Day 1 - So far so good
Barely alive but up early thanks to jet lag and the character building building next door. So we decided it was an opportune time to check out the random alleys around our place. Really interesting little shops littering every street. Pop up tents full of all kinds of shirts and touristy stuff. Thus far, my favourite being the shirt featuring a naked girl in the nun habit twisting her own nipple. Classy.
Tuktuk drivers are everywhere in their strange scooter modified into a passenger vehicle and decorated by what could only be a taxi driver with a love for the same visual aesthetics as Macho Man Randy Savage got his hands on every knickknack ever owned by any south East Asian grandmother and went to town on this strange vehicle. They all offered the best deal but it’s only available today! Right now! Never again!
I was also gifted a new nick name from one of the drivers looking for my attention. “Hey Mr Long hair! Mr Long hair! One minute!” I kind of like it.
We took a tourist river boat down stream to the fancy-pants district. The driver was hilarious. Both polite and rude at the same time with his consistent refrain of “hurry up please” at every stop.
At the fancy pants Shopping Center, we tried to find some sunglasses for Maggie. Wandering into the only expensive sunglasses shop we have seen so far, we were greeted by a young lady who seemed unable to end a sentence without the word “madam”. It was nice to feel fancy lol.
Leaving there and breaking that poor girls heart by not buying anything we were on to find sunscreen to avoid a swift and crispy death. Soon to discover that every skin product here seems to bleach your skin as well. A little unnecessary as we are both already white as the freshly fallen snow and getting any whiter seems counter productive. It took a while but we found some normal stuff and we were back on our way.
After walking around through some beautiful alleys and smelling that jungle smell the entire city seems to have, we were given some helpful advice by a nice scam artist selling river boat tours. After bargaining with four separate people, we finally decided to give it a go and went for a canal tour in a long boat.
Turns out this was not to be. We actually ended up in a slow portly boat which, in a nice and interesting turn, was piloted by the only female boat driver we saw out on the water all day. She took us to the canal we were supposed to go down and said the canal water lock was closed and we could wait or go to a small river. We were a little choked about the switch of boats and now being told there was another change led to me giving the lady a reasonable but firm earful.
We did end up sticking it out and waiting on the water lock which was actually a great happening because it led to some amazing photos. The state of the river was appalling. Garbage everywhere and somehow a fish farm in it, which I can only assume will birth the next swamp thing or Godzilla style creature.
The wildlife, however, was incredible. We saw 6 giant lizards and incredible birds. One that was quite frequent looked like a tiny white heron. One even decided to test his luck bouncing up to a lizard and we were damn close to seeing some real planet earth shit go down. It was lovely.
We also saw houses built over the water on the river with literally no thought given to sustainability or building codes. Some older ones were half in the water already as their supports, which were often just a couple 2x4’s, slowly eroded into nothingness. The ingenuity and lack of forethought was truly something to behold.
After shitpacking another water lock full of boats we were back home to relax and grab some dinner.
I feel an early night is in order as we are a tired sloppy mess.
Tomorrow is another day.