Right, time to be a tad more 'cultural' and visit some cities and ruins and that. Oh and do some cheap shopping Bangkok of course.
And our first stop is Bangkok where we finally arrive after a ridiculously long and uncomfortable journey which may have included me calling the girl with her chair rammed back into my knees a 'stupid bitch'. Quite loudly.To her face. But in my defence she did keeeeep ramming her chair back and back and then looking at me case my knees were in her back... urm my legs can't get shorter your chair can go up! grrrr. Stupid bitch.
Our first encounter with terrible tourist scamming happens the minute we get off the bus with a taxi driver charging £4 to take us to our hotel...this is a rip off when it should be about a £1. The cheek! And then the following day we get scammed, again, by a taxi driver, again. This time going to meet Taya for shopping, and the taxi driver took us around the houses to go somewhere that should have taken 10/15minutes. In total he ‘scammed’ us for about 40p and I really would have preferred to have given him 80p extra to get us there direct and on time! So, although you’re supposed to always insist on the taxi using the meter for a fair fare we tend to set a higher price before we go so we get to places quicker.
We spent a few amazing days in Bangkok. Shopping with Taya was great! She took us to the Thai places to shop and made sure the store owners didn’t rip us off just because we are tourists, awesome! The only problem was that the Thai shops don’t always have clothes that fit my hippier, European frame. Duncan was fine. She also insisted on taxi’s setting us lower Thai prices, which they didn’t like so much and drove like crazies as a result! We also spent a lovely evening with her and her boyfriend Note eating at traditional Thai street market food stalls that we never would have been able to do otherwise due to everything being written in Thai and our Thai reading skills not being up to much. The dinner food was amazing but I wasn’t a huge fan of the desserts, one of which was made from swallow’s saliva and another popped goo in your mouth! Haha. We also learnt several useful Thai phrases like ‘please may