Whenever you leave enough time to get to the airport I don't think many people plan time for getting caught in the middle of protests in the city centre surrounded by about 200 police in riot gear. Well this happened however with a nifty taxi driver we managed to get out of this 'situation' pretty pronto and he got me to Kathmandu airport with a few minutes to spare. I boarded my flight to Bangkok, the guy sitting next to me was silent the whole way until about 5 minutes before landing he perks up and asks me about 100 questions within the space of a minute ranging from do I have a family to my favourite food and finally finishing off the inquisition with do i have a facebook account...i politely declined his offer of becoming facebook friends.
Last time I was in Bangkok was 5 years ago and I remember being absolutely blown away at how different it was compared to anywhere I had ever been. This time around it was pretty different, I couldn't believe how easy and how western the city actually is, it didn't seem to phase me. Standard asia and the taxi man didn't have a clue where the hostel was and made up some excuse to charge me more, I tried my best to argue he was having none of it, in the end I gave in as the air con of nappark hostel was calling me...I really hope he enjoyed his dinner that night!
I spent a couple of days in Bangkok, eating delicious street food (which now I maybe regret!), taking a ferry down the river to look at the many temples and of course a coupe of compulsary nights out on the shanty town that is Ko Sahn Road. Bangkok is known to be the most humid city in the world, and I can see why, I would wake up sweating, eat, drink, party, walk, breathe and just sweat! By this point it was time to get out of the city and so I headed to the island of Samet a couple of hours away from Bangkok, to catch a tan before town hopping the rest of asia.
A guy i met in the hostel asked if he could come along, yes I sad...but turns out he was a bit of an antisocial knob and so we went our seperate ways at the ferry port on the island. Standing on the jetty wondering what to do, where to stay in order to avoid the guy, luckily two danish girls Line and Trine came to my rescue and so we jumped in the back of a taxi and headed to Jeps bungalows which became home for 4 days. The bungalows were right on the beach, it was perfect. Fine white sand and clear blue sea the temperature of a bath. Beautiful surroundings. The only thing missing semed to be other backpackers! We were surrounded by couples, families and the majority of the population were 60+ year old english men named Terry and John parading down the beach in their hawaiin shirts, open with their belly out I may add, with their Thai bride on their arm. Each to their own!
We managed to find the party though, hooked up with a few other people and after spending the day doing nothing on the beach apart from drinking ice tea to cool down we spent the evening drinking cold beer, cocktails from buckets and eating pretty good food! We challenged a chinese hostel owner to beer pong, after winning the first game we were felling pretty confident however 1 bucket too many and blurred vision lead to an absolutely shocking loss for the second game! There were also a few japanese tourists kicking about in the bar who seemed to be rebelling against everything and so teaching them to do laughing gas was an amusing 10 minutes of our evenings.
The time came to leave Samet but not before another episode of hard bargaining with a taxi man, this time he didnt give in and neither did i and so I walked 20 minutes across the island with my 17kg rucksack in the midday sun and sweated some more. The breeze on the ferry cooled me down briefly and as soon as I was on the mainland i ran in to 7/11 to abuse the air con and pick up cod drinks!
This is all I did in Thailand. It is way too commercial, fun but tacky. And so this evening I took a 12 hour overnight bus up to the Laos border to start a trip slightly more off the beaten track.
