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Day 20 – 23rd December 2007

For the most part of Thailand, I actually took considerably less pictures than I did in Laos (so expect less pictures in this entry) – but it’s understandable, because if you take Kuala Lumpur and remove its various symbolic buildings, Bangkok actually looks very similar to KL: the heavy suffocating fumes from vehicles, the incessant traffic that’s synonymous to city life, and buildings and buildings and yet more concrete jungles that get increasingly dull over time.

Not too sure where the railway tracks are, so I drew a straight line from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, where we were heading to next.

Arrived at Bangkok’s railway station at about 6.30am.

Reaching incredibly early in the morning, Siew ate his breakfast at their coupon-based cafeteria while I didn’t feel like eating any due to my diarrhoea problems that seemed to be persisting. At that point in Bangkok, we were as good as lost as we had no maps nor guidebooks to aid us, so as any other relatively new traveller who may be in the same predicament as us, we asked locals we passed by along the way – a lot – and follow signs.

Rising sun in the morning.

I hated the idea of walking with my backpack aimlessly, but as I mentioned before in my previous entry about Siew’s seemingly unlimited stamina, we walked and walked until I couldn’t take it anymore that we stopped by at a bus stop to sit down and rest. And after another kilometre or so, went into this Snake Zoo of some sort to rest – you need to pay an entrance fee (that wasn’t cheap) to actually go inside to see the snakes.

Finally arriving at Lumphini Park.

In fact, we were walking around very aimlessly with only signs to said park above in mind – for some reason Siew decided that we should go to a park. I was quite exhausted from the nearly hour-long walk we had done while carrying our backpacks, that by my standards, it was quite an impressive feat. While inside the park, we sat next to the drinks shop and took turns to nap to watch out for our bags – rested nicely for about an hour plus, if the buzzing houseflies that kept landing on our skins were not taken into consideration.

Done with our naps, we crossed the incredibly busy roads to get to the other side, initially to enter one of their many smaller shopping malls. However, we spotted a McDonald’s and with great joy we entered it and I munched on yet another Samurai Pork Burger.

Another section of McDonald’s called the McCafe – essentially like a Starbucks in that it sells coffee etc, but it also has two computers with Internet connection to use for free! (Only downside is it’ll log you off automatically every 15 minutes, presumably so that other people can get a chance to use as well.)

The McCafe sells cakes as well.

Another thing that came across to me as culturally different than Malaysia’s is how the Thais always give you straws whenever you purchase drinks, be it at 7-Eleven or even pharmacies like Watson’s, even if said drink is just a mineral bottle.

We called our Bangkok host who said that we could go to his house after 5pm, which was why we stayed in McDonald’s surfing the Net or read newspapers and magazines from the very small collection that McCafe had – I had enough of walking while lugging my backpack around, not to mention that the air-con in McD’s was very welcoming compared to the stagnant heat of the outside.

It got so boring that Siew attempted to do crosswords from the newspapers HAHAHAHA.

When the appointed time neared, after checking for our host’s directions to his house through e-mail, we stepped outside and looked around to determine the exact location of the train we were supposed to take. A foreigner stopped by and asked if we needed help with directions and we nodded yes – I was surprised at first at his rather thick Thai accent (with all the noticeable “uh huh”s only unique to Thais), but we later found out that this gay gym instructor had lived in Thailand for nearly 20 years wtf.

At first he suggested that we take the taxi instead which would be more cost-effective than trains, but for some reason the taxis nearby didn’t want to take us to our destination.. so we were back to train again. When we reached Jatujak (Chatuchak) Station, we hitched the correct public bus and blindly sat through it – the female bus conductor (rare sight in Malaysia) kindly told us where to get off at.

Our Bangkok host lives at northern Bangkok, and it was incredibly far away from the city centre. As we wandered around trying to figure out the exact location of his house – made difficult in that there were no road signs, and each house was numbered very weirdly such as “212/15” and “132/24” and made no logical ordered sense at all – I eventually stopped by to ask a local woman, who then asked another person, and by then a small crowd formed around us wtf.

But each of them was very, very friendly – I couldn’t stress that enough. Even hilarious was when they thought we were Japanese – a grandfather approached me asking “Nihonjin desu ka?” (“Are you Japanese?”), and me, taken aback, replied “Iie!” (“No!”) and he looked up at me in the eye and smilingly said, “Wakaranai ne” wtf (“So you don’t understand..”).

While they were busying themselves figuring out the location of the address I gave them (looked like they couldn’t understand the basis of the weird house numbering system themselves), the local woman asked if I have my host’s telephone number, to which I gave them. A local dude used his handphone to dial the number and talked to my host about the both of us being lost in the middle of a low-cost housing estate, and he later told me that my host, Songwoot, would be on his way to pick us up.

