Ratchathewi

Bangkok

After agreeing last night to wake up at 8 or 9ish, I woke to Alfie shaking my arm at 10 after I fell asleep without setting an alarm. After a western breakfast, brushing my teeth and covering up in sunscreen, we were ready to go. Sporting my linen temple trousers and new shirt, we stepped outside not far from midday and compared to the day before, I felt like I was adjusting to the heat - the air not feeling as thick.

Our first stop was to the Saket Temple, which we decided against Google maps and planned to take a boat West along the canal. After finally getting to the right side of the canal and waiting for 10 minutes, I suddenly started feeling a bit ill. Fearing the worst, I tell Alfie that I needed to go back to the hostel. A 10 minute walk later, I indeed had caught 'Bangkok Belly' just over 24 hours into our stay - although I hadn't exactly been careful. Luckily, it was nothing a couple of Immodium couldn't help fix - and for now they seemed to have done their job quite well. I'm just praying this doesn't backfire on me.

Now, after trekking BACK to the pier we eventually board and rapidly surf along the canal until the final stop. This is where we meet the main character of the day - Dang. Now this is how to pronounce it, I have no idea how I'd begin to spell it. He's a retired Thai man who lives in Chiang Mai and was in Bangkok for a couple days to see a friend. He asked us where we were from and where we were going and he said that he would be happy to show us around. Sensing a scam, we were on our toes but we felt safe enough for now. We walked and talked our way to a local place where we sat and drank Thai beer. We spend a while talking about Thailand, England, his life, our lives, places to travel. It was a really nice experience and we helped eachother learn to speak eachothers languages. Now, for us it was the very basics and for him it was very specific, mostly we talked about how Northerners were hard to understand and taught him the word 'Scouser' as he had met one before and struggled like the rest of us. But by the end of our drinks, we had a cheat sheet of Thai phrases and had learnt more about their culture than I knew before. He had studied in Bangkok for 4 years learning history so knew the place quite well, even knowing the best places for a Thai massage - both the traditional and special.

He had also studied as a monk for 3 months - something most Thai men do in their younger years so was very knowledgeable about Buddhism and its practices. This led us to a local temple which I'll spare you the long English name where he taught us how to properly pay respect to Buddha. This was a very surreal experience, to sit in a temple next to an ex-monk who I had only met a couple hours earlier and worship infront of a giant pure gold statue. He then lead us to the start of a long boat tour which he highly recommended, which was meant to take us past some of the biggest landmarks in Bangkok. He got us a discounted price and away we went. Before leaving, he had told us to give him a call in Chiang Mai and he would show us around. Apparently his brother owns a Muay Thai gym, and we could get a lesson for free. To be honest even after meeting him this all still seems sketchy, but I think that I'm just not used to Thai hospitality and I've read too many warnings for scams whilst travelling.

Now, enough about Dang, although he may appear more in the future, time for the '1.5 hour' boat tour. First we head along the main river to a canal off shoot. I thought, wow, this is going to be amazing. Immediately then we wait for an hour as the canal's locks had a bottleneck and a very slow turn around time. After having my legs crammed in a seat to small and my ass on a wooden seat too hard I started to think I had wasted my money - although it gave me time to eat my spring rolls we had grabbed before hand. Eventually we got going along the canal and it was super interesting to see the state of the buildings along the canal. A very different way of living to what I had seen before. The temples on the route were cool but it was definitely a whistle stop tour, it would have been better time spent seeing them on foot - which is the plan for tomorrow. After reversing our route and waiting for the lock again, it turned out to be almost a 2.5 hour ride.

After our extended ride, we headed to Chinatown to check it off our list. And wow, what an atmosphere. It was lucky we came during the Chinese New Year weekend as the streets were packed with people mostly wearing red and were lined with various food and merch stalls. Drumming filled the background and the more we explored we found various performances of different scales, ranging from 1 person with a guitar to an entire stage production with film cameras. We grabbed a delicious selection of food including pork noodles, fresh coconut ice cream out of a coconut, and a pomegranate juice drink.

After eating all of our yummy food we made 1 final stop before heading back to our hostel. I want to be clear we did not partake in any activities, purely an exploration of a famous part of Bangkok's culture - the red light district. And I'm not sure what I was expecting but it wasn't as crazy as I imagined. Maybe we went to the wrong street, or on the wrong day but it definitely wasn't as absurd as I expected. With a few ladyboys spotted it was time to head back to Pinto Hostel.

One thing we had learned today after making a stop in the tourism office is that our lack of planning loosey goosey style of travelling was costing us more than we had hoped and could soon prove troublesome with transport and accommodation especially as the full moon parties down South began to book up accommodation. While we decided to plan the rest of our time in Thailand when we got back, we only made a vague plan for the next 2 days before Alfie went to bed. And that's where I sat writing this before a Kuwaiti dude from our hostel started chatting with me about his last 30 days in Thailand. I'll spare you his details but he seemed to go to the randomest places and showed me SO. MANY. PHOTOS. AND. VIDEOS. I was happy to talk but why is this man showing me a 1 minute video of someone trying a piece of candy. Anyways... shower had now time for bed.Read more