Big Bangkok (Part 1)

We narrowly missed out on the typhoon that was hitting Japan. It seemed fairly bad in places from what we saw on the news.
Ever since we've left China we'd heard nothing but bad news about them on tv. Funny how we didn't see any of that when we were there. Hmmm.
I'm sick of cities. Some are obviously way better than others but they all have the same kind of things going on. I'm tired from the last week of manic travelling and the 2 hour bus ride in the heaviest traffic yet isn't improving my mood. Welcome to Thailand. This is Bangkok. Oh the joy. And it's raining. Humid. When are we going to Australia!? I don't need another 10 million people milling about me!
At least the hostel was good, clean and friendly. Back to the humidity though and wishing we were still in Japan. We'll start looking around tomorrow, I can't face it.
Next morning we had a cracking, included, breakfast. My mood had improved and we were much less weary. Travelling days are always the worst. You can spend 12 or more hours going from underground metros to overground trains to taxis to planes to buses and back to taxis then walk for an hour just to get somewhere to put your head down.
It was a good looking day though and we felt we could handle the hustle and bustle better after experiencing Beijing. Even so we were instantly approached by a guy claiming to be a police chief. He was telling us all the places to go and things to see whilst in Bangkok and then how much he loved England and so on. Suddenly a tuk-tuk driver appeared and within seconds we were off down the road on a roller coaster ride around Bangkok. This time we agreed a price before setting off! About 50pence for the ride wouldn't see us too much out of pocket!
He ended up taking us to the official, we hoped, tourist information office run by the government. By the end of about an hour we'd booked 3 tours, a flight to the island of Phuket, 2 nights stay on another 'paradise ' island, and a flight to Kuala Lumpur! It actually all worked out just about on budget but we knew we'd spend over on food and the such. Thailand is really cheap but we were willing to spend the cash to see something different other than another sprawling metropolis. We almost felt like we'd been fleeced but thought it all looked really good and were looking forward to getting away from it all.
In the afternoon we took a tuk-tuk ride to a boat which took us along the river, a major feature of Bangkok. Don't bother. The water is mud brown and it's mainly a grim ride. We stopped off, not by choice, at a snake farm. I'd already seen a crocodile on the way there on a river back so wasn't impressed by the ones kept in tiny cages in the snake farm. Other animals such as lizards and monkeys were kept here in tiny cages and I didn't like it one bit. Then the 'highlight' was the snake show! Hmmm. Snakes were taken out of bags and generally prodded and goaded into reacting and lashing out at the snake tamers. It was fairly tight but quite interesting to see cobras, boa constrictors and pythons doing their stuff. Nasty place on the whole.
There's a hidden undisclosed charge for everything here too. You pay for the boat ride, then you have to tip the driver to take you to the platform to drop you off. Then once on the pier you have to pay a 'landing fee' to some random idiot. Oh good. It's all peanuts to us but it's the dishonesty I can't abide.
Right so this is it. We're going to see the giant reclining Buddha statue and the huge Grand Palace drenched in gold. Think again! This is where we got introduced to senders. These guys masquerade as being officials when really they send you off to other places getting kick-backs from tuk-tuk drivers for getting you in their tuk-tuk. "The Grand Palace is closed" we were told. "What?, how come?"
"Half day closing for monks day"
"Oh really!" How gullible were we?!
"Reclining Buddha also closed."
So we ended up getting in a tuk-tuk for the rest of the day travelling round to various pretty cool temples and fairly cool places for about 80pence. It was actually really good but we still missed the major attractions of Bangkok.
Fuel seems to be a serious issue here and tuk-tuk drivers and taxi drivers get fuel vouchers from shops and restaurants for getting people through their doors. At this point I went insane. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to buy a fitted suit. Why I don't know. But we did. It worked out at Top Man prices for a proper fitted suit but as it's now been sent home I'll have to wait til I get back to see it!
After all this we went to get some food, no expense spared here. It's cheap anyway and so far all we've heard is that everybody gets ill in Thailand. I didn't want to take that chance!
Odd thing is here, well one of the many, is that tuk tuk and taxi drivers sometimes will not take you places. This is mainly because the traffic is just so bad they don't want to drive about. When drivers come up to traffic lights they turn their engines off to save petrol. There's a lot of bartering with tuk-tuk drivers but at least it's really cheap.
Bangkok and Thailand is the placed we researched the least. In fact we didn't even read a thing about it. Why did we come here?! The first days we were wondering. Before we got there the rough plan was just to pass through and get the train down to Singapore via a few places on the way. It was about 3 or 4 days train journey which didn't sound appealing. When we learnt about the recent Muslim bombings on the trains it didn't make it any better. So we were happy to do something different and fly to Phuket and with the promise of a fantasy island we were looking forward to leaving Bangkok already.
Hostel wise this was the most friendly place we'd been and we got talking to plenty of people who'd been all over. One guy, Jav, was from Edinburgh and was really hating it Bangkok but was really funny with it. He was fed up with the constant hassle he was getting off lady-boys. There are plenty here though. In fact it's more of a sexual melting pot than I've seen anywhere. Man-women, women-men it's all the same here so why old guys come here to pay for prostitutes I don't know, you never know what you're gonna get!
A few Chang beers and then off to bed to prepare for the next days tour. The bridge over the river Kwai. I didn't even realise it was in Thailand!

Below, a view from the river.