Jam and Bev Go Wild: Sunny Sly Siam

On the 10th November, we left NZ for Hong Kong. We flew into Thailand via Hong Kong, as our Air NZ flight back to London stopped in Hong Kong, so we just extended our stopover so that we could have 10 days in Thailand, and then return to Hong Kong, to continue with the remaining leg of our journey, back to London.

We were surprised by our first impressions of Thailand – it really isn’t an outstandingly different country, there are very few high rise buildings, and they are all very spreadout. In many ways Bangkok is quite similar to Cairo, but without the sleazy men :o) It felt like a mix between Egypt and Fiji.

However one of the first things we did notice, and were quite surprised by, was that everyone has new cars over there – these people earn very low wages, but can still afford new cars – according one of our tour guides, a nice car is a big status symbol for Thais.

On arrival at the airport, we quickly found the bus we needed and transferred to Koh San road – this is the main tourist area of Bangkok, and well worth a look!

A tuk tuk zapping by

Khaon San Road, Bangkok

It is very busy, has lots of T shirt and souvenir stalls, basically a big street market, with heaps of people dying to bargain with you! I was impressed at the range of goods, as in Egypt they had a lot of souvenir sellers, but nothing I really wanted to buy. I think one of the best bits about Thailand is they always have the things you want to buy, for example when you are in a hot country, you want cool drinks and juicy tropical fruit. These are all available in Thailand – we honestly ate so many fresh pineapples and watermelons we lost count, because for 50 cents NZD you can buy half a pineapple, precut and cored! Delicious!

Bev demonstrating how delicious the pineapples were - just before he dropped it on the pavement!

We also enjoyed the cheap vendor food – Noodle soup, fried rice and pad thai could all be purchased for $1.50 NZD, and this was enough for your lunch or dinner – it tasted fantastic, and the best bit was we didn’t get sick from eating the local food like we did in Egypt.

Yummy noodle soup cart

They also have Scottish restaurants in Thailand - With Double Filet of Fishes and Double Big Macs!

We found the people selling stuff at the market good in terms of engaging you if you appear interested but not harassing you (again like we had in Egypt – no one would leave you alone, and it really put you off bargaining with them). They did however get offended when you tried to barging too low with them, but I got over that and just tried low anyway :o) There are quite a few places in Thailand that you can get suits and shirts sewn for you for really cheap prices. The people however seem to never have enough business and it is these people that tended to try the hardest to get you to purchase something from them.

They were very clever at getting your attention; I think their tactic was that as soon as they engaged you in conversation they have you. One guy was particularly clever, as I walked past with this delicious pancake that a street vendor had made me, the guy (it wasn’t immediately obvious what he was selling) goes – “Pancake”, and pointed at my pancake, and I said “yeah, nice pancake” and gave him a big smile, he then gave me an even bigger triumphant smile and said “Nice suit” – damn it how do they do that! He had me sucked in over a conversation about a pancake! Haha impressive!

We meet up with Bev’s cousin Dee and her fiancée Mark at Koh San Road, and got a room at the hotel they were at – at a mere $25 NZD a night it was excellent – a decent bed, air conditioning and a bathroom (with western toilet) is all one needs in Bangkok. We didn’t have hot water, but in that heat, it is an unnecessary luxury, and the fact that the shower is above the toilet seems to be common practice – weird (just had to remember to take the toilet paper out of the bathroom before showering, otherwise soggy paper!).

We explored Bangkok a little, the first night we happened upon a cool market full of the locals (no long noses were around, as Mark and I decided to call our fellow europeans), they say that Thais no longer eat at home anymore because buying food off the street vendors is just as cost effective as making it at home, and this was definitely noticeable at the market – everyone was buying all sorts of cooked delights, including deep fried locusts, cockroaches, frogs on a stick etc.

Mmmm fried bugs

Sausages and toads for dinner anyone?

