Birthday in Bangkok

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Yesterday was my 37th birthday. Now, it may not be obvious, but I do actually try not to fill this whole blog with talk of food and photos of food and just generally raving about food… but you’re going to have to bear with me for this post because pretty much all we did on this particular day was eat.

We started off the day with the buffet breakfast. I’ve become pretty good with resisting the urge to eat myself sick at buffets since there’s been one pretty much everywhere we’ve stayed so far but I have never seen anything like Lebua’s!

We estimated that if you lined up all the separate tables there’d be about 25 metres of dishes to choose from. Five cuisines were on offer – Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian and Western. Western included all the usual bacon, sausages, eggs, cereal etc but also a make-it-yourself salad bar, cheese board, meat platters… it seemed never ending! Two rooms of food that included a pizza oven for toasting whichever of the 20 or so types of bread you’d like and individual pots of jam and honey.

Breakfast sushi, anyone?

I love food but this was getting a bit silly.

Cereal tracklements! My favourites – toasted hazelnuts and prunes.

My strategy with this sort of thing is to get tiny helpings of all the things I think I’d like and then go back for more of the stuff I really enjoyed but there was no chance of that happening. I was impressed that Luke finished off with a plate of 5 different pastries but by the time we left we were both a bit worse for wear.

This guy’s job was to grill as much bacon and as many sausages as you liked and carve the giant hams. Tough gig.

Back to the room to digest with a bit of reading time and a shower before a quick trip out to buy me a dress for the evening then back to Breeze Restaurant for high tea. We’d decided to spend the day making the most of the hotel facilities and lazing about and achieved this quite spectacularly. We spent two hours drinking cocktails and eating all kinds of cured meat, cheeses, chocolates and cake. There might have been a slice of fruit in there somewhere.

When we got back to the room we found a note, some cutlery and a tiny birthday cake in the fridge, compliments of the hotel! Then we spent an hour dressing up as nicely as we could and  headed up for dinner.

The view was marvellous and we were the first ones up there. The open air restaurant and bar quickly filled up. Apparently it was featured in the movie The Hangover 2, which I hadn’t seen. They had a ‘Hangovertini’, which Luke ordered and which was surprisingly nice. Both our meals were delicious, though pretty pricey – top end Melbourne prices – and we couldn’t justify a bottle of wine. After the band played me ‘Happy Birthday’ and another surprise cake came out, this time courtesy of Luke, we went back to our room and Luke ducked out to buy some much cheaper wine and we watched some IT Crowd and Community before drifting off into a very deep sleep with slightly aching stomachs.

I’d written a bunch of postcards in the afternoon and kept wishing everyone I knew was here to spend the day with us, but that was the only way it could’ve been any more enjoyable. Truly, I think this will be one of the highlights of my trip.

Good times!

Ocean World, Madame Tussauds and Baiyoke Sky Tower.

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Yesterday was a good day to be inside out of the 39 degree, muggy heat so Luke and I pre-bought our M. Tussauds and Ocean World tickets the night before online (saving nearly 50%, if you’re thinking of going 😉 ). The catch was we had to enter both places before midday so we got out early, ready to do a bit of camera equipment scouting at the mall before the attractions opened.

Turns out only government businesses open before 10am, or at least that was the information given to us by a random guy on the street. As we milled around outside MBK at 9am we were approached by an extremely friendly middle aged fellow who told us to go to another market down the road that was much cheaper. We didn’t really have time but had a chat to him anyway. He told us all about the water festival coming up, a parade that was on the next day and seemed very keen to share everything he knew about Bangkok. It was a nice chat but we headed off down the road to find a drink and were then stopped by another guy who asked what we were doing and directed us to a different place to shop. Shortly afterwards, as we were looking at some of the roadside food stalls, killing time, a lady came up for a chat about our holiday and to tell us about what she was doing.. it was starting to get weird. Like we’d inadvertently put on our ‘talk to us, we’re tourists!’ t shirts that morning.

Eventually we got into the mall that had the wax exhibition and spent almost an hour wandering around.

I give Tiger a few pointers.

It was fairly cheap to get into and quite interesting. Not a patch on Ocean World though, which I’d definitely rate above Melbourne Aquarium, which I think is quite good, but Bangkok has OTTERS. They did a short feeding show where the otters jumped around and climbed things then when we came back they’d curled up together for a sleep. D’aw! I didn’t get any photos though, you’ll have to wait for Luke’s next video.

Terrifying!

