Thailand - Bangkok

Bangkok, what a ride... We're both relieved to have escaped alive, and it was definitely the most confusing, uncomfortable and just generally stressful couple of days we've had on our journey!

First of all, there really isn't very much to see and do in Bangkok. We were pretty surprised by that. Everything seems to centre around Buddha (someone that we're well and truly sick of) or the king of Thailand (who we're less sick of, but he isn't very interesting).

We saw the Golden Buddha, the Emerald Buddha, the Reclining Buddha, and a bunch of other lesser Buddhas. They're all very Buddha-y, with lots of precious metal and stone, and people praying and lighting incense, and monks all over the place doing monky stuff like sitting looking pious, but there's only so much Buddha one can take in a day. We definitely hit our quota and then some. Its hard to take all this very seriously; you aren't allowed to point your feet at a Buddha, but you are allowed to charge money to let non-believers pile in to look at said Buddha and photograph the hell out of him.

We saw the Grand Palace, and had a cruise along the river. People in Thailand really like their king. I mean, they really like their king. I'm not sure why, and I don't feel I can ask them without betraying my true feelings towards its hilarity, so I've kept my mouth shut. There are huge posters of him and his wife everywhere, and people wear yellow clothes all the time, because yellow is his colour (he was born on a Monday, and it seems Monday has been decreed Yellow Day by some higher power that has authority over this sort of thing). You see "long live the king" written all over the place too.

Bangkok is one big scam that everyone else is in on. We didn't realise this, so we were kind of at a disadvantage when the conmen came to collect their money from us innocent little farang (that's Thai for "stupid foreigner"). See the next post for our run in with Voglee Export Tailors, an adventure which cost me over $1000 (although at least I got something for my money!). We avoided the famous gem scam, but nobody warned us about the tailors. After this experience we heeded the advice we'd received from numerous sources, which was basically to never trust anybody on the street suggesting you do something or go somewhere. It was tiring though, being appropriately paranoid...

Siam Square was kind of like our little sanctuary after experiencing the farang-eaters around Chinatown (where we were based) and the tourist sites. Siam Square is the Bangkok equivalent of Rundle Mall. Its just got a huge number of shops and shopping centres and that sort of thing. Young and affluent Thais seem to be the major customers in Siam Square. But really (and we realised something about the merits of capitalism and big business as our feelings crystallised) we just felt safe sitting in a Starbucks drinking coffee and watching people shop. There were so many little barriers stopping conmen from getting to us while we were in Siam Square: there were people everywhere, rental prices were clearly sky high, most of the stores were international chains with reputations to protect, bartering was not the thing so everything had a price tag (ahhh, glorious glorious price tags - you have no idea). We watched two movies at the cinemas, Harry Potter and Transformers, and we spent an evening eating then drinking at Hard Rock Cafe. We really liked the normality of Siam Square, a stark contrast to Chinatown. I think we will stay in Siam Square when we go back after my elective!

So now we're in Mae Sot, which is a calm little city in comparison. We are really enjoying it here, which is a relief since we were both a little nervous after Bangkok. I can safely say that from my experience Bangkok is the worst city in south-east Asia - the people are generally untrustworthy, the place is dirty, there isn't much to see, it has no character or class and the traffic is horrible! Spend as little time as possible in Bangkok, as the rest of Thailand is where you want to be...

I've completely updated our photo album, since we have yet to take a photo in Mae Sot! You can see it here. We've added a couple more from Hoi An, Phnom Penh and Angkor that were overlooked initially, and I've labelled and written comment for them all now.