Bangkok and Culture
In previous posts we wrote a bit about the weather. Here is the recap of our "cultural" experiences.
1. In order to get to our hostel we took the AirLink (similar to BART) to the last station. After that we had to catch a cab to our hostel. I remember the confusion I felt in those first few moments on the streets of Bangkok. Crazy traffic moving in the "wrong" direction and us not knowing which way to go. Luckily we were approached by a passerby who seemed like he wanted to practice his English skills. He told us where to cross the street and hail a cab and how much this should cost. And warned us to ask the driver to use a meter. (its very common for cab drivers to name a random outrageous price and to refuse to use the meter). Also he told us about the fact that Khao San Road is completely under water. Even showed us pictures in the Thai newspaper. Khao San is the main tourist road in the center of the city. We had planned to go there first to find a travel agency that could help us book the rest of our trip in Thailand. Levka started to run through images in his head how we would rent a kayak and paddle up and down the street in search of this agency.... Turns out the street was never under water. We are still not sure what were this guy's reasons for this kind of "misinformation". But this was not the last time that we encountered this.
2. Our first outing to see the sights was quite a learning experience. We heard all the warnings from friends about the tourist traps, but we still managed to land in a minor one. We were on the way to the Grand Palace and we were stopped by some nice "passerby" who spoke English surprisingly well. He told us that Grand Palace is currently closed for lunch because of some ceremony that is going on. And that's when he recommended that we take a tuk-tuk to see some other temples before the Grand palace. Magically a tuk-tuk appeared. We did make the driver promise us that he won't take us to any stores (according to our friends this is a common scam) and we were on our way. The agreed upon price for the entire 2 hour trip was 80 Baht which is equivalent to $2.5. The driver took us to the three temples, however, in between he dropped us off at 2 different travel agencies. I guess this guy gets commission off whatever travel package we buy. You should have seen the disappointed look on the driver's face when we told him that we didn't purchase anything. He asked us again and again, "no buy anything?". And his face got sadder each time we repeated "no, it was too expensive". So with that he took us to the Grand Palace, which, by the way, was never closed. We didn't waste a lot if time, saw the temples that we wanted to see and made it to grand palace with plenty of time to see it, but we still felt duped and resolved to be more careful in the future.
3. Day 3 at Bangkok was a day of frustration. Our plan was simple. To take a ride on a boat through the canals and to stop and see a few temples on the way. First, we were getting mixed reports whether the tourist boats are running or not because the water in the river was too high. Until we physically reached a pier, we didn't know. Turned our that the were plenty of boats. At this point we needed to negotiate a price. We had an idea about the price from the guide books and from talking to the locals. The first place we went to quoted the price that was 4 times what we thought we should pay. So we started to walk from one pier to the next, moving away from the touristy area. The prices did start to come down but were still not where we thought they should be. We tried negotiating but nobody was willing to budge even a little bit. We were confused by the situation. Tons of boats, no work, a ridiculous price and people unwilling to take us for a lower price. Oh and let me mention that the price wasn't that much by American standards. But we were not in America and this was a matter of principal, especially after the tuk-tuk incident from the day before. So as a result, we changed our plans and didn't go on this boat ride.
4. A guy at our hostel recommended that we go to China Town to get some dinner and to walk around. On a map he drew the exact location of the bus station and the number bus that we needed to take. And we were off. We waited at the bus station where there is no schedule and watched as other buses arrived, barely stopping to let in passengers. So when our bus arrived, we jumped on it as fast as humanly possible and held on tight (the bus doors never close to assure a faster passenger turnover at the bus stops). We drove for only a couple minutes when I realized that we don't know which bus station to get off on. And even if we did know the name of the station it wouldn't help us because nothing is marked. So I turned to Levka and asked, "how will we know where to get off?" Without really thinking he said, "Its China Town. How hard can it be to spot it?" Turns out when you're in Asia, China town doesn't stand out as much :) Of course we missed it and like regular tourists took a taxi first to China Town and then back to the hostel. And we had a blast making fun of our own naivete the entire time :)
And with this variety of experiences we left for the islands to enjoy the slower and more relaxed way of life.