While I was chatting with the Japanese-speaking grandfather, another man came along hurriedly with another woman who I presumed had dragged the man along, again asking if I speak Japanese wtf. When I said “Nihonjin janai” (“I’m not Japanese”), I overheard them wondering if we could speak Tagalog LOL.

At that moment our host arrived, completely unrecognisable from his Couchsurfing profile picture ‘cause he grew such a long hair that gave him a more elderly outlook. We sat inside his living room, and while watching the national election news on the telly, we had a long chat with Songwoot – interesting and diverse topics ranging from politics (“the city people don’t like Thaksin, but because he used to give the uneducated rural people money, these people all love Thaksin”) to travelling (his experiences in Paris, where he was chosen by the government as one of the few youths to attend a UNESCO conference).

Time passed by so quickly that we didn’t realise it was already 8pm or so, where he then cooked dinner (merely heated up leftover food), and we went outside to his mosquito-infested compound to eat our dinner – fish, vege, some meat I can’t remember, and later on, sample some Ricard (which I hated) that his previous French guest left for him.

His 14 year old female neighbour Fern dropped by with English questions for us wtf, and her English was so poor it was incredibly hard to communicate, although we gladly taught whatever we knew. Songwoot forced her to practise conversational English with us lmao, as she was shy as well and thus was reluctant to talk in English to us.

Our host has decent English, although for some reason, he has a Thai/American hybrid accent and his attempts at using American slangs (“Whatever man”) made him come across as slightly arrogant, straightforward (not necessarily a bad thing) and a little insensitive.

Songwoot also recommended a homestay programme that he had developed under an NGO he joined, which is at an island, Koh Yao, near Phuket – basically by paying a sum of money, we could stay with the locals and do fishing etc with the locals in the middle of the ocean, which Siew was incredibly hyped up about, while I was more or less reluctant about the idea.

After chatting with Jessica on MSN (through Songwoot’s laptop) about the both of us heading to Phuket the same time she was going to, we slept upstairs in his spare room on a mattress with a table fan – decent enough to sleep.

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Day 21 – 24th December 2007

Our host suggested a bunch of places to visit around Bangkok, but his optimistic outlook on public transportation wasn’t shared by us. We wanted to initially just hitch a taxi to the Southern Bus Terminal, but as the taxi driver offered to drive us around for 1000baht (the floating market that we wanted to go to was about 40 mins to an hour away, plus the combination of local transport that we’d be taking would almost equal 500baht per person), we double confirmed that he would be our driver for the entire day up to at night, he said “Yes yes” and we agreed.

Songwoot’s living room.

Climbing out of Songwoot’s gate ‘cause we forgot to open up the locks with his key before locking the main door. (He later lightly and indirectly reprimanded us saying that his neighbours thought we were thieves and were about to call the police wtf.)

Communicating with our taxi driver proved to be a trying experience – we had a hard time trying to talk to him, and he to us, and that was when knowing synonyms for basic words helped a lot, because it was like trying to talk to a kindergarten kid. But we did manage to get to know him a little better – he supports the political party Thai Rak Thai and liked Thaksin (like what Songwoot told us, the uneducated supports Thaksin >_>), his hometown is in Chiang Mai, he thought “Big army no good” and that he was from a small army fighting against communists thus injured his leg from a battle and now works as a taxi driver, the list goes on.

And the peril of big cities is that it’s easy to mistrust.

Our taxi driver bought two cans of Thai’s version of Diet Coke for us when we stopped by at a petrol station while he bought a reload card for his handphone.

When we finally reached Damnoen Saduak, the overcommercialised place for floating market, Siew got into a disagreement with the locals over their excessive pricing and when locals kept telling us that it wasn’t possible to just observe the floating market without hitching a boat. We managed to get our taxi driver to drive us around to find a cheaper place, and we settled for a sampan that costs 300baht/boat to rent (compared to the 800baht/boat earlier).

Boats loaded with various groceries at the floating market.

The river. There are shops selling the usual souvenirs at the sides too.

Slow trot by the sampan which was good for us – the motor-powered ones were horribly noisy, and zipped past the floating market too quickly.

Colourful array of goods.

This uncle was cooking my lunch on a boat – pork rice.

Siew’s lunch – she also poured waste materials into the river wtf.

The bridge at Bangkok.