We weren’t so game as to try these local delights, but we did try a couple of less risky items, such as a sweet meringue wafer type sweet, and the best thing we tried was this lime leaf wrapped morsel, that included a wedge of lime, some peanuts and tamarind sauce – very delicious mix of sweet and sour. We later read in the Lonely planet that they recommend trying these because they are so nice! There was a real carnival atmosphere at this market, and you could pay to play a few games, such as shooting balloons with a bow and arrow, throwing a ball at a level which made a thai girl fall into a barrel of water etc.

We also saw a few temples, however we weren’t terribly interested in these, and there were a lot of locals around because the Thai King's sister had just died, so they were all paying their respects. In some ways this was kinda cool though, because the locals were all making these cool floating flower displays out of flax (or something similar, maybe palm leaves) and arranging flowers on them, they were then placing them in the river, it was very interesting to see this custom – so very different to our own.

Floating Flower Arrangement

The second night that we were in Bangkok, we arranged for an overnight bus to Phuket. In hindsight, we should have read the lonely planet before booking transport, because this will have told us that booking overnight buses from Koh San road is not a good idea, as these buses are actually illegal, and they often don’t take you where you want to go! We had looked into getting a train down to Phuket, but the problem is the train only went 2/3rds of the way to Phuket and then you had to get a bus from the train station in Surat thani to Phuket – however, we found ourselves stranded in Surat thani nonetheless, despite many assurances from our travel agent in Koh San road that the bus was direct to Phuket!

At 6am the driver’s music blared on the bus, and we awoke to a Thai guy asking us which location we were heading to, we said Phuket and he said off the bus! So bleary eyed we collected our stuff and hopped off the bus in the middle of nowhere! There were 7 of us, all hoping to get to Phuket, and we were loaded into a little tuk-tuk truck and taken to a travel agents. We were told that our connecting bus would collect us at 7, 8…..anyway whilst at this travel agents (owned by a woman and her sons), the owner returned to her shop on her scooter, but as she was about to hop off her scooter, the adjacent travel agent came running out of his shop with a broom handle and sconed her one on the head! They then had a rough and tumble scrap right in front of all of us on the road outside the shop! We had no idea what to do or even what it was all about.

The lady was a lot stockier and bigger than the guy she was fighting, so she was clearly dominating the fight, had she not been “winning” so to speak, we might have been more willing to step in and break up the fight. However all of the locals came out to have a look, but nobody stepped in to separate the pair. Eventually the ladies son came out and jumped on the mans head (not pleasant) and the man retreated. A car then arrived with a Thai guy, wearing an English football shirt carrying a very large gun – we started to dack our pants at this point – what the heck! But it turned out that this was the local policeman! He sauntered around, putting on his Khaki jacket, and making play for his gun when the travel agent lady didn’t play ball! The next thing we know, another tuk tuk arrives to pick us up, and takes us to yet another travel agency.

By this time we were getting extremely agitated - so much for our direct bus to Phuket! The next travel agent basically said that she had been asked to have us in her office because of the fight that took place – I am guessing the Policeman told them to get rid of us, (protecting tourism and all that), but this second agent didn’t want anything to do with us, but couldn’t tell us when our bus was coming. In true dodgy Thai styles, she said that for a further 300 baht each ($15) we could have a bus immediately. Now I know $15 doesn’t sound like much but, basically it is the principle of the whole matter, we had already paid for a direct fare from Bangkok to Phuket, yet this lady was trying to wheedle another $15 out of us each!

So we refused, and kept hassling her – Mark and this other British girl even got to the point of sitting right in front of this lady and telling her that if she didn’t arrange for our bus they would be “best friends” for the next couple of hours, and when she ignored them and pretended to write, they asked her “What are you writing”.

I am not sure whether it was this persistent hassling or whether by luck our bus did arrive within 10mins of this constant harassment! But by this time it was around 9.30am! What was interesting was when we hopped in the mini van, there were two Brits already in the van and they had travelled by train (as we had considered), and had been also waiting hours for their bus which they had paid for, but they had buckled and paid the $15 each for an “instant bus”, only to find us joining them! Dodgy thais!!