We also watched the shark feeding show, which seemed to consist mainly of two divers standing on the heads of the sharks and poking them with sticks… which sounds worse than it was, it looked very gentle, but it seemed that they were keeping the (larger than person-sized) sharks away from their heads and forcing them to the floor of the aquarium where a couple of the enormous beasts just wiggled around like puppies and tried to get into the fish basket.

My favourite thing in the aquarium was the octopus. It was quite huge – it’s head/body would’ve been as big as a basketball and its tentacles were beautiful plus it was moving around a lot.

So beautiful!

After the fun of wandering around in a cool, dark building we walked the couple of blocks back to the hotel in the searing heat and caught a cab over to Lebua. The driver wouldn’t put the meter on but we only noticed after we’d gone a few blocks. If I hadn’t had a splitting headache I might’ve made him let us out but, with all our bags, it seemed such a hassle. As it was the charge wasn’t extortionate but still, I was fuming. Refusing to put the meter on is a pretty typical scam.

Arriving at our hotel washed away all my irritation and frustration. Lebua at State Tower is *gorgeous*. Another one of those hotels that cause you to eventually forget that you need to open doors for yourself and close them behind you because there’s always someone there to do it for you.

We checked in and decided to upgrade to the Tower Club, which meant that instead of a 20-something floor room we had a three room suite on the 54th floor, free high tea every afternoon with unlimited drinks (of any kind), free mini bar and a view that Batman would envy. You only turn 37 once, right? I could not afford this level of luxury (at least, not without selling my house) in Australia, but here it costs about as much per night as the Best Western in Ballarat, so why the heck not?

We were escorted up to our room (ears popping several times) and just… wow. You’re looking down on just about everything, including other skyscrapers.

We had a couple of hours before heading out so we quickly ran out to buy me a pair of covered shoes (a ‘smart casual’ dress code applies in all the restaurants here) so we could make it to high tea. We were starving as we’d only had breakfast and fortunately the first pair of shoes I found fit perfectly and were under $20. We dashed back to the hotel, waited impatiently for the elevator and made it to high tea in time to scoff down a cocktail, a plate of minute sandwiches, some pastries and chocolates before heading out to meet up with Ean and his godfather, Niren, again.

These savoury pastries were so crisp they shattered everywhere and made a huge mess. We kept giggling like little kids.

After a tuk tuk that stopped working at every set of lights and a mad dash along a busy road, we made it to the hotel on time, only to sit and wait for 50 minutes as Niren was still out shopping. Turned out he’d had to go to several places for a couple of caps that I’d expressed an interest in the night before (gifts for family), but once he got back and we sorted everything out and headed to Baiyoke Sky Tower, the tallest building in Bangkok. We all marveled at the view and took a lot of photos as the sun went down.

A lovely day and so nice to spend the evening talking with Ean and Niren. We hope to see them again one day. If any of you are thinking of going to Siem Reap do get Ean’s details from us, he was just great.

Luke, Ean and Niren.

Chatuchak Market

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Yesterday we hopped on the Skytrain and headed to Chatuchak Markets, the largest open air air markets in the world. As we went past it from above I could feel my jaw dropping. For a Melbourne comparison, I’d say multiply the Vic Markets by perhaps 12? Seriously huge. Each stall varies in size from something the size of a phone booth (there were people on the road into the market who’d set up in an actual phone booth) to shops the size of a 2 car garage. Most were fairly basic but some had chandeliers and wallpaper.

It was quite overwhelming. We wandered into one narrow alleyway and then just meandered around. I had one piece of advice in my head from my reading online – if you find something you like just buy it because you’ll never find the stall again. My shopping list was pretty short. A pair of jeans, a bar of soap (for once our hotel didn’t provide any), anything that stood out as a nice gift for friends and family and maybe a few other bits of clothing for me.

I love to look at shops but, what with all the saving for this trip, I’ve pretty much gotten out of the habit of spending money frivolously. I looked at jeans but couldn’t find any I liked. We bought a bar of soap and I got a waterproof bag for my camera (on Ben T’s recommendation – thanks Ben!) and a couple of gifts and that was it. We did spend quite a bit on cold drinks as the day was hot but that was it. On reflection I probably spent less than $70. I could’ve spent more if I’d taken more time – and it was only when we were leaving that we saw a stall set up by a shipping company so you could post your purchases immediately. How convenient!

I’d definitely add Chatuchak Markets to my list of places I’d return to in Asia. It was extremely interesting and there were a number of stall that sold really interesting and unusual stuff – really stylish bags, lovely fabric and homewares. Prices weren’t as cheap as I’d hoped for many things but things were certainly cheaper than in Australia (but right now pretty much everywhere is cheaper than home).

