Our friend Por had half a day of work left before his vacation. Nadine and I were left to fend for ourselves for the first time in Bangkok. We wandered down Silom rd. and followed the swarms of people as they gave us an indication when it was a little more safer to cross the road. After sometime we sat down for a quick bite to eat. We had little breakfast samplers, mini croissants, cinammon buns, etc.. for about 10 Baht(~$0.30) each; simply delicious!
Traffic in Bangkok truly is one of the worst in the world. Cars, Taxis, Tuk-Tuks, stray dogs, stray people, everyone is on the road and no one seems to obey the most basic of traffic rules. You can expect your cab-driver to get you where you need to be however he needs to drive you there.
Need to borrow the oncoming traffic lane for a while? Go ahead. Tired of waiting at this busy street and this red light? No problem. I could go on for hours, but the great thing is that the Thai all seem to play this game and people don’t seem to get mad at each other as easily as I could imagine Westerners.
After we met up with Por we went to MBK, a massive 5-storey shopping complex. This place has everything you could ever want to bargain for Clothes, Illegal Software, an entire floor devoted to Mobile Phones, food constabularies. You are sure to get lost a few times during your stay. At one point we left Nadine to get her Acrylic nails done and Por and I g
ot completely lost and ended up on a different floor than we started without using any escalators, elevators, or stairs; This isn’t a lateral thinking puzzle, it’s just Thailand.
Leaving the hotel for the night we were approached by one of the more officious looking people down by the front of the hotel. As always in Thailand, everywhere you go everyone asks if you need a taxi. We took advantage of our native Thai speaker and asked him to ask for a taxi for us. To our shock, he was told 400 Baht for the trip to Kao Sarn road. The trip should only cost about 80-90 Baht, and after the man realized that Por was indeed Thai, he quickly turned around and stopped talking to us.
Kao Sarn Road - Literally ‘Rice Street’ this is where the late night action is, the street is full of foreigners and lined with bars. You can even buy Fake IDs here if you want too! The first ‘bar’ we went to was at the bottom of the street and consisted of tiny stools and a cooler on the side of the street. Apparently, all of these side-street businesses in Thailand pay collection monies to local landlords, usually government themselves.
When midnight came around the owner shuffled people off of the street and onto the sidewalks only. One particularly tipsy patron was overheard questioning the owner why they weren’t told about the ‘upstairs’ bar and why they had been kept downstairs the whole time. It’s funny because the two ‘levels’ were street and sidewalk. Maybe it was something in his vodka-redbull bucket he was drinking?
I wish I could show you the pictures of Kao Sarn that I took but unfortunately my camera went missing. Surprisingly, I made it through the entire inebriated evening without losing it. It was only when we returned to the hotel and got out of the cab that we left it behind.
What an ordeal. Por called the taxi service but none of us remembered the taxi# so we had to describe it. It did have the distinguishing characteristic of having a batman symbol painted on the rear-view mirror. Later in the night the taxi help-line called him back and interviewed Por live on Bangkok taxi radio about our missing camera!
Regardless, it appears as if the camera is not coming back so Nadine and I went out and picked up a Canon Ixus 850 IS. So instead of Kao Sarn, enjoy this random pictures of Bangkok and me looking smug.
Some Australian Travel Agents don’t think that it can snow in Toronto because it is down “too low”. Well, this wasn’t quite taken in Toronto, but we’re actually a bit little lower. All the best from my Igloo up in Canada!
Subscribe (RSS)