Its our third day in Bangkok and its been, uh...an experience!!
Our hotel is miles away from the centre of Bangkok (thanks Hotels.com!) but its pretty nice and is opposite a night market which has an array of ropey looKing foodstuffs - which i will be eating within the week no doubt! On our first day we walked around for a while before we realised there is nothing around here and there were a lot of Thai people staring at us (probably thinking why the hell are they staying all the way out here!). Eventually we found a bar and the Thais working there got very excited to see westerners in the bar - they immediatly turned on some music, lit insence, turned every fan they had in our direction and switched on all the lanterns!! So of course, we had to stay for a few beers (especially at about 50p a pint).
Yesterday we went into the centre of Bangkok, to the shopping district (of course!), we went in a few malls, the park and the Patpong night market. There were sandbags around all the buildings, the height of the sandbags was directly proportional to the importance of the buildings they were protecting, the little shops had about 2 sandbag high walls around them, HSBC and the Hilton had sandbag walls of about 9ft!! Theres no flooding in the shopping district at the moment, however, the main tourist district is completely flooded and we were told by the locals not to go there (apparently there are crocadiles in the water too), so we'll do that on the way back in Feb.
Night time is when it all gets lively in Bangkok, we had a couple of drinks in a bar near Patpong and then looked around the market. There are tons of food stalls, guys trying to give you a ride in the tuk tuks and a few lady boys! We decided to head back about 10pm as we'd been out all day - however, when we gave the taxi driver the slip with our hotel address on he was silent for about 2 minutes while me and Robin sat in the back looking at each other, wondering if he could read, then he started laughing and told us he didn't know where our hotel was! So we flagged down another taxi who told us the hotel was too far away, flung back the piece of paper and drove off!! At which point we started to despair slightly, we then ended up navigating through the train system to get home, which after a few confusing encounters with the railway staff and a trip to the airport, got us back safe and sound!
Today we decided not to risk the trip to Bankgkok again and stay more local. However, we are in the middle of nowhere, so we weren't quite sure what we'd do. Fortuneatly we got chatting to a couple of brits over breakfast and by 12.30 we were drinking rum with them! We then took them to the one bar we'd discovered away from the hotel and ended up spending the whole day drinking! I then went for a massage (1 hour for 6quid!) - which Robin came barrelling into half way through, for no explicable reason! When the massage had finished I went back out tosee he had found another couple to drink with! He is now asleep in a chair!
Anyway, we're flying to chaing mai tomorrow morning so i'd better put Robin to bed!!
Will post pictures when i get on a half decent PC with a better internet connection!
Tina xx