Happy Thai New Year!!
We arrived in Bangkok after our overnight bus journey from Khao Lak at around 5am, we went straight to our hostel to catch up on our sleep. We had booked a dorm for 4 nights but got upgraded to a private room which was a good start. Our hostel was ok, very basic. Shay's fan didn't work and the bathrooms were shared and kinda grotty but had hot water, so it wasn't all bad.
After a couple of hours sleep we decided to head to Central World. We had been here to celebrate our New Year last year so we wanted to see if they had started to set up for their festival. We ended up walking through 5 massive shopping malls. We didn't remember seeing them last time, they were amazing. You could have easily spent a whole day here. There was a floor with heaps of stalls selling really fine food like ice cream, cookies, brownies etc. We managed to resist and not buy anything.....we surely couldn't have been feeling right.
At night we decided a night out on Khao San Road was in order. We hit a few of the bars and ended up at a club playing pool, jonny won about 5 games in a row. On the way home we both decided to get a back and shoulder massage, it was amazing. Very amusing for Shay as every time the Thai lady touched Jonnys legs he roared out laughing and wriggling around like a worm, the Thai lady was then in hysterics at him. He seems to be rather ticklish haha. Nothing beats a £2 massage at 4 in the morning on the way home from a night out lol.
The following day we decided to visit Bangkok Zoo. It wasn't very impressive for a city zoo to be honest. There were heaps of different kinds of snakes which was cool to see. They did have a shallow pool area were heaps of kids were paddling around and there were elephants at the side shooting water over the kids, was quite cool. Although, we didn't fancy playing in the water haha.
We decided to have some street food for tea, we are becoming real travelers now haha. It was really good and it came to a grand total of 35 baht (70p) haha. We then went to check out Chinatown. Its very much like......a street in China. Not much to see, it was a pity we had already eaten as we could have had a nice Chinese meal. Apart from restaurants there wasn't much to see in Chinatown so we went to Silom to see the Patpong Night Market. It was a good market however, there were lots of go-go bars right next to the stalls and lots of people trying to get you to go to "ping pong" shows haha, so not a place for kids. They had all your usual clothes, watches etc etc. Shay bought some earings and Jonny bought flip flops, baseball cap (to keep his hair under control....its getting long) and a belt. Again all this must have cost £5.
The next day was the start of the "Songkran" festival. Which is better known as the biggest water fight in the world. We decided to get up and sort out our onward travel before going to check out the festival. So we paid a taxi to take us to the bus station where we were told apparently you can not buy bus tickets in advance....strange, as that what we have done everywhere. So we decided to just fly to Chiang Mai since its only and extra £5. Wasted journey in the morning, never mind.
When we got back we were dropped at the end of our street. The festival had begun, we got soaked getting back to our hostel so we both invested in a Super Soaker 5000 haha. It turned out to be the best buy so far. We got changed into some old clothes, filled up the guns and headed for Khao San Road. The festival was in full swing and everybody was soaking each other, thrown buckets of water everywhere, people shooting hoses of water around. Just absolute madness. Jonny was in his element running around soaking everyone. The Thais were mixing talcum powder with water to make a paste and painting everybody with it.
The day/night was absolute madness, we bar hopped along all the streets, drinking and having water fights. We ended up staying out to watch the man u vs Chelsea game and by the time that finished we were defiantly ready for bed, such a good day/night.
We woke up to our last day in Bangkok and to find the water fighting had not calmed down at all. We ventured out for some food and got soaked within 2 minutes. We decided to get a decent sleep for our flight the following day.
We are now off to Chiang Mai, both heard great things about the north of Thailand, so lets see what it has to offer.
J+B