After the markets we went back to our cosy cell hotel room for a rest then over to MBK. I found a pair of jeans that I didn’t mind (I’m starting to get a bit worried about the fact that Munich is still covered in snow and we’ll be there in 5 days) and then we had another night of IT Crowd and a few drinks. Possibly a few too many because I woke up with a bit of a headache the next morning.

After some aspirin and a big breakfast (the breakfasts you get in the hotels here are great. I know I keep saying this, but eggs any way you like them, croissants and a plate of fresh tropical fruit… so good!) we headed to Fortune Town, another mega mall with the focus on electonics. The trip started off quite oddly as we tried to catch a cab and the driver pretty much said no and then a lady from our hotel came out and convinced us to catch the train. Later in the day we tried 3 cabs for another journey before finding one that would take us. We couldn’t work out if they didn’t know where to go, the trip was too short or what, but it’s very odd to be in a country where everyone is trying to get your money off you and be told ‘no’ when you’re asking something pretty simple.

Anyhow, Fortune Town was pretty quiet, which was nice, and we bought USB sticks and hard drives to store all our photos and video. I am going to post a memory stick home shortly so that if anything happens to my laptop at least most of my photos are safe. I also looked at a Canon 8-15mm lens. I’ve been eyeing off this lens for quite some time and figured I’d have a look. I put it on my camera and was immediately taken with the distorted effect it gives but it’s quite expensive so I thought it was a good idea to take some time to think about it.

Anyway, we had a mission to accomplish and it turned out to be quite a challenge.

When we were in Cambodia we made friends with our driver, Ean (pronounced An) who was also going to Bangkok on the same day as us, although by bus. He was going to meet his ‘godfather’, an Indian-Australian man who had sort of adopted Ean on a trip to Cambodia years ago. Ean’s godfather helps support Ean and his children and was in Bangkok on business and so paid for him to travel from Cambodia for a week to be with him. Ean had never been outside Cambodia before and told us he was very nervous about the trip so we said we’d meet him and maybe we could all go out together.

So that was our mission, to find the hotel and Ean. We decided to catch a taxi as it didn’t look far on the map. After 3 refusals we finally found someone who agreed to take us near to where we wanted to go and dropped us off on a very wide, busy street. We couldn’t find the right number or see the hotel and wandered around asking directions every so often and getting pointed further on, then into back streets, then further back streets until I was almost ready to give up. Finally we spotted the hotel, went in and they had no record of the people we were looking for. This, as you can imagine was quite disheartening. We stepped out of the hotel and standing there was Ean! We were so happy we hugged him and he looked very happy in return.

We chatted to his godfather and agreed to meet them back there at 5 the following evening so we could all go up Baiyoke Tower to the sky deck (it is the tallest building in Bangkok and almost right next to their hotel) for sunset then go and have dinner together.

We had a well-deserved rest for a few hours after that then had dinner at the hole-in-the-wall place at the end of our block. Bangkok is littered with places like this. There’s a big room, open to the street and generally painted a dirty eggshell blue. The lighting is florescent, there’s a bank of cooking equipment on the street side, piles of salad stuff, fruit and meat. The furniture is all plastic, there’s lots of condiments on the tables and a roll of toilet paper instead of napkins on each table.

It’s basic, there’s very little English, lots of Thai people and the food is fantastic. I had Tom Kha soup and it was so flavourful I could not find words to describe it. It made me very sorry that I’d wasted precious meals eating anywhere else.

This was our last night on this side of town, tomorrow we’re moving to my birthday treat, Lebua at State Tower.

Saigon (Luke)

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It was something of a shock to be woken up by one of the overnight train conductors, yelling loudly in Vietnamese and banging his hand on my bunk bed. Once again we had been duped by the timetable, but this time it was all on us. For some reason we had read the time 5:00 and thought 5PM – when the rest of the timetable was in 24hr time, so it was clearly 5AM. Although a bit dazed at being woken up so early, I was certainly very happy to have arrived at our destination a full 12 hours earlier than expected.

We got to the hotel, but as we were very early we figured we would wait until they were properly open before going in (they shut their main gate overnight). However some random Vietnamese guy saw us standing outside with all our bags and “helpfully” pointed out that there was a bell by the gate, which he then pushed. There was no point trying to convey that we had seen the bell and had chosen not to push it. At any rate it woke up one of the hotel workers and he ushered us in and got the owner.

