Bangkok, Oriental City

We arrived in Bangkok after what seemed like a long journey and checked into the Ambassador Hotel where we met up with Eric's friend Rob from New Zealand. We were too tired to do anything crazy so we took it easy while Rob and some Canadians he met went out on the town. The hotel only had about seven rules, and lo and behold, rule #5 was no durians allowed in the room. Dammit!

After a bit of a rest, Eric and I explored the neighborhood. There were many Indians who lived in the area and lots of Indian restaurants, but since this was our first day in Thailand, we resisted the temptation to indulge in a lamb curry. Instead, we hopped in a cab and headed to a night market in hopes of getting some tasty street vendor food. Unfortunately, the night market was more of a shopping destination with a different kind of menu... Eric was approached every few meters by men holding out a menu with items such as "Pussy Ping-Pong, Pussy Darts, Pussy Cigarettes". We had heard about some of these shows from friends and it was intriguing, but certainly not what we were looking for so we went out of the area and had dinner at a little restaurant/bar. Eric had pad thai and I had a spicy seafood salad all washed down with a Singha beer. Tasty. We were sitting next to a Dutch couple who told us about an island in the south of Thailand called Koh Samui which they described as "paradise", and since we hadn't made any plans yet, we were sold and made a mental note to make that one of our stops. On our way back to our hotel that night, we stopped into a tailor shop and were fitted for some custom made clothing. I needed suits anyways and we figured we may as well get some pants to fit Eric's tree trunk legs.

We met Rob for breakfast the next day and headed to the Cambodian embassy to get our visas -- figured we'd get that out of the way. We went to see the Grand Palace (where the king lives, I think) but had to rent long pants since shorts were not allowed. In some areas we had to take off our shoes (and nearly burn our feet on the tile). It was a stinkin' hot day. The palace itself was quite magnificant -- gold statues, elaborately tiled walls and roofs, and detailed murals. For lunch we headed to "backpackers row", the (in)famous Khao San road. It was packed with hostels and vendors, but we managed to find a little cart selling pad thai and spring rolls. Lunch for the 3 of us cost us $2!

That night we hit the town for a few bevvies and to check stuff out. The area we ended up in was mostly go-go bars, but had some awesome street food. Mangosteens at 90 baht per kilo. Feasting occurred. We also enjoyed BBQ'd skewers and other delectibles before moving on. One intriguing element to the night life in Bangkok is that blind people often have mirophones and portable speakers and wander the streets singing for money. Smoe have the typical sticks with the red strip on it and others are led by people who can see. In one instance, a blind man was being led by another man who apparently couldn't see either. It truly was the blind leading the blind. We're going to hell for sure for this pic...

One of the things we were never interested in, but so many people told us we had to experience, was Thai kickboxing. Apparently, it's different from anything else we see in the western world so we thought we'd give it a shot, but unfortunately, we weren't able to get tickets in time. What's the next best thing? The pussy show of course! That was also something we were never interested in, but we heard from singles and couples who went together and they thought it was "very interesting". So we made our way back to the night market and headed up to Pussy Galore. As soon as we sat down, about 7 girls in bikinis surrounded us and tried to talk to us in their showgirl ways... it was very awkward and uncomfortable to say the least! Finally, they figured out that I was actually Eric's wife and not his hired "lady joiner" and they were not so aggressive. However, this very ugly man-woman charged us an arm and a leg for 2 beers and insisted that we tip the girls so Eric somehow gave them all the money he had in his pocket. It was more out of desperation at that point because we just wanted to be left alone! Anything to make them stop massaging Eric's leg. Poor Eric. Anyways, in front of us, a woman was shooting darts out of her vagina at balloons... and some of the darts landed dangerously close to us. Across the room an English man was yelling that he was going to stop the show right now if he didn't get his money back because the waiter was trying to pull a quick one on him and not give him any change for a beer that he purchased with a large bill. Beside us, one of the bikini ladies that was all over the man sitting beside us slammed down a beer and caused a rucous -- don't know why but it didn't look good. Needless to say, it was time for us to leave the shady joint so Eric and I booted out of there. Been there, done that. We'd never do it again, but when in Bangkok...

At least when we were on our way back from the excitement, we stumbled upon a local fruit guy and got ourselves some mangosteens, dragon fruit and some other fruits that we'd never tried before. They were tasty!

On day 3 in Bangkok, Rob checked into another hotel where he was meeting his tour group. We checked into the New World Lodge, where we were going to meet our tour group the following week. One of the reasons was that we wanted to leave Bangkok for a week but wanted to leave one of our packs somewhere, so leaving it at the hotel we would come back to seemed like a good idea. Another reason was that we didn't want to give the Ambassador Hotel another dime after being slapped with a $40 laundry fee -- that was the price of the room itself! The New World Lodge is about a 10 minute walk from backpackers row, so it had a lot of the conveniences without too much of the touristy bit. We dropped off some laundry for a much more reasonable $1 a kilo. After a quick lunch and a drink with Rob, we parted ways. It was great to see him.

After a disappointing breakfast buffet at the hotel the next day (e.g. soggy pad thai, typical continental breakfast stuff under a heating lamp) , Eric and I finally got the courage to get our feet massaged and try out a Thai massage. It was fantastic, especially for $7 an hour! Then it was off to Koh Samui!