We’re staying just off the Khao San Road and decided to opt for luxury for the first two nights – an £8 a night guest house with a rooftop swimming pool! We’ve now downgraded after carefully identifying the best deals in the neighbourhood and have a lovely room for half the price. It even comes equipped with a window which a lot of the ones we looked at didnt. The only down side is that its on the 5th floor and carrying my rucksack up there almost killed me!
So, what have we been doing since we arrived? Well, mainly we’ve been eating! The food is so good and is everywhere you look, the street stalls cooking pad thai in front of you make it far too tempting to pass by without getting something, and there’s always room for just one more spring roll. Breakfast now means banana pancakes and we’ve become addicted to the fruitshakes and are averaging about 3 a day.
We’ve also ventured out of backpacker land into China town which is one crazy place, neon lights everywhere, a sort of chinese Time Square. The main road is lined with food stalls and the tables and chairs are literally in the road, leaving taxi drivers and tuk tuks to negiotuate around you as you eat your dinner. Im not sure what we were expecting of the food, but certainly not what we saw! We must have walked the entire length of the road, twice, without seeing any food that we even remotely recognised or that looked edible. Everywhere there were large pots boiling away filled with all manner of horribel looking ingredients, being stirred by what im sure were chinese witches. At last we were saved when we saw the word “prawn” on a menu and hurriedly grabbed a table. A bit scared by the horrors of what we’d seen cooking along the way we decided to play it safe and ordered a very boring prawn fried rice and chicken wings (I think dan is missing Nando’s). The Thai farmer sat next to us must have taken pity on our boring tourist tastes as he tried to entice us with the all the strange delights he’d ordered. Unfortunately he couldnt translate what they were for us but im pretty sure one was an eye of some sort.
Last night I discovered my favorite method of transport in Bangkok, the river taxi, you get a scenic tour of the city and avoid the traffic jams and the death defying experience of trying to cross the road. We disembarked Downtown where we were suddenly surrounded by the familar sight of macdonalds, subway and pizza hut. A few two many Singha’s later I am now the proud owner of a “gucci” watch and we are both now fully adept at dodging ping pong balls.
I think that’s all for now, Im eager to finish writing as we‘re off to get thai massages! Its a little treat before we begin the 12 hour bus journey to Krabi en route to our next destination Koh Jum for a mega relaxing week on the beach. Hope you are all well, much love from both of us.
p.s. our thai mobile number is +66843593797 and check out more photos on facebook
