Thailand (Part 2)

So, we eventually arrived on Koh Samui safe and sound and checked into another very nice hotel... there's plenty of time for cheapo hostels and guesthouses in the rest of the trip but for now, we're still officially on holiday! We stayed in Chaweng on the East coast of the island which was lovely, although still very touristy and Spain-esque. While we were here Matt was quite crook- we think he caught a bug from the diseased backpackers on the bus (urgh!) and so he was confined to bed pretty ill for a couple of days until the antibiotics kicked in. Then, we spent sometime relaxing on the beach in the day and checking out the main strip of bars, restaurants and shops at night. We came across a pretty cool rock bar (called 'Rock Nights')- more authentic than the last one, and spent an ace night listening to rock classics from a funky local Thai band... and it was here Matt discovered he actually liked Oasis and he even requested they play more, which left us feeling very nostalgic about home and everything British... and even the Gallagher brothers... odd!

After a good week or so in Samui we decided we'd had enough of beaches and headed for the bright lights of Bangkok. I'd liked to say that this time we had a smooth uneventful journey but I think that's pretty much impossible here. It took us over 17 hours and it went something like this - minibus to coach, coach to ferry, ferry to coach, coach to bus stop, Tuk Tuk to another bus stop then overnight coach (which stank of pee) to Bangkok with at least fours hours of the fast and the furious film series blasting out of the speakers right by our heads! We eventually arrived in Bangkok at 5.30am the next morning to another hoard of taxi drivers trying to con us. After tracking one down who's meter wasn't 'sleeping' we had another trek to get to our guesthouse which he couldn't find. We finally checked in but couldn't get into our room until after 10.00am (it was now 6.00am and we were VERY tired) so we went to find somewhere for breakfast, which was when we witnessed the pretty horrific aftermath of a road traffic accident where a poor bloody motorcyclist was having a car pushed off his head!

We were originally quite worried about Bangkok because we'd heard lots of people who really didn't enjoy it and recommend you get out of there as soon as possible, but we absolutely loved it.
We started with checking out the most important thing... the shopping of course! The malls and the night markets are just too big to describe - we'd spend hours in them, stop for refreshments and go again and still not be anywhere near seeing it all. We had lots of fun bartering with the stall holders though and ended up having to post two huge boxes of stuff back with still more to go.

Next stop was the Grand Palace home to the Emerald Buddha and the King for some formal occasions. This place was like my dream come true - it was all just so shiny and colourful - definitely my perfect idea of a house with all the mosaic mirrored glass and gold leaf. It was kind of like finding the lost City of Gold!

Then, the Big Buddha which is apparently the biggest reclining Buddha in the world was again pretty impressive.

We also managed to fit in a visit to the Bridge over the River Kwai the Death Railway and the floating markets, all of which were darn fine excursions! The floating market was a good, mad and hectic turn all by itself!

However, our highlight came when we went to visit the Tiger Temple. This is a rescue centre run by monks for animals that have been mistreated or just generally rescued from bad times in the wild. It was here that we got to stroke real life big ass tigers! Wow! It was amazing! They are so big and gorgeous and we even managed to get a play with a little cub! Absolutely brilliant!

And, of course we couldn't visit Bangkok without a visit to Patpong, which was recommended to us by a fair few people for some reason, including my good friend Miss Slater (a primary school teacher no less!). For those of you who haven't already heard of it, it's the famous for it's Ping Pong shows... not the kind played on tables... We went expecting something well, I'm not sure, but a bit more of a family show... if that makes sense? Or, perhaps a bit more cabaret? I've no idea why, but that's definitely not what we got! Somehow we managed to find the seediest place on the strip (well, kind of behind the strip down a dark soi and up some stairs!) with a fair few lady-boys, which by-the-way, we were promised there wouldn't be by the man touting for business on the street?!! Anyway we were greeted by the first act bursting a balloon by something flying out of one of the woman's, well... erm... front bottom!! Sorry, i don't quite know how else to describe it?! Anyway, it was like clay pigeon shooting for pervs!! It was far from the big stage show we were expecting and we far too close to flying debris for comfort!!! The rest of the show consisted of similar acts including, smoking a cigarette, blowing a horn (which everytime we hear one now we think the crazy woman is following us down the street!!), pulling out razor blades, popping ping pong balls into a glass etc etc... All very business like really and it ended up feeling quite normal... until we woke up the next morning and wondered if we'd actually dreamt it! Very surreal..... Oh, and no, they wouldn't let you take a camera in, so no pics :)