We went back to Bangkok after tour around the floating market, which was merely so-so for me. Our taxi driver asked if it was alright if he brings us to some “government-owned jewelry factory” so that he could get some gas coupons, which we agreed to. We later found out that it was really an international class gem exhibition which looked awfully expensive – we left very inadequate with our rather shobby attire amidst topazes and sapphires and rubies and whatnot, although the Thai lady who was ushering us could speak smatterings of really good-accented Cantonese and Mandarin. There were also other goods on sale such as leather wallets and purses and Thai silks etc.

After wading through the jam, our taxi driver was reluctant to take us to any temple as he said it’d be closed. He dropped us at Chatuchak market, and let’s just say that it ended on a sour note, which was really too bad because I could see the taxi driver kinda enjoyed Siew’s company, especially after giving Siew one of them Thai amulets and kept pestering him to go for sex massages wtf.

There apparently was a miscommunication – our agreement with him was supposed to last till 9pm instead of 5pm, but he said that as he didn’t know English, he didn’t know what we were talking and kept saying “Yes yes” zzz. Siew forced him to reduce prices from 1000baht to 800baht to compensate this, and disagreed with his suggestion to talk to his friend on the phone who knows how to speak English since “this is between us”. (Siew later acknowledged that he was being a bit of an asshole and that he was taking advantage of the situation wtf.)

The largest market in the city was a little subdued as not many shops were open – supposedly if we were to go on the weekends, it’d be far more livelier, and we arrived a day late.

We walked to JJ Mall which was nearby, to be honest it looked like a hypermarket/mall hybrid. I impulsively bought some Dragon Ball Z gashapon for around 650baht (a collection of 9 pieces!) after Siew urged me on to splurge wtf. When we were ready to leave and I wanted to go to Siam Paragon quite badly, a security guard went out of his way to show us where the nearest BTS station is.

JJ Mall.

The grand, magnificent Siam Paragon I’ve always been reading about!

The Christmas decor and atmosphere was superb – and the building and its architecture itself was top-notch!

An open bar right next to Siam Paragon wtf.

Ahh Siam Paragonku. Doesn’t it look grand?

Soldiers (probably not real lah) playing Christmas songs with various blowing instruments.

Hmm security check to get in – no, not really, they didn’t exactly check us.

Me in front of reindeer, wearing just slippers in the grand Siam Paragon – what an insult wtf.

Christmas carols.

The shops were obviously way beyond our capabilities to purchase – all the international, world-renowned brands under one roof, and there were actual exhibitions of impressive cars (with impressive price tags) ranging from Lamborghini to Alfa Romeo. We spent most of our time in a bookshop, however.

The Paragon cineplex.

Oh my god seriously, this cineplex looks damn exclusive with lounges and tasteful, exquisite decor.

Melts me.

We then walked all the way to Lumphini Market, part of the journey was through their Sky Walk system, which connects huge shopping malls via a bridge, was quite well-planned and we liked it – Malaysia should implement something like this so us pedestrians wouldn’t get to inhale vehicle fumes all the time. Siew didn’t want to take the train in the name of saving money wtf, so there we went again walking and walking and walking and me silently thinking of various creative ways to murder Siew to pass the time wtf.

Array of lights from waiting vehicles.

I was exhausted and hungry – we probably took an hour to reach the Lumphini market, where we walked around for a bit before eating noodles for dinner. Right on reaching the market, a man approached me and silently passed to me a placard with the words “SEX DVD” haha wtf, and later on about 10 different dudes did the same.

It’s supposed to say “SUPER PUSSY” but that flag thing blocked lah. Anyway yeah this garnered a WTF from me.

So yeah it appears that we were at an infamous street for sex peddling activities – lots of people who showed us menus and when looked upon closely, what I initially thought was food turned out to be um, ‘interesting’ sex shows ranging from ping-pong to god knows what these women want to stuff up into their vagina wtf.

You can even look into the strip bars from outside and see these women in bikinis gyrating away but Siew and I agreed that it looked boring – I wanted to enter one of them (only 100baht per entry for these strip bars which even includes a beer) but we were running out of time and Siew didn’t want to go, bah humbug.

After purchasing some souvenirs (NOT sex-related at all) and a T-shirt for myself, we met up with Songwoot at his office at 10.30pm. He gave us the keys to his house first as he had some urgent customers coming (he works as an IT consultant), so we hitched a train and bus back home – took us about an hour. We reached home at 11.40pm, which was the latest we’ve ever returned from outside this entire trip (Laos included). Also gave Songwoot a souvenir we brought all the way from Malaysia as a pretext of a Christmas gift.

That night as we were talking to each other in the dark.. I discovered another side of Siew wtf.

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Day 22 – 25th December 2007

Originally we wanted to go to Bangkok by the river (I can’t imagine how dirty that would be) on Songwoot’s suggestion and perhaps do a temple or two, but really, with all the rushing, a good enjoyable travel it is not – which defeats my philosophy of travelling.

