This time arriving Bangkok and its crazy traffic was better than the first time three weeks ago. At least you know the country and how things go. Shared a cab to the city district of Bangalampoo around the traveller scene of KaoSarn Road with two german travellers that just arrived from Germany from the airport. Here I'm staying with Ellen at the Navaja River Side Resort which is our retreat from this crazy busy city. But once I put a step onto KaoSarn Road where most of the Thailand travellers start their journey I figured out I have been in a different world the last three weeks. Lots of party, cheap guest houses, people selling something everywhere and lots of noise. So after checking in I just got some Pad Thai and a Thai massage and watched the scene from a safe place with a beer before heading back to the hotel, spending a quiet evening at the river. The Thai massage was actually the best so far. I figured out that Head, Shoulder and back, sitting in that relaxing chair is the best. After it you walk the streets as if you are in a trance, its so good! The good thing is also, that they shut down the bars and the music at about one at night, so the noise outside dims at least for a couple of hours.
Because Ellen was arriving late on Friday I had the whole day to figure things out and relax. Forget about using public transportation on the streets here during the day! And because there isn't any subway or high train station around the best option is using the Expressboats that leave right at the backside of our hotel at the river. For 15 Baht you can go almost everywhere and its great to figure out this city in a relaxing way. Well, not really relaxing, because riding them is quite an adventure. I figured out that the most dangerous job in Thailand is the one of the guy who is responsible for the hop on hop off management. He has a whistle to signal the captain what to do and jumps on and off the pier with a rope to secure the boat that is then almost crashing into the pier when tied to it. Everything has to go really fast, even if you hit other boats...but its really nice, I saw lots of the city in a couple of hours and then walked back trough the main attraction district to the hotel. Spend the rest of the day relaxing at the rooftop pool and checking the typhoon Kai Tak warning signals for Hongkong, where Ellen had to change for a flight to Bangkok. Gladly figured out that Kai Tak decided to go westwards leaving Hongkong out, so Ellen arrived safely at about midnight in Bangkok. Because there is no public transportation at that time we had to take a cab to our hotel at two in morning after we figured out, that her bag got lost...
Stranding without your bag isn't that nice, but Thai Airlines Baggage Services took over the handling and did a good job finding the baggage within 48 hours. So we spent the first day doing some basic clothes shopping (actually I think the baggage loss was just made up to do clothes shopping the first day :-)) at this crazy huge weekend market called chatuchak market, 35 acres with about 8000 market stalls and 200.000 visitors a day. We inhaled the city atmosphere, using the express boat and the high train for travel and trying to keep relaxed as much as we could in this crazy busy city. Seeing all the food at the market made us hungry, so we went to Siam Paragon, a shopping mall right downtown with an awesome food court. Got some energy there to visit the Jim Thompson house afterwards. Jim Thompson was an American who went to Thailand as an agent for the forerunner of the CIA during second world war and after it became involved in reorganizing the Oriental Hotel and entered the silk business in Bangkok. He also built up a really nice teak house as his residence which is today one of the last really original Thai houses you can see in Bangkok. It was really, really nice and through the tour we learned lots about Thai lifestyle and housing. Did you know the Thai people sleep on the wooden floor? Its better for your back, so thats what I'm going to do tonight...We had a nice atmosphere there because it was raining outside and the dark inside with the green outside really came to its great appearance together.
Today we went up to Ayutthaya with the bus. It was Sunday, so traffic wasn't that messed up and we really made it in a good time. Ayutthaya was founded in 1350 by King U Thong, who went there to escape a smallpox outbreak in Lop Buri and proclaimed it the capital of his kingdom, often referred to as the Ayutthaya kingdom or Siam. Ayutthaya became the second Siamese capital after Sukhothai. The Ayutthaya historical park is the ruins of the former capital of the Kingdom of Siam and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. If you want to dig into Thai history, you definitely have to go there. So we did and arrived at the bus terminal of this very widespread city at about noontime. The question was, how would we get to all the sites? And as always, the answer was popping up by itself. The nicest TukTuk driver ever offered us a 4 hour rental, taking us to all the major places and waiting for us outside. He had this little personal tripadvisor book with lots of comments of all different kinds of people in several languages. The german and the american entries said he was amazing and so we did it. We definitiely had an amazing day with him, he even caring for our food and drinks, telling us things, showing us all the great places even far away of the touristic centre and so at the end we wrote something nice in his book too to let other travellers enjoy his service.
We were also really lucky to experience something very special. While we were visiting the Viharn Noi with the giant buddha statue and were already wondering about all the police around we heard, that a member of the royal family would visit the place in a couple of minutes. So we sat there at the side with students and lots of other people, witnessing the ceremony and seeing the delegation riding in with elephants. All in all we had a really amazing day, thanks to our TukTuk driver. Back at the hotel we were greeted by Ellen's luggage, being delivered during the day. So while I write this Ellen is jumping around in our hotel room full of happiness. And after the daily heavy rain shower is over we might hit the KaoSarn area again to get some Thai food, before we do the grand palace and Wat here in Bangkok tomorrow morning and then head off for Chiang Mai via Air Asia tomorrow afternoon.
