Phuket...the return

Phuket is much busier than I remembered. I'm sure it's the same but after Phi Phi island this place seems rammed.
At least the beach is still relatively quiet, at 3 kilometres long I'm not surprised. The sand is a soft flour-like consistency and with the intense heat the water is soo soothing. But don't forget, as we kept being told when we booked the trip, that this is rainy season. So what? It's hardly rained all through Asia. Here it rains once a day, at about 8 o'clock, for about half an hour, and it feels great. If this is low season then I think I'm coming back at this time!
At night we ate like kings on our freshly picked out steamed sea bass and pondered the amazing differences of Thailand. Then realised we were half pissed due to Chang beer being 6.4% here! Blimey! The Thai people really know how to do things!
It was time to move on yet again, this time to the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur. But looking back at Thailand is great. The place we researched the least but surprised the most. The one-side dishonesty to the other-side total truth. Bangkok is the sex industry capital of the world and Phuket also has enough to keep any sad old man happy. You can also watch a bit of Thai boxing, they promote fights by driving round in a truck fighting the day before!
Bangkok had great buildings but a grotty underbelly and not a great deal to recommend. Phuket is a good location to visit the islands off the east coast of which Phi Phi really was amazing. Would I go back? To Bangkok? No. Phuket? Sort of. Phi Phi Island? Tomorrow in a shot!

As a side note, it turns out that not so long ago the same airline we took to Phuket, One-2-Go, crashed there. Quite why there is a huge sponsorship deal running with Manchester United I don't know, the stewardesses even wore Man U caps! It was a low budget airline but didn't seem too bad but you never know. Whilst in Bangkok we also saw one of the biggest plane crashes in Brazilian history on the news......from the same airport we fly out from in November.

Big Bangkok (Part 2)

An incredibly mental day followed. We knew very little about the tour we'd booked, just getting out of the city for the day sounded good enough, but what was to follow was totally unexpected.
The day started in the small minibus with a couple of guys from our hostel, Eric the German and Matt the Aussie. Both sound guys. The main part of the trip was to visit the bridge over the river Kwai, as made infamous from the movie in the 70's I think.
First stop was a graveyard of British soldiers and other Commonwealth forces that helped fight in the war and prisoners of war held at the river Kwai. There were loads of graves but the stop off wasn't that interesting, it turns out it was mainly so that the tour guides could sort out the groups of people in different mini-buses depending on what they'd paid for as part of their trip. Confusing? It turned out to be, all day. We were then ushered into a different mini-bus for the 2 and a half our drive to the bridge.
It's not hard to notice in Thailand that they have pictures of the king everywhere, massive shrines in the middle of the motorway and they often wear bright yellow t-shirts with the king's emblem on it. Fair enough I suppose but we did hear of a drunk Swedish bloke getting 10 years in prison for defacing a poster! He got out in far less than that, with a pardon from the king no less, but they still take the king, and their love for him very seriously.
So we arrived at the bridge and to the pathetic attempt of a war museum they'd erected near-by. It was a horrible grotto of a place with toilets straight out of a zombie flick. Not only that some of the displays were atrocious. I noticed a wall of coins and notes, supposedly taken from prisoners of war at the time but there was at least 20 50pence coins from 1980 in there! Shoddy. I read a large notice about the history of the bridge and the hardships the Japanese put the pow's through in building and rebuilding it. It kept being destroyed because it was a valuable supply route for the Japanese war effort. But the torturous conditions the prisoners were under were awful. Right at the very end of this display it actually read and I quote(sort of), 'Although around 300,000 deaths occurred here it was not all for nothing. Because now the bridge is a famous landmark and many tourists come to Thailand to see it and learn about Thailand.' Oh well then. It's all alright because Thailand is now a tourist destination. Mental. There was also a lot of emphasis on the destructive Americans and their bombs, even dropping them on their own prisoners - due to the Japanese sending the pow's out onto the bridge thinking that allied forces wouldn't attack it. Lovely.

The bridge itself was ok but very busy to walk across. Health and safety officers would clearly have a heart attack if they saw the huge gaps people were strolling across though.