Another couple we were with had their bags gone through overnight, where the lonely planet had also noted this to be common occurrence while the travellers were sleeping in the upper deck. We decided after this experience that Surat Thani would be our new word for something crap! For those of you who want to avoid this rigmarole I suggest either flying from Bangkok to Phuket (or directly into Phuket from outside Thailand), or they recommend booking your own bus tickets from the national bus terminal.

Anyway eventually we made it to Phuket town, we then caught the local bus (a truck with a crate on the back) out to the beaches. We settled on Karon, which is south of Pattong beach. By this stage we were shattered – we had been up since 6am after sleeping on a bus overnight, we had only had a few snacks such as chips and peanuts that we could buy from a service station to eat, and it was about 2pm, and stinking hot! We found somewhere to sit down and have a meal so that we could try and think straight. After lunch we dragged our luggage along the beach front until we found a place to stay. Mark thankfully negotiated a good price for two rooms for us.

We were surprised at the beaches in Phuket – we had thought they would be crystal clear like the beaches in Fiji, but they were no different to say the Mt in NZ – the water wasn’t a really cool blue, and it wasn’t crystal clear, however it was really warm – just like a bath – it was so nice to go swimming after more than a year!

We had expected to see heaps of lady boys, and young thai girls with crusty old European guys, and we did see a few, but not as many as we had thought. That whole industry is really disgusting, and it is so sad that it is Western men driving the trade - enough said. We were trying to work out how it is one picks up a thai girl, because it wasn’t immediately obvious, but we decided it probably started by asking for a massage or a massar (said really nasally by the thais).

One thing that was particularly funny however, was that the Thais thought Bevan and Dee were thais also – I guess both have quite tanned skin for Chinese, so I assume people thought Mark had picked up a thai girl for “companionship” whilst in Thailand, but what they must have thought of me I am not sure – a crusty European girl picking up a thai boy?? Must’ve thought I was a bit strange! Haha

Mark and Dee and us sitting on Karon Beach in Phuket

We did a day trip out to Phi Phi Island which is off Phuket (an island itself), and has the crystal clear waters that I had assumed Phuket would have. It had absolutely gorgeous beaches, and some of the movie “The Beach” was filmed there.

Phi Phi Island - absolutely gorgeous beach

We feed some monkeys some bananas, and Pepsi (prob not the best idea) and did some really cool snorkelling both off the boat and off the beach– a great day out and well worth it. The day ended with an elephant ride – which I must say was a real highlight for me, they are so incredibly smart. You could buy a plastic bag of small bananas for your elephant if you want, so I did, and of course the elephants know what is in the bag, completely conditioned to the sound of the bag rattling I am sure! So our elephant wouldn’t walk more than a few steps without reaching its trunk backwards for another banana haha! I’m sure it probably knew exactly how many were in each bag too!

Overall we had a great time relaxing in Phuket, it was really nice to lazy at the beach on the deck chairs and under the umbrellas that are all laid out for you to sit on (at a hansome sum of $5 each per day!) I even managed to get a tan! Although not terribly noticeable when positioned next to Bev as he just went super tanned!

The next day we returned by overnight bus again (this time we followed the Lonely planets advice and went to the national bus terminal) to Bangkok. We could tell that the bus was not a scam because it was just full of locals, and the hostess couldn’t speak english! Mark and Dee then left for Chiang Mai, and we had a few more days in Bangkok. We did two day trips, one to Ayattaya – an ancient city, which was once the capital of Thailand, with lots of cool ruins etc. This was great, because as luck had it, we were the only ones on the tour, so we got a guide all to ourselves.

Ayattaya - Ruins

Boat trip along the river in Ayattaya

The other day trip was to the floating markets and Tiger Temple. We thought the floating markets were a bit touristy and tiger temple was very much exploiting tourists for their money, but both were worthwhile, and I am glad that we went.