The hotel I’d chosen had received some good reviews due to the lady who owned it being very helpful to foreign tourists, and indeed we were very grateful for that straight off the bat as she was very welcoming, even at such an early hour. She said we could leave our bags there or just hang out at the restaurant until check-in time, or we could pay slightly more for a better room and check-in early, which we did. She also chatted with us for a while and we were surprised to find her quite well traveled – a first for us when conversing with native Vietnamese. She gave us some warnings about the pickpockets in Saigon, and some suggestions of what to do during our stay.

After a short nap to catch up on sleep, we headed out to see the city. Although it was witheringly hot we covered a bit of ground, starting at the Saigon river and working our way back through the city past a few highlights, such as the Opera House and Dong Khoi markets. The city is extremely Westernised. It almost feels like the Surfer’s Paradise of Vietnam. Lots of glitzy hotels and big malls.

Our main stop was at the war museum. I didn’t take any footage because I felt it would be inappropriate. Besides which, it’s one of those places where the feeling you get from being there sinks in slowly. Every photo you see adds to the sick feeling you get at realising these people were put through this situation, adds weight to the question of why it happened at all. Very much an eye-opener, and I’m glad I went. Hopefully it’s memorials like these that will ensure future generations are firmly anti-war.

The hotel owner had mentioned that a trip down the Mekong would be worthwhile, but she couldn’t advise me on which company or tour to go with. Instead she said I should find one but that she would assist in making the booking. I did some research and found an expensive but very highly praised operator, and took my laptop down to show her exactly what it was I wanted, and the number she could call. It was after business hours and getting on in to the evening, and I asked if she thought we may have left it too late, but she said that tour operators usually open late on business days. Still, I asked if she could let me know when it was booked. I didn’t hear from her, so I went down later to ask her if everything was sorted, and she assured me it was and that we should be in the lobby to take a 7:45am taxi. That was a bit strange, since the tour’s timetable said they left at 7:30am, but I figured maybe that’s when they started doing the rounds of the hotels and picking people up to take to the docks.

In the morning we were given a piece of paper with an address on it, and had to pay a taxi to take us there. It was some random travel agency, which had extremely cheap Mekong tours. Not what we’d signed up for. It was also the second time someone had pointed out what we wanted was really expensive, and theirs was really cheap – as if cheaper was better. Basically the opposite of what we normally expect.

Extremely disappointed, we took a taxi back to the hotel where the owner was very apologetic for the misunderstanding. I still don’t quite know what happened – whether she’d tried to book the tour we wanted but couldn’t, or just saw the photos of the Mekong River and found an operator who would take tours… but then why ask us to source our own? She did at least agree to take the amount we’d paid for taxis off our final hotel bill, which was a nice gesture. Lesson learned though – sometimes it’s just better to book yourself.

Instead we spent the day working on HCTP, then down at a nearby mall in the air-con for lunch and a movie (Oz The Great And Powerful – a bit over the top and melodramatic, but still entertaining).

After spending so much time in Vietnam, I was well and truly keen to move on, and very much looking forward to Cambodia. 🙂

First Night in Bangkok

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Bangkok is definitely the most easily commuted city we’ve visited so far. We had no difficulty getting to our hotel, just across the road from mega-mall MBK. Although once we stepped off the train I did refer to a compass to get my bearings, for the first time in my life. While I lack skills in things as simple as accurately recalling three digit numbers, I’m pretty good with map reading and orientation and I quite enjoy the challenge of navigating around a new city.

Our hotel, Wendy House, is… uh… serviceable. Our room has fake wood paneling of a style that looks about 40 years old and we have no windows and a bright florescent light. You can imagine how charming it is, I’m sure. The staff are nice though, and it does come with free breakfast and a flight of the steepest and narrowest stairs I’ve ever seen in an establishment that has no lift. Fortunately they changed our room from the 4th floor to the 1st.

I lied – there is a window but it opens onto the corridor and you can barely see through it so I don’t think it counts.

We showered then headed down the road to MBK where there appeared to be a Cosplay convention happening right outside. Naturally, since we’d only gone down to do a preliminary reconnaissance, I didn’t take my camera. Fortunately Luke got some video. After a couple of hours of wandering around we sat down in a restaurant on the ground floor and watched all the people in elaborate costumes walk past. There seemed to be more photographers than actual cosplayers and the event seemed to comprise of nothing more than giggling and taking photos.

In the evening we wandered down the road and ended up buying some packet noodles, some fresh mango and a few drinks to have in our hotel room. We the forgot about the noodles, drank quite a few drinks and watched a few episodes of the IT Crowd and then went to bed, ready for Chatuchuck Markets in the morning.