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| The King looks over everything |
Whenever Bangkok comes up in
conversation I find it impossible not to chuckle at the world’s best named city
and I arrived back into the metropolis excited and intrigued to explore the 21
st
century’s answer to Sodom and Gomorrah. There
seems to be no black and white in Bangkok where the marker for decorum slides up
and down to an appropriate level for you. Anything seems to go and rather than
be hidden away in dark alleys glowing neon signs light up streets advertising everything
from Lady Boy Bars, massage parlours offering optional extras and infamous
Ping Pong shows. Without looking for trouble
Bangkok instead throws it at you. Having
been left alone by Hannah for less than 48 hours I finished my mid-afternoon dental
appointment on one of the main shopping streets and headed next door to watch
the tennis final, only to find myself playing pool with a Thai hooker in one of
the infamous Go Go Bars, I was soundly beaten 3-0. Bangkok (or me, I left undecided) seems to be
a magnet for all manner of excess but looking beyond the seedy side of the city
it radiates energy and it is impossible not to get caught up in the chaos and pace
of life that surrounds you.
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| Soi Cowboy - Made famous by the Hang Over 2 |
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| Navigating the pavement! |
We took a few days away from cultural
activities to catch up with ‘real life’; replenishing our dirty clothes in Terminal 21 shopping centre, relaxing by the pool in our Airbnb apartment and
sorting our paperwork for the new job.
The first four days were spent rushing between the hospital and various
government offices trying to have medical checks legalised for our new job. With this successfully accomplished and with
Hannah safely on a plane to Phuket I was left to see what damage I could cause over
a long weekend. My favourite part of
Bangkok was not the palaces and temples (maybe I was still recovering from
being
templed out in Myanmar) but roaming the back
streets and watching the chaos of life in the city unfold. Trying to squeeze past stalls selling
everything from knocked off Viagra to Tasers as disco tuc-tucs shouted at me above
the symphony of horns and engines provided no end of entertainment. Known as the land of smiles for a reason it
was frenetic but very friendly and I ended up getting lost amongst the narrow
alleys until I emerged at the river bank and Wat Pho, home to a 46 metres long
reclining Buddha and six temples covered in exquisite murals.
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| Wat Pho temple |
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Buying a new identity on
The Kosan Road |
I had been told I had to experience
The Kosan road, described in The Beach as ‘
the
centre of the backpacking universe’.
Walking up the one kilometre street lined with bars and hostels it was
possible to become a crusty hippy complete with shit tattoos and dread locks, a
University Professor with a Doctorate all for $5 or as I discovered when I was accosted in a bar married to a lady boy sporting a moustache and bobbing Adams Apple. Running backwards up the street for safety I decided
to head back to the apartment before I fell into the clutches of Bangkok. The
apartment was sat in the middle of one of Bangkok’s numerous building projects and
behind the famous RCA clubbing street.
We had discovered one of the best restaurants of our trip on the RCA
where a friendly Thai man spoke broken English from his pilgrimage to Liverpool
four decades earlier to pay homage to the Beetles. I decided
to take one of the motor bike taxis through the congested roads for a few
Singha beers and dinner there to recover from my earlier scare. Several hours later I
eventually stumbled towards home when I met a few of the builders who lived in
the temporary estate created from huge metal containers at the side of the
construction site. I was
soon sat in the back of a pick-up truck in the middle of container town drinking
Thai Whiskey from a beer bottle, managing to communicate through the
international language of football with my new friends. In hindsight it was probably for the best
that Hannah was only gone for a few days as it is impossible to ‘do Bangkok’, Bangkok
only ‘does you’ (quite literally if you are not too careful) and we left on the
6am train to the Cambodian border before I could get into any serious trouble!
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