus picked us up at 1pm and we were on the river by 2:30pm. It was a really good trip as it gave us a chance to see some of the tourist attractions of Bangkok, such as Wat Arun (Temple of Dawn), without braving the crowded roads. Plus there's nothing like a boat ride to cure a hangover!

The tour guide was a bit of a character, so that was entertaining. But the main attraction was being able to see lots of Bangkok hotspots from the convenience of a riverboat. Also, there was free fresh fruit and drinks on the boat, including Sansom, the local (and dirt-cheap!) Thai whiskey.

This lady rowed out to sell us tourists some stuff

Hungry fishies!

After we arrived back at the hotel we freshened up, and headed out again with Dennis. We had one of our best meals in Thailand at a very well hidden restaurant - it didn't look great from the outside but after squeezing past the overflowing fish tank and the bustling service staff, we found ourselves in a bright, clean, well furnished establishment. We ate well, before hitting the street again to find the shisha bar.

Exterior

Interior - that's Dennis by the way

Forgotten what this is called, but it was very tasty

We found it, eventually! It took over half an hour though as we took the wrong turning and ended up down a very shifty looking street full of yet more massage parlours. But we made it in the end, thanks again to my superb directional instincts, which seem to only exist in Asia. Here's a video of me blowing a shisha bubble:

On the way back to the hotel, Dennis wanted to play pool so we stopped in at a pool bar and had a few games. We all beat each other a few times, and I beat the bar girl twice, despite her best efforts to put me off. She had a very unusual style, straightening up immediately after hitting the ball, no doubt out of experience of being in a bar full of men! It also must be mentioned that Andy absolutely dominated me in more than one game with his inconceivably perfect straight-arm technique. As always, he was very modest, claiming he just likes to hit the balls hard.

Afterwards, we wanted to continue the night so we got a taxi to a club called Insomnia (or Insanity, depending on how old you are). Really good music, great atmosphere and reasonably priced booze made for a cracking time, along with the tasty street food we had on the way home.

 

Bangkok - Monday

On Monday, we slept in before checking out of our hotel and moving onto the next place, which was in Sukhumvit, only a few stops down the MRT. Finding the place took a while after getting off the train, but thanks to my much improved sense of direction (!), we found House 23 Guesthouse, our home for the next two nights. We were in a 6-bed dormitory, but there was only one other person staying there, a Canadian guy around our age named Dennis.

After introducing ourselves we left Dennis to his hangover to explore the area. We ate a really delicious authentic Chinese lunch, which cost less than £2.50 for both of us, including drinks! Then we explored further, bypassing what seemed like every massage parlour in Bangkok, and found a swish-looking shisha bar.

We didn't try it, but it was tempting!

The strip at daytime

After that we walked back for a shower as it was incredibly hot and sticky. Soon enough we were hungry again, so Dennis took us to a place he had been to already which served really tasty and cheap burgers. After dinner we returned to the hostel and got ready to go out.

Matte black M3 - tasty!

At about 11pm we left the hostel again and went clubbing. Dennis was really great, showing us around places he had been before and taking us through the different kinds of music each club played. Eventually, after sampling several different places, we finished the night in a house music club called Climax and danced the night away.

 

Bangkok - Sunday

Thanks to our early night, we were able to rise at about 8am, breakfast at the hotel and arrive at our first tourist destination Chatuchak Weekend Market via MRT by 10am.

Breakfast

Funny sign

JJ market (abbreviated from alternative spelling Jatujak) is HUGE. Over 8000 shops and stalls, selling almost anything you could possibly think of, separated into several sections. The whole place was a hustling, bustling haggler's paradise, and I bought plenty of things to bring home for people, as well as a couple of bits and pieces for myself. After a few hours walking around, we lunched on paella which was prepared in a massive pan by a very skilled chef so that people could watch. I also had a much needed refreshing fruit/yoghurt smoothie type drink which was delicious. They love putting yoghurt in their drinks here, and I love the texture it creates. We soldiered on in the sweltering heat of the marketplace for another hour after lunch before waving the sweaty white shirt of surrender to the scorchio weather and retreating back into the MRT.

Another funny sign

So many clothes!

Paella man

Manly lunchtime drink

On a whim, we decided not to go straight back to the hotel and shower yet, so that we could visit the Thailand Cultural Centre MRT station and see what was so cultural about it. Turns out, not much! We wandered about and found a shopping mall that seems to have opened but forgotten to install many actual shops, creating a very bright white place with no apparent purpose. However, the toilets were very nice, so it wasn't a total loss. After that we crossed the road to the shopping mall opposite which actually had shops in it. Here we treated ourselves to small chocolate covered doughnuts on a stick before wandering back out and into a street market. We looked, but not with much enthusiasm - we were all marketed out by this stage, so we headed to the MRT station. On the way in, we noticed a sign for a supposedly spectacular, free stage show which plays in the area every evening, called Siam Niramit. I took the details and checked it out back at the hotel, and we decided to go, based on the excellent reviews from almost everyone who has seen it.

