Thursday, February 15, 2007

Bangkok

"One night in Bangkok makes a proud man humble..." as the song goes. Well, we spent two nights in Bangkok. We got in to Laosan street (which is a huge backpakers street) at like 9:30 at night. Having travelled all day and walking with our huge packs, we only needed a room for three people. As we trusged up and down the street with our Lonely Planet as our guide, we realized that we would not be finding any places suggested in the book, so we wold have to stay at the first place we found. Our room was a one bed cement crap whole. We did have a toilet, but to flush we had to fill a bucket up with water and pur it into the toilet. It was above a bar and it was a little loud, but it was a place to stay. The next day we would set out to find a better place, but we were hungry and wanted to put our packs down.

The next day we realized that finding a reasonably priced room for three people would be hard, so we settled for a room that had a bed the size of a double bed and was no larger than a lrage closet. THe highlight of the room was the tv where we watched the news update on the 2008 presidential candidates. The low was the tv in the room next to us and the the walls were paper thin so none of us slept at all because we were crammed into a double bed listening to the tv next door till after three in the morning.

The highlights ins Bangkok had to be the food. The street food was amazing. There was mango and sticky rice which was to die for along with pad thai (sp?) and skewers and plain mango and these fried crepe like pancakes with banana... During the day we walked around and found this park. The park was so cool and there was a path that weaved itself around. There was a pavillion where a band played and there were dancers. However, instead of listening to the music I joined in witht hese Thai guys playing a soccer type juggling game. The ball was this woven platic type ball which was kicked around in a circle. After the music stopped the pavillion was cleared for an aerobics class.

Overall Bangkok was alright. The people were cool, but just another city.

1 comment:

janai said...

Your comment on the toilets is funny... mostly because by the time we reached these types of toilets, we had gone through many a smelly a gross squatty in S.E. China.... to a squattie that you have to flush yourself with buckets of water (which were actually nicer, because generally, they were also a lot cleaner)... to... Praise the L'rd! real western toilets.... you still had to "hand flush" but they were definitally cleaner (mostly because they were in lao) and nicer (b/c it waasn't a squattie.) As for what I've come to call "wiki ball" .... they ussually play with those balls on a court with a net aboutthe height of a tennis net, but you can only kickthe ball over. Seeing as how alll of us now own 1 plastic wiki ball, and havve one real wicker wiki ball... i'msure we'll get some games going back in Shanghai.... glad to hear your trip is giong well.... sounds like youre having a lot of fun...:) see ya soon