Bangkok, land of the smog cloud

Posted by Ryan

Heidi and I woke up and went strait to the luscious brekky awaiting us. There was a menu card to fill out and the breaky was cooked up fresh. I was very excited as it was the first peice of decent brekky bacon I had on the holiday. We wondered over to the brekky smorgesboard and among the cheeses, baked savoury treats and other gourmet delights there was some tomato juice, worcestershire sauce, tabasco, celery sticks and a bottle of absolute vodka. Yes that's right, Bloody Mary's for breaky, I immediately mixed myself one to enjoy with the rest of my meal.

We caught a Sawngthaw to the airport and paid 300 bahts. The hotel offered to take us for 250 baht each. The Samui Airport was a private one and was kind of just a really nice looking shack, all open where we checked in. After the checkin we caught a bus/train thing down a road to the gate shack. They wouldn't let me take my beer through as it was a security risk which was highly annoying as the security guard kept smiling and asking if I wanted a beer and I was thinking, "No I don't want a beer, I just like carrying them around wrapped up in my bag for fun!" The airline was touted as a boutique airline and it offered free chocolate, tarts, juices and other snacks, but I was too full from breakfast to indulge. Of course the girls made the most of the free food on offer. (Chris: The nice check-in lady even put us on an earlier plane than our scheduled plane)

After some nice treatment on the plane, moist towels, ice creams and lunch, we landed in Bangkok and this time took a metered cab to the hotel. This guy didn't have the best suspension in the world, but still did about 120kph on a dodgey freeway, passing other cars like they were parked. Little did we know, this guy would be one of the best cab rides we'd have in Bangkok.

After checking in we caught an even more crazy cab to the Emporium shopping center. It was near where we could get a good suit according to the lonely planet. We walked around to a few places to get some quotes. One of the suit pimps yelled out "WHAT'S WRONG?" in disbelief when I went to leave after getting "his best price" despite telling him that I was just looking around. Got measured up at the last place as they all seemed to be about the same price for the quality I wanted, for 5000 of the bahts.

We caught the sky-tram to the MBK shopping center, which is like a Westfield, but everything is fake and or dodgey. Did about an hour of shopping, then had to wait close to an hour for the DVD shop to burn us some DVDs even though they told us they'd only be 20 minutes. After this we waited for a taxi at the rank and were rejected by quite a few cabbies, because us pointing at a map of Bangkok's inner city that's in Thai and English is a bit too hard for them. We got sick of it and just got one to drop us off at Khao San Road, the backpacker district that wasn't too far away from the hotel and walked back.

That night we headed out to Khao San road, this is in the film "The Beach" too. Very popular area for backpackers. I bought some fried grasshoppers from a street vendor, the sauce it was in tasted good, but one of the long spikey hind legs got stuck halfway down my throat and I choked on it. One of the locals informed me that it's a good idea to rip them off and they were a lot easier to eat after that. Everyone tried them except Danae.

I needed to find an eatery to get some beer asap, those grasshoppers were dry and salty as. We found a place called the Hippy-Hi Bar that did a mean Local Curry, although I think I've had it in Sydney and it's called a Jungle Curry. The Hippy-Hi bar offered towers of beer, a 3L plastic tower that sat at your table. It was some good work for us to drink it before it went warm. I even got to wear it as a hat after! In good spirits and full of beer we headed home and Chris decided it would be hilarious to hassle the hustlers on the way home.