So we stayed at Songwoot’s house and bade him goodbye for good as he left for work. Siew kindly helped me do my laundry once more , and we basically spent the entire day in his house lepaking and going online on my PDA by stealing wifi from his neighbour (Songwoot gave me the password to it on the first night we were here).

We left at 3.30pm after passing the house keys to the grandma next door (and left my quick dry towel drying outside at the compound, and Songwoot did not reply to my e-mail nor testimonial on Couchsurfing afterwards -__-), and took a taxi to the tour bus agency which we booked yesterday.

At 4pm, a van picked us up from there and brought us to another branch of its agency which doubles up as a bus ‘station’ – it went around picking up people and reached its destination at 5.30pm. As the bus wouldn’t be arriving till 7pm, we went nearby for dinner, and MOST amusingly, after taking one look at us, the auntie (owner of the restaurant perhaps) brought us a Japanese menu WTF.

Said Japanese menu wtf.

My kanji and vocabulary are rather limited so the menu was of no use to me – we had to pick another English menu to actually able to understand what we were going to order.

Thus far, we have collected an impressive amount of nationalities that people thought we were (in no particular order):

1) Japanese – TONS of local Thais thought we were Japanese for some reason I cannot fathom.
2) Thai – even more locals thought we were Thais. I remembered when we were in Chiang Mai at Kad Suan Kaew shopping mall at the departmental store, one of the sales staffs approached us and started talking to us in Thai, probably because we were dressed so shabbily all the time wtf. Literally not one day passed by without at least 5 different locals (NOT an exaggeration) attempted to talk to us in Thai, until we thought of mimicking what Johnny did and write a placard that says “I don’t speak Thai” in Thai script and show it to people who thought we’re locals.
3) Singaporean – a Laotian in Pak Meng guessed this, close enough.
4) Korean – a few thought we were Koreans even though I don’t think we look any remotely similar.
5) Chinese – as in, mainland Chinese.
6) American – an American thought Siew was an American in Pak Meng.
7) Mongolian – a Bhutanese (to be described later) thought Siew was a Mongolian as Siew looked wildly similar to his university-mate LOL.

The bus arrived at 7pm, and to my utmost jakun-like joy it was a double decker!! I’ve never sat before in one!!!

The long journey from Bangkok to Phuket that was supposed to take only 12 hours, but it stopped over at Suratthani.

Double decker left at 7.30pm.

Funky lights, they turned it off a short while later. -___-

We also chatted with an American Indian from Houston, Texas, on the bus, who was incredibly talkative. The bus was also fairly comfortable and what I thought would be a comfortable ride all the way to Phuket.

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Day 23 – 26th December 2007

It was at 1am that after watching an episode of How I Met Your Mother on Siew’s iPod that I suddenly realised I left my pouch, which contained my passport, at an earlier rest stop’s toilet (which the bus fellas earlier told us was going to be our last rest stop). I couldn’t even begin to describe the panic and fear that hit me upon realising it, like a bucket of icy water doused all over me, especially when this loss is caused by my own carelessness – which to my defence, I was feeling very sleepy at that moment when I went to the toilet and left my guard down, when normally I am careful and meticulous about my pouch and other belongings. I immediately turned to Siew who was sleeping to tell him in loud whispers what just happened, and Siew went “Are you kidding?” and all I had to say was “No I’m not Siew”.

At this juncture I inhaled and exhaled in dangerously high frequency because the reality of losing my passport was gripping me. The multiple scenarios consequence of losing my passport continued playing in my mind – stranded in Thailand, missing my upcoming Langkawi trip, etc – and in the end I went to a private-like room of some other angmohs (the bus is designed this way) to talk to the bus assistant thrice because he couldn’t understand me.

I told him about my predicament and he looked at my very blankly and said “OK OK” which obviously meant nothing and shut the door to the driver’s room – he thought I wanted to stop to use the frigging toilet! (The double decker actually has a toilet itself.) I was stunned, and very lost, and luckily I had Siew to push me to my senses to talk to the bus assistant again because all the confidence I had of the trip was beginning to crumble like a Lego wall. Finally I had to use a combination of very simple English and wild gestures (as if talking to toddlers, really) to get him to understand: “Bus. Stop there.” I then pointed with my finger as if to the back of the bus. “Toilet. Passport.”

I then tried to forget about it after he said “OK OK” once more, because there was obviously nothing I could do about it – I even naively thought that the bus would turn back right then and there for me and my passport. I slept intermittently till 5am (Siew later told me that he was surprised I could sleep so well when even he himself was kept awake by thoughts about my missing passport) till we reached the Suratthani bus station.

