Departing Siem Reap at 1:30pm we flew Air Asia to Bangkok landing an hour later. We jumped in a taxi and were taken to our hostel where we stayed at Khaosan Baan Thai. The hostel was very clean and cosy and was located only 10 minutes from the famous tourist spot, Khaosan Road. The hostel was run by an extremely friendly and helpful Thai woman and had all the facilities you needed; internet, common area, booking facilities and cold beer. The only downside was that all the beds were on the floor and our room had no air-conditioning.
Once we settled in we went for a walk down towards Khaosan Road, found a place to get something to eat and have some cold beers. At the restaurant we met two American girls that were studying in Bangkok and convinced them to put the studying aside and show us the famous Bangkok night life. We went our separate ways, got changed in to our party gears and reconvened at the restaurant where we met. A few cocktails down and I needed some more cash, I went down to the ATM and realised I no longer had my money card, with no idea where it could be we went back to the hostel and searched my room. It was no where to be found so I grabbed a backup and we jumped in a cab to the clubbing district. We started at a club called Above 11, it was a roof top bar located 32 stories up and the view was awesome!
From there we went down stairs to a huge night club, with Ferraris parked out front, awesome DJ's and a saxophone player we all partied until the early hours of the morning. Bangkok clubs were epic.
The next morning I woke up with a sore head, an empty stomach and an empty wallet so we went out to get some food stopping at an ATM along the way. As I went to grab my backup money card to get money out I realised this was also no longer in my wallet. Confused and frustrated we went back to the hostel and turned the room upside down however the card was also no where to be found. I spent an hour trying to calm myself down then an hour trying to cancel both my cards (luckily with no money missing). Once that was done, thankfully Adrian agreed to lend me money for the rest of the trip in which I would pay him back once back in Australia. We later worked out that the most likely cause of the lost cards was due to the fact that in Thailand the ATM machines give you your money before your card, this is the opposite in Australia so I would have most likely grabbed my money and walked off and the ATM swallowed my card. I think the most frustrating thing was is that I travelled around Europe for 8 months not losing a thing and then losing my only two money cards on my first night in Bangkok. "Bangkok has you now!"
After all that was sorted we went for lunch and walked down towards the river, I lit up a cigarette in a park and was quickly told off as it was a non-smoking park. The person that told me off ended up being the most helpful person we had met on the trip. He helped plan our next few days in Bangkok, told us how much tuk tuks should cost and made us aware of a few of the scams. His first suggestion was to do a tuk tuk tour of the city and then get the public boat to Chinatown.
Our first stop was the giant golden Buddha When we walked in through the gates a guy convinced us to buy "freedom birds", they are supposed to bring you good luck and freedom to your life however we were quite happy to pay 10 baht and let these poor birds fly free. Ignore the graphic nature of Adrian's t-shirt :)
We then went to the White Temple, here you are meant to make a wish. When we arrived at the temple there was one guy inside that happened to be the owner of the temple, it had been passed through his family for generations and those that had passed were all buried in the temple walls.
Our driver then dropped us that ferry terminal where we boarded a very cramped public boat and cruised down the river passing the Golden Temple on our way to Chinatown.
We got lost in Chinatown for a couple of hours, weaving through alleyways and dodging market stalls and vendors before getting a tuk tuk back to the hostel. When we arrived back at the hostel we met two English girls who were really keen to check out a famous Bangkok ping pong show. We didn't hesitate to join them.
We got ready and then jumped in cab to take us to the red light district, here there are hundreds of places hosting ping pong shows, go-go bars, dominatrix shows and even live sex shows.
We were warned about the scams here, being advised not to pay entrance fees and to always be aware of ways that they will try and con you for your money. We quickly fell in to a trap. When we hopped out of the taxi there was a guy waiting for us, he convinced us to come to his bar for a ping pong show promising there were no door fees and everything was legitimate. After firing a hundred questions at him we decided to go with him. When we entered the club everything looked ok, there was no door fee and a ping pong show was in progress, as we sat down we were offered a beer, we all said yes thinking they would be the usual 15 baht however they were 500 baht each! We quickly declined the offer however because they had opened them they would not let us leave the club demanding 2000 baht. The girls pushed through the heavy weight female bouncer however Adrian and I were pinned. We continued to decline payment of the drinks and the female bouncer was only getting more furious, by this stage we had the attention of the whole club and the female bouncer was on the phone threatening us that more heavyweights were on their way. After 10 minutes of arguing we managed to come to an agreement on a price and we were let out of the club with our beers.
Overwhelmed we sat down to rethink the idea waiting for our heart rates to slow down. During this time we were greeted by another person trying to entice us in to their club. They allowed us in with the beers from the other club and the crowd in here seemed a lot more normal. We watched the ping pong show which involved all types of craziness, I even got on stage and held balloons while a girl shot darts at me and popped the balloons.
After a few drinks and not fully satisfied we went on the search for more, this was Bangkok after all. We found a dominatrix club that had a live slave and S&M show however it was out of our price range, the owner then told of us of another underground club he owned that had live sex shows. He took us to a taxi who gave us a free ride across town, down a dark dirty alley way where we walked in to what looked like a restaurant, we were taken through the restaurant behind a curtain at the back where there was a bar setup with a stage and poles in the middle surrounded by chairs. Here we had front seat live action of a Thai sex show, it was pretty crazy to say the least.
The following day we had booked a full day tour to Kanchanaburi to go Elephant riding and pat tigers at the Tiger Temple. We had only had about an hours sleep after the previous nights adventures however the excitement of seeing these amazing animals kept us going through the day.
Our first stop on the tour was the Kanchanaburi war cemetery, war museum and the infamous Khwae railway bridge. At the cemetery there are 5,084 Commonwealth casualties and 1,896 Dutch war graves of the Second World War buried or commemorated here.
