Bangkok

We left Chiang Mai on Monday afternoon on the Night Train for Bangkok. That was an experience in itself. We got a ticket which cost roughly 600 baht (9 pound) and boarded the train at 2.50pm. Around about 5pm we visited the restaurant car, apparently food used to be very cheap with sellers getting on the train at stations to sell food and drink. That has been stopped now and there is limited over priced food available. It isn’t dear compared to our food here but it is very dear compared to theirs it was also unedible. so anyone planning to do any train trips there – take your own food with you. Its a 15 hour journey and you will need some. We stayed in the restaurant for a while and had a few Chang’s (Beer). When we got back to our seats they had been converted into bunks, Jen slept on the top and I slept on the bottom. They were quite Comfy considering.

We arrived at Bangkok at 6am. Now I know why young people back pack to Thailand – Because it is so cheap. If your happy with a shared toilet and shower, no hot water and a very small basic room you can be talking one pound fifty a night. Ideal for students I suppose with little money. Bangkok itself is not a pretty sight. It is overcrowded, polluted, congested, smells very bad, lacks even basic hygiene. Every building in the streets looks like they could do with pulling down. Shanty towns and sweat shops are everywhere filthy market stalls line every street with massive temples and gold leaf Buddha’s every few streets.  Tomorrow we are going to see the Floating Markets and a Lady Boy show in the night. Then on Thursday we leave here on another night train for an island in the south.  My friend did warn me that there was nothing special about Bangkok, I’m glad we came here and the experience has been good but one I don’t think I’d repeat.

Posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 3:18 pm You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.