Diana’s comments:
We don’t know what caused it, or what happened, but our first three days in Thailand were wasted in sickness! It might have been the deathly sick looking guy sitting next to me in the plane, but Richard had such a high fever and was almost delirious that first night. After that we sort of both settled into a version of Delhi Belly that we didn’t dare to try out Thai food for the first week! Luckily for us, in Bangkok, there were 7-Elevens every two blocks on our street and a KFC around the corner.
We extended our stay in Bangkok for a couple more nights and felt good enough by the fourth day to venture out. Bangkok is quite the city! People were selling frogs and cockroaches with other meats on the street; the night market near our hotel served up anything you might need; massage parlours on every other block; traffic is unmoving; and and 7-Elevens everywhere!
Scams are another thing we found an abundancy of in Bangkok. They are friendly and will try to help you find directions, only to tell you that the site you are looking for is closed for the holiday (it really was a holiday, but they’ll say that anyways) and to come with them in their tuk tuk for 30 baats each, they’ll show us some other places. Cabbies will not understand the name of your hotel or the place you want to go, will try to get you to negotiate a price, but if you ask them to use the meter, they’ll drive you all over (pretending?) that they don’t understand the map you are pointing at. It was quite fun there.
At Patpong market, we laughed at the “menus” thrust in your face naming shows you can watch (women doing amazing things with cigarettes and ping pong balls etc). Richard had to get a copy of one of those lists, if you are brave, you might ask him to see it.
at the Grand Palace in Bangkok
After seeing the various sites in Bangkok - the Grand Palace with the Emerald Buddha, the reclining Buddha, a longtail boat trip on the canals, the festival where they make little floats out of banana leaves and flowers and a candle and float them down the river at night - we bought tickets to Krabi (in the south) and stayed there for a little while. There we did things like ride an elephant, kayaking, snorkeling around the different islands and swim in the amazingly warm water.
krabi elephant tour
We also booked 5 nights on an island called Koh Siboya. We stayed in a bungalow that had power only from dusk till around 11pm. That means the “room with bathroom and fan” was only a “room with bathroom” all of the other hours of the day. There were also many bugs in our room - I was in a dilemma because it was too hot to stay in the covers, yet too many bugs to take them off. Needless to say, we had many hot sleepless nights. But we survived the heat by not doing anything. Being the only tourists at this particular resort (one of two on the whole island) we had the whole beach to ourselves. The water was very shallow and very hot! Not just warm but so hot it hurts your feet.
sunset at Koh Siboya
The resort employees entertained us a bit by taking us fishing with nets just off the shore. We caught tiny little fish and some bigger flying fish which they served up for dinner. One man climbed a coconut tree to shake out a monitor lizard which they caught for their father’s dinner. Most of the time though, we spent reading in a hammock and watching the hundreds of crabs tidying their holes on the beach.
Richard's new friend
After Krabi, we had no more time, so we went back north to Bangkok for one more shopping day before leaving for New Zealand. We wandered half the day in the 15000 stalls of the Chatuchak weekend market and back to Patpong in the evening to look at all of the fake brand name stuff again.
If we hadn’t been sick and if we’d had more time, I think we would have done more here in Thailand, but I think because we were so worn out from Egypt and India, we didn’t make full use out of the 3 weeks here. It would have been nice to go north to Chiang Mai and also to see Angkor Wat in Cambodia, but we are at least well rested for our next really hectic trip in New Zealand.
June 16th, 2010 at 4:07 am
[...] Well, that’s about it for India. See you in Thailand [...]