We’ve been in Thailand for 6 days now and it seems like a great place. Travelling is so easy here compared to China. A lot of people speak English, and if they don’t generally we’ve found you can get by with some smiling, gestures and some basic Thai phrases as everyone’s friendly.
Bangkok was a brilliant mix of really glitzy Wats, hot sweaty days walking around and fantastically tasty, cheap street food! We even went to the Cinema! It’s nice to see how temples vary from country to country. Thailand’s are almost gaudy in their brightly coloured shininess but we’ve taken quite a liking to them. At the moment we’re in Ayutthaya, just North of Bangkok where the Wats, Prangs and Buddhas have not been restored but instead left to naturally fall down and deteriorate piece by piece. It’s quite a nice change and it’s all on such a small island that we hired bikes and cycled around.
When we first arrived the backpackers Mecca that is Khao San Road in Bangkok reminded us of a tourist resort in Spain but tightly compacted in two or three roads. Everyone was speaking English and trying to entice you to their bar with Thailand’s strongest cocktails, white faces surrounded us, hippies who were absent in China had returned, street stalls were selling fake branded goods, fake ID’s and Diplomas could be bought. In short it was quite relaxing to be somewhere so familiar, yet different!
The Grand Palace was a real highlight in Bangkok and I particularly enjoyed the Vimanmek Mansion Museum or the King’s old Palace which has 81 large open rooms that enjoy a lot of natural light - it’s also all made out of wood without a single nail! The ferries were our favourite mode of transport as you get to see the city from a different perspective, to cross the river to get to Wat Aran it cost us 6 pence each way! We also caught the ferry down to Chinatown where we saw a huge market selling everything you could imagine including fake Cath Kidston bags. The street food generally costs us around 60 pence per meal and if you get a beer that’s about £1.20 on top. Not quite as cheap as China’s 20p supermarket beer but it’s still good!
We took a day trip to Kanchanaburi on our last day in Bangkok and as part of our tour we went to the controversial Tiger Temple. We had read all sorts of horror stories from various websites about the Tigers being drugged and mistreated so we went with some trepidation and were even at one time considering not going as we thought it might be too sad. We glad to report that the tigers all seemed to be in good condition were particularly enjoying frolicking in the water to escape the heat. It was a rare and brilliant opportunity to be able to get so close to them and a real highlight of the trip so far!
We’re going to head to Khao Yai National Park tomorrow which is a tropical rainforest where hopefully we will get to see some wild Elephants!
Love Chris & Kat. xxx
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