We landed in Bangkok around 8.30am on the Wednesday morning, after leaving Perth the night before, with a short stop over in Singapore for some delicious roasted duck noodles. It was a funny feeling walking through the doors of Perth International Airport again to leave for our holiday. It was a lot less dramatic, to say the least, then when I had arrived a year earlier completely shattered and half in shock that I was actually back in Perth after leaving London. It was also hard to believe that I was going to be in another country for the first time in a year. It had been far too long between travels.
Our priority on arriving in Bangkok was to find accommodation as soon as possible so we could dump our luggage, have a quick look around and catch up on some much needed sleep before really exploring the city. We made our way to backpacker central - Koh Sahn Road, in Banglamphu. It became pretty obvious quite early on that I was probably the only one out of the group that had bothered to do any form of research before arriving in Thailand. Actually, this became obvious at Perth airport and Changi airport as everyone kept asking me where we had to go, when our next flight was and what was happening. So somehow I fell into tour leader role and found us some spare rooms at Rikka Inn for about 800BHT a night, complete with air conditioning, hot showers and a roof top pool. Exactly what we needed.
After a few hours sleep Rebel and I decided to hit Kao Sahn Rd to find some food and see what this city was all about. Kao Sahn Rd as I said before is backpackers central. Hence the street is full of vendors selling cheap clothes, fake sunglasses, cheap beer and food. I loved watching the street transform throughout the day. First thing in the morning it's so quiet, with the vendors starting to assemble their clothing stores, getting ready for another days trade. By lunchtime the hungover backpackers are starting to appear from the myriad of guesthouses lining the street, people are queueing to grab a 30BHT pad Thai from the street food vendors and the bars are slowly filling with those ready for their first Singha beer. As dusk starts to fall on the city the touts start flooding the street trying to sell their wares to every passing foreigner - glow sticks, ribbiting wooden frogs, laser lights. The 7-Elevens transform into street bars selling cheap as chips cocktails and Tiger beers for 50BHT (approximately $2) and loud music thumps out from the bars across the street.
Our little travelling group also decided to absorb some culture and sightseeing. We ventured off to The Grand Palace, sidestepping the dodgy people trying to fool us that the Palace was closed for the day and headed through the impressive main gates only to be hustled into the change room, where we were told to cover up. As we stepped back into the sticky humidity, donning our new outfits, full length sarongs and button up shirts, we wandered into the grounds of the palace admiring the glittering gold statues throughout. We finished the tour of the grounds with a look at the Emerald Buddha in the Royal Monastery at which stage my modest sarong decided to fall off and bare my barely covered backside to the revered Buddha. Oops!The lure of the Bangkok night life also drew us into it's steamy bosom. On our first night as we dodged a lightning storm we stumbled into a hidden mansion bar down a little side street. This beautiful 2 storey old Thai house was set up as an alternative indi bar, with outdoor furniture settings filling the courtyard lit with fairy lights. We were the only Westerners yet we were greeted with big smiles from the people running the bar, as we found ourselves a place amongst the young Thais sharing bottles of whisky at the tables. We kicked back sharing large bottles of Chang beer and watched the rain pour down outside through the open shutters, loving every moment.
Our last night in Bangkok coincided with the start of Rebel's 30th birthday. Acting on a last minute recommendation from a friend via facebook (what would I do without facebook?!)we headed across Bangkok to Sukhumvit Rd to the Bed Supperclub. Our night was timed with UB Radio's 1st birthday party which saw us paying an exorbitant 700BHT entry fee. However, the bar itself and the music they were playing was pretty damn cool. We kicked on until about 2 or 3am, before managing to find our way home to collapse in bed. We awoke blearily 5 hours later only to start a series of slow moving stuff ups leading us to miss our 11am flight to Koh Samui.
To be continued...
