Bangkok. What a city.

I think I can say that until now, I have never really been to a foreign city. London, Washington, D.C., Brisbane, they are all too similar to New Zealand, with differences in the accents or little things. Here, very little is similar, with the exception of Starbucks, which is still here. It’s a whole different way of living, from language, road rules, to how they move around this city.

When we first arrived at the city, we decided to go down to Chinatown from our hotel by Central Pier. That was an experience in itself, as the boats themselves have ticketing officers who aren’t clearly identified and in which the boats all have different prices depending on the colour of the flag. Once you know how to use it, its fine, but when you’re green in the city, it’s all very confusing. Furthermore, it is quite easy to get away with not having to pay a fare on these boats as there is a level of honesty that is implicit in the system. If a ticketing officer never approaches you, you might not have to pay. We did this once or twice, the ticketing officer looking at us, and then moving on to the next to ask for payment from them. Indeed, getting on, off, and everything to do with the boats is slightly controlled chaos. It certainly is something to be experienced.

Then once we got to Chinatown, it was another shock to the system, the smells, the closeness of everyone and everything, not understanding a single word written or said towards us. I have never found it so hard to figure out what was on the menu, and which was what. In this instance, I wish I did have a SIM card so that I could take advantage of Google Translate and its photo translation capabilities. In the end, we found a place on the main street serving roast pork on noodles in a soup. It was delicious, though incredibly spicy which made my lips burn. Indeed, that is a theme here in Bangkok, with spicy food had each time, lovely and tasty, but goddamn spicy. I swear I might have been able to breathe fire at one point.

Visiting the street and night markets are much the same. The street markets, of which many are dotted around, are varied in their goods, though most of the stalls will be exactly the same, selling the same thing, just with different people who you can bargain with. In some ways, this is slightly disappointing as there aren’t the variety of things that I thought that there would be, though whether this is symptomatic of the markets that we have attended, we don’t know.

The night market though was interesting, mainly because we rushed through it because it was pouring down with monsoon rain. It poured and poured. We thought we would wait it out but after half an hour, it seemed like it wouldn’t so we went out to explore at the Patpong night market, which is where there are the adult entertainment shows with pingpong balls, if you know what I mean.

At one point, we were quite keen to see this, but the rain combined with what we thought the girls were involved in, in addition to the very pushy and persistent door staff, we in the end didn’t do it. If we had though, I imagine we would have been able to avoid the downpour of rain which had us drenched head to toe, clothes clinging to us. Everything is on an express dry to get ready for tomorrow’s journey. Naturally, about half an hour once we got back to the hotel after crossing the river, it stopped raining.

One more post about the temples, of which there are many, and are incredibly beautiful, and then we’ll be at Koh Chang!

EDIT: This post was meant to be posted earlier but our hotel Wifi could barely stay connected, let alone be able to upload posts! Alas, it allowed me to update about the rain. Additionally, I am trying a new way for the posts, we’ll see if it works better.