Funny that right before I left for my trip, my Mandarin and Japanese teacher, Ms. Lee, recounted a tale of one of her students missing her passport at the beginning of her trip and basically destroyed the entire trip when her entire family, who was with her, was as worried sick as she did. It was every traveller’s nightmare to lose his or her passport, and there I was, living in one.

We were supposed to switch bus – and there I talked to the person-in-charge, Mr. Tuk, who would be the guy handling my passport issue. He has decent enough English and reassured me that he would get the oncoming bus to send it on to Phuket, and left me his number (he did ask for my number but I didn’t have a Thai mobile number, so he asked me to call him once I reach my hotel).

And as if bad things have to happen in sequence, we lost our tickets for the next upcoming bus and had to pay more for it. -___- It set off a very bad mood for the both of us.

At 6.30am, the pickup truck came to transfer us to another bus agency, and only at 8am plus did a local bus arrive. While waiting for said bus, we chatted with four Bhutanese (whose country, Bhutan, situated in between India and China, I honestly had never heard about (have you?); when they told me I, shamefully, looked at them blankly) – the two whose English were good were quite friendly.

Siew was so incredibly quiet (which was very unlike him) that I had to ask him at one point, “Are you disappointed that now we may not be able to go for the fishing trip at Koh Yao?” and he replied curtly, “What do you think?”

We didn’t talk for the remaining of the bus journey.

Let me tell you that “awful” couldn’t quite describe the bus ride we had up to Phuket Town, when we arrived at 4.30pm, which was a ridiculous amount of time compared to the “11 or 12 hours” that we were told – so basically we were conned. We left Songwoot’s house at 3.30pm yesterday, so it was a trying 25 hours combined worth of sitting and sitting in vans and pickup trucks and buses and bus agencies.

The local bus we took from Suratthani had no aircon, so a sweating marathon was in order. The bus sort of ‘broke down’ twice when it had to stop to change tires and tighten up bolts, and another reason why it took insanely long to reach Phuket was because it kept taking long routes and stopping to pickup other locals – another local tested my patience when he, fedup or tired of standing, began sitting ON the arm of my seat WTF and plopped his arse right next to my arm as if it was the most natural thing to do in the world to a stranger, and I could feel his already wet trousers (my educated guess is because of his sweat) on my skin wtf.

That was sickly revolting – but at that point, I couldn’t be bothered to tell him off because of other more pressing issues (my passport) that were occupying my mind.

I also had skipped breakfast as I didn’t have much appetite and ate half a guava for lunch.

Jessica told me via SMS that we couldn’t stay with her at Seeka Resort due to resort policies, so after consulting a taxi driver (who really was just someone who ‘converted’ his car into one), we got ourselves a room at a guesthouse – creatively called Rent-A-Room wtf – for 300baht/night.

I also had to phone both Songwoot (to tell him about us cancelling our plans to Koh Yao, supposed to go over there today but then again, the local bus took long enough to arrive at Phuket that I’m pretty sure we’ve missed the free transit to the jetty) and Mr. Tuk to inform him that I’ve already reached Phuket, and to give him the phone number of the guesthouse’s staff.

At first I wanted to go meet up Jess that night itself as I really needed someone to talk to about my passport fiasco (seriously, try losing your passport and face the possibility of getting stranded in a foreign land and missing out on a trip with your other close friends at Langkawi), but we discovered from the guesthouse’s staff (who was quite friendly) that it will cost us 400baht to go to Patong Beach by tuk-tuk – ONE WAY.

Initially Siew Kiat wanted to leave to Krabi the next day then and there – couldn’t stop him of course – and the internal feeling of being stranded was full at force. Thankfully he decided to sign up for a one day trip to Phi Phi Island, and I agreed fervently, telling him I needed something to get my mind off my passport.

One of the roundabouts at Phuket Town, near Ocean Mall and Robinson’s.

We walked around Phuket Town to both the aforementioned malls – I was clearly not in the mood, fretting over my passport even though I really couldn’t do anything about it, except to wait for the oncoming bus from Bangkok to arrive at Phuket hopefully with my passport. Siew kept telling me repeatedly that it was all going to be OK (corny wtf).

It rained till 8.30pm – our second encounter with rain of the entire trip (and the rains all happened in Thailand). We were forced to stay at Robinson’s to kill time – read some Thai magazines at a bookshop to aid that.

And when we finally did reach our guesthouse, I slept rather early at around 9pm, wanting to lose myself in my dreams, and await for some hopefully what would be good news the next morning.