Roaming Bangkok

Its soooo wonderful to see Emma! Its been a whole year, yet it felt like I was just with her yesterday, we could talk all night, about anything, about everything. I was pretty sick of travelling alone, and there's nothing better than having Emma right here constantly reminding me that we need more phad thai and beer.Bangkok is slightly on the mad side. The first thing I saw hopping off the bus was an elephant in the middle of the street performing some sort of elephant trick. Unable to find my guesthouse I asked a motorbike-taxi driver for directions - he cut me a cheap deal and offered to take me there. I stupidly hopped on with my 17kg backpack on the back of his very very small motocycle, thinking that it would be just down the next ally way. Instead we went on a little excursion through the main street circling around cars at the red light and running right through it!! Then he wedged between two gigantic buses in the narrowest space with my huge backpack (I thought that if one of the straps was caught on something we would both be meat pies right now) but phew cutting it fine hasn't killed me just yet.

Emma and I moved to Kao San Rd after a night in Siem Square as its dirt cheap there for accom and just handy to everything. But yeah its a condensed version of everything wacky about Thailand and tourism, see previous post. We've been exploring different parts in and around Bangkok in the last few days, and sampling thousands of interesting food. We have been on all sorts of transportations of different form, speed and costs that really made our minds boggle.

Stuff we've been doing:
Floating Markets
a touristy kind of water canals where traditionally the locals load up their row boats with all kinds of goodies to sell to houses built right on the waters.

Kachanaburi - Bridge over the River Kwai
This is the so called "Death Railway" - The Thai-Burmese railway which thousands of Allie POW were forced to build by the Japanese in WWII, obviously in hideous labour conditions and about 1 in 4 POW out of about 10,000 ppl died whilst building this railway. The Bridge over River Kwai is only a small part of this, but links the railway quite strategially and was bombed several times during the war to stop Japanese advancement into Burma etc etc. Made into a movie, given the household whistle tune, and naturally graduates into a tourist town and a museum.

Tiger Temple
a wild life sanctury set up by monks initially rescuing orphaned tiger cubs, now they have all sorts of animals, I got to pat a tiger, that was pretty cool.

Aruttaya - The Acient Ruins
I'll update on the history soon - but yeah, this place is awesome we had such a fun day there all except being conned by the Thai Railways bureaucrats...

Night Markets & China Town
Where you find the coolest kids and best food in Thailand.

Siam Square
Where more hip youngsters hang out in big shiny shopping centres, lined with boutique shops and upmarket labels. We walked straight into a full blown argument in a Chinese dry-fruit shop in the middle of Siam Square. The customers weren't happy with their bargain and the owners were pissed off that they cursed the shop. Saliva and figer pointing flying around, there were sweat and tears and the whole footpath is gorking at them. I've always hated conflicts but watching one is so much fun - just like watching the Taiwanese Parliament - its almost a fetish.

Thai Massaging
Apart from Emma not being able to walk the next day, it was an overall pleasant experience.