We took the MRT back to Thailand Cultural Centre, and waited for the free shuttle bus to transport us to the theatre. On the bus we got talking to a fellow theatre-goer about the show, and I asked him how they afford to put on such a lavish show for free every night. He chuckled and said it wasn't free, only the shuttle bus was. I hope I'm not the only one to have made this mistake. So we arrived, and we decided to go anyway despite the expense, and the tickets with buffet dinner included were 1850 Baht, approximately £35. The buffet certainly didn't disappoint and had a huge range of food, from traditional Thai dishes including a delicious red curry, to roast chicken and chips, with a whole lot more in between. Unfortunately as we had arrived a little late we couldn't eat as much as we wanted to, but we still had plenty. We also missed the elephant rides and a handful of other activities and things that happen in the 3 hours preceding the start of the show. But never mind.

After taking our seats in the 3000 seater auditorium and standing for the national anthem, we settled in and enjoyed the show, which focussed around the origins of Thailand, and how the country was formed. This was all expressed through text on a screen, music, mime and dance. The drummers at the beginning were especially good. The stage was huge, and is apparently one of the biggest in the world. The scene changes were incredibly smooth and unnoticeable. Halfway through the first part, sprinklers were used on the stage to simulate the monsoon, and only at that moment did we notice that the front of the stage was made of water, forming a kind of river separating the crowd and performers. A performer then jumped into it and sank completely out of sight before resurfacing, so it was definitely deep.

Then something amazing happened. After the first 40 minutes there was a comedic musical interlude, where a conductor came onto the stage and introduced 7 other musicians, each holding a wooden musical instrument a bit like an abacus, that they shook vigorously to make a note. This meant there was one note missing, so the spotlight searched around the stage and up in the rafters before moving onto the crowd and settling on..

Yep

So I was lead to the stage of this 3000 seater theatre with hundreds or thousands of people watching me, on slightly wobbly legs if I'm being honest! The conductor and I made the Thai greeting to each other and I was given the 8th 'rattler' and told to stand on the end of the line of performers. My first attempt at rattling wasn't brilliant, but got a laugh, and my second attempt was much better and I got a cheer from the crowd :D Then the conductor started pointing to each musician in turn, prompting them to play their notes in a musical tune. I waited on tenterhooks until finally he pointed at me for the last note of the piece, which actually sounded ok! Next, the conductor pretended to kick a musician out of the group and replaced him with me, and I played a much bigger part in the next piece, acquitting myself well. We did one more piece and the I went to the front of the stage to bow to the crowd and to the conductor, the latter of which gave me a cool Siam Niramit scarf. that I wore proudly through the rest of the show and after leaving the auditorium.

 

Bangkok - Saturday

Pearl arranged us a taxi to Kuala Lumpur International Airport which would pick us up at 8am so that we could make our 11:30am flight. Normally this would've been fine, but we had been out partying at the Butter Factory nightclub until the wee hours, and we were shattered! Anyway we got the flight without incident and made our bleary-eyed way into Bangkok.

We booked a taxi driver to take us to our hotel, and after nearly being dropped off at the wrong place a couple of times, we were redirected by some very friendly Thais at found our home for the next two nights, Ratchada 17 Place. The place has a swimming pool with clear glass sides which I liked the look of, although I never swam in it. There was also a pool table and restaurant. The room was startlingly good, very spacious with two beds and a table and chairs, clean ensuite, free water in the fridge, and best of all a balcony with a cracking view of the sprawling metropolis that makes up a large portion of the city.

After settling in and spreading the contents of our suitcases around the room a bit, as well as an obligatory shower, we set off to explore the local area. We found lots of 'street food' carts, the ubiquitous food vendors of Bangkok, as well as much of Southeast Asia. Then with the help of a little map on a scrap of paper we were given by the hotel, we searched for and eventually found the nearest underground train station (MRT); Sutthisan. We bought railcards and then had a self-congratulatory meal at a very peculiar restaurant, called Peking.. something.

The peculiarity of the place was mostly thanks to the serving staff, who were numerous despite the complete lack of customers (yeah we know, don't go to an empty restaurant.. What can I say, we were intrigued). We were immediately shown to a table and swamped by around four of them, who handed us menus and then stood by our table expectantly waiting for us to order, which was a bit disconcerting. I sent them off to get drinks which bought us enough time to decide on our food; pork dumplings for Andy, Kuey Teow for me (I think). These were brought out one at a time, meaning I had almost finished by the time Andy's food arrived. We thought this was odd, but it quickly became clear throughout the week that this is fairly normal practice in restaurants. The waitresses then watched us eat, thankfully from across the room rather than at the end of the table. After that, we decided to cut and run and just put the whole experience down as one to laugh about afterwards.

Further down the road from the MRT station, back towards our hotel, were a couple of points of interest; firstly Mansion 7, which is a kind of spooky, haunted house theme bar, and another bar called Poseidon. I understand that there are some very friendly people working there, but we didn't go in. We passed a similar bar called Copa Cabana on the way home too. Back at the hotel we chatted to some people by the pool and played a bit of ping pong before going to our room to crash.