The notorious Burma-Siam railway was built by Commonwealth, Dutch and American prisoners of war. During its construction, approximately 13,000 prisoners of war died and were buried along the 424km railway. An estimated 80,000 to 100,000 civilians also died in the course of the project.
We then went elephant riding and bamboo rafting in the jungle. It was an amazing experience being on the world's largest land animal, yet so humble and gentle.
We then had a very tasty buffet lunch before stopping at a waterfall to cool down on our way to the Tiger Temple.
The Tiger Temple was set on a huge landscape similar to what you would imagine a savanna to look like. There were loads of animals roaming free around the park including; boar, deer, water buffalo, donkeys and the odd tiger. There was one main area where you could have your photos taken with the tigers for free. The park has a number of volunteers from around the world working there and they are adamant that the tigers are not drugged, I am yet to decide however they do seem very sleepy which the park claims is from the heat and being cats they sleep for 18 hours a day. I got the photo's anyway.
We arrived back in Bangkok around 6pm and decided to head out for another night in this awesome city. Keeping it local, we spent the night in Khaosan Road. Khaosan road is a street lined with bars, clubs and market stalls. You will not be able to walk more than 2 metres without someone trying to sell you a tailor made suit, counterfeit accessories or cockroaches and scorpions from the hot stand. While drinking a tower of beer the famous singer of the Gangnam Style song came to our bar with cameras following him, this song was absolutely thrashed all through out Asia but it was one song I knew how to dance to.
On our way to the next bar and feeling a little tipsy we decided to try some of the interesting food on offer, we tried scorpions and cockroaches. We spent that night at a couple of clubs, drank a lot of jugs and met an awesome fish that would talk to you when you went up to the glass. Can someone please tell me what kind of fish this is, I want one!!
The following day we went to the MBK shopping centre. It was a massive 5 story shopping mall, as well as having legitimate shops it also had hundreds of market stalls selling counterfeit items. I didn't buy anything hear but Adrian walked away with a few belts, sunglasses and some tailor-made suit pants.
As we were leaving the mall a tuk tuk driver approached us offering a free ride back to our hostel if we stopped and looked around a tailor-made suit shop for 5-10 minutes. Adrian was hesitant however I was quite keen as I have a wedding coming up soon. I managed to convince Adrian and we were taken to a suit shop called The Oriental Galleria. As we walked in we were quickly ushered up stairs by a very convincing sales man, we sat down and were given water and magazines to browse through with pages full of actors wearing perfect fitting suits to choose from. I was an easy sale and was stupid for not bartering, paying 10,500 baht ($300 AUD) for a three piece suit with a shirt and two ties. A lot of other places were offering suits for 3000 baht or less however the suit fits and is made well. After I got measured up I was told to come back in the morning to have an initial fitting. We were also flying out to Phuket that day so the salesman said he would be quick and ship the suit to our hotel in Phuket free of charge.
That night we went out again in Khaosan road with a friend that we had met on the Tiger Temple tour, again we drunk a lot of jugs and partied the night away!
Today we were departing Bangkok at 1:30pm to Phuket however we still had to go back to the tailors for a second suit fitting. We thought we had given ourselves plenty of time leaving the hostel at 9am but it did not turn out this way. We were mucked around for 2 hours at the tailors and then jumped in a taxi that purposely got lost, doing laps of Bangkok for an hour which we ended up doing a runner from. We got back to our hostel at 12:30pm (the time we had to check in at the airport) and were still 30 minutes away. Our hostel owner called us a taxi who happened to be really nice and drove 130 kph all the way to the airport. When we arrived, the check-in desk had closed and we were unable to check-in our bags so we found out our gate number and sprinted to security, by this time it was about 1:20pm. We had tonnes of illegal items in our bags because we usually check them in and had to get them searched and scanned several times. Eventually getting through we were convinced we had missed our flight and sprinted for the gate which just so happened to be at the opposite end of the airport. Half way through the terminal Adrians bag exploded and clothes went flying everywhere, we grabbed what we could dodging people along the way and finally made it to the gate with 2 minutes to spare. What a rush!
We arrived in Phuket at 2:30pm and got a shuttle to the resort. In Phuket we were staying at the Baan Laimai Beach Resort in Patong Beach. The resort was really nice, located only minutes to the beach and Bangla Road. It had a huge swimming pool that was setup like a moat around the central sunbathing area, poolside bar and modern rooms with balconies overlooking the pool. This resort was also the death of us so to speak. On our second to last day, Adrian and I ordered western food for the first time, a cheeseburger and steak sandwich and both ended up getting bed ridden with food poisoning for our last two days until we had to check out to return to Australia.
While in Phuket we went out our first couple of nights, the first night we went to a bar called Seduction. Every night Seduction offers a huge western only party with an open bar from 10pm - 12pm for 300 baht. Adrian and I did not like Phuket (Patong Beach) at all and preferred the surrounds of the resort. Phuket was very similar to the Gold Coast in Australia and was overrun with overweight bogan Australians the only difference being a whole lot of Thais' constantly hounding you to go in their tuk tuk, buy a suit or come in their bar. From what I have heard I would recommend going to Krabi beach or staying on Phi Phi Island instead.
The one day we weren't bed ridden or lounging by the pool we ventured on a tour of Koh Phi Phi and the surrounding islands. The islands were beautiful and very picturesque. I will leave you with some pictures of our tour of Koh Phi Phi and the surrounding islands.
Maya Bay below where the famous movie "The Beach" was filmed.
Hope you enjoyed reading about our short trip to South-East Asia, there is still so much to see. Would love to visit the beautiful beach of Sihanoukville in Cambodia, the north of Thailand, Laos and North Vietnam however the next adventure is yet to be decided..... see you back here soon :)