However, the countryside is amazing. Thailand is such a lush place with rolling green bushy hills and the humid climate to go with it. There's no denying its beauty.
As we walked back over the bridge a train began its journey across. A train!? This thing looked like it could barely carry 20 people! Rather them than me. Let's go.
Back in the mini-bus with another set of internationally confused travellers. This tour was run in conjunction with many others and swapping and changing about was clearly the norm. We had no idea where we'd end up next.
Oh good lunch. We heard that everybody gets ill at some point in Thailand. I really didn't fancy that at all so at the fly infested buffet lunch I stuck with rice. The safe mans choice. Besides, luke warm wobbly meat is bad enough without the internal fluids of flies added into the mix.
The 'restaurant' itself was floating, not quite a boat but floating all the same. I'm sure they charge extra for this ramshackle shed on water. The water is pure brown too, but I think that's mud sediment so I'll let them off.
What next? Oh of course, lets get on an elephant and be ridden around at the behest of an 8 year old boy! Still, you just get on with it. Spot on scenery, even if I felt a bit queasy with the lolloping elephant pondering around wondering whether to follow the boys commands or walk towards a yummy looking tree. Often he chose the latter. Uncomfortableness aside and onto our next fun filled adventure. A bamboo raft ride along the river. This turned out to be superb. A real relaxed cruise along a beautiful river on a half submerged bit of wood tie together with elephant eyelashes, probably. It's was excellent just taking in the views and discussing the oddities of travel with a group of Americans by our side. Cracking. And best of all he was the only guy, the raft man that is, who didn't asked for any tip at the end. My type of ride. A highlight of the day, especially when the American next to me fell right through is feeble bamboo seat. Excellent.
All in a days work. What next? Oh tiger temple you say? Hmmm oh good.
We took another minibus to a waterfall which did look pretty stunning but mainly the stop off was to change people into different mini-buses again. After a quick look round we were off to the tiger temple. Now I'm no friend of the animals but I don't like to see cruelty either so I was wondering what to expect.
Upon arrival we were told we would have to pay 300 baht to enter. No way! I refused point blank declaring it was all part of the trip we'd paid for. I had noticed that our tour 'guide' was hanging back slightly to see if any of the tour group would pay. This was because he had the money to pay for everybody in his hand but wanted to see if he could pocket that and let the tourists pay the entrance fee. Once I said I wasn't going in he came forward and said he would pay for us. Dodgy.
We'd heard a few different things about the tiger temple, some good some bad, the main being that it had been featured on cable tv as being amazingly good. We also heard that instead of monks putting the tigers into a calming trance, as was the official line, it was more a case of slip them a few sedatives so the daft tourists can have heir photos taken with them.
I'm not sure either way what was going on but I had my photo taken with a couple of tigers anyway, not that I was too interested as I thought at any moment they could turn on me and bite off my important bits. The park itself was pretty good though, it was like a safari park with loads of animals running wild...right next to you. "Oh is that a wild boar running towards me at 20 miles an hour?" It seems so.
And so the last visit of the day was over and the disorganised chaos of this tour can finally come to an end on the way back to Bangkok. Oh no. We waited around while a tour guide tried to arrange what bus we'd be going in. One of the drivers did not look pleased. I figured this from the pretend Thai-boxing kicks, the moaning voice and the repeated slamming of his fist on his van. Guess which driver was ours? Even so we were on our way and back in the same bus as Eric the German and Matt the Aussie. This time we also had the Americans we'd chatted to for ages and a seemingly insane bloke from Finland. Another Aussie couple joined us at the last minute as they wanted to be dropped off just outside Bangkok. So far soo good. Then the rain started. This was proper rain streaming across the carriageway. Why I chose to sit in the front for this 2 and a half hour journey I don't know. The driver was constantly fidgeting about under his seat whilst answering his mobile. Fine I thought. It's only total monsoon weather. We stopped off at a petrol station for snacks and drinks. And, as it turns out, so the driver could disconnect the accelerator cable from the pedal. This was so he could accelerate using his hand pulling the cable. Hmmm. Then the Aussie couple started getting agitated about whether the driver was dropping them off or not. He refused to say and was clearly agitated himself. His phone never stopped ringing and using the cable with your hand to accelerate clearly was hurting his hand......whilst answering his mobile phone.....and driving in full on rain. This was becoming a nightmare. We stopped again and the Aussie bloke got out to confront the driver. This ended in a load of pushing, shoving and shouting and half punches being thrown. Oh please end this joyous day! But no, we ploughed on. Eventually we got into Bangkok but with still a way to go. The driver pulled over at what looked like his mini-bus depot to see if he could change vans but it was too late at night. The mental Fin, Eric the German, Matt the Aussie and us had had enough. We got out and all crammed into a taxi, four of us in the back. They were cheap anyway and we'd had enough excitement for one day to carry on with the mentalist mini-bus driver. We hit traffic, Bangkok style. Heavy and nothing moves for 10 mins or so. The Fin guy in the front is trying to persuade the taxi driver to take some side roads and swerve in and out of traffic once we get moving. Unfortunately the driver took his advice......only times 10! The guy drove like I've never seen before, except in Hollywood movies, swerving at breakneck speeds in and out of traffic like a total nutter. He floored it and everybody when sheet-white. I felt ill. It was like being stuck in a Playstation game, with 3 other people crammed next to you!
All was fine when we eventually got out at the monorail station, yep Bangkok has a monorail(quite advanced stuff too). Back to the hostel and out for a meal with German Eric and Aussie Matt. A few Chang beers soon calmed us all down but I'll never forget that day. Or the fear!
Blimey, all in a day. I was glad to be getting out of this place the next day for sure!
Paradise here we come, so we've been told.
Below, me and a tiger, niether of us are totally enjoying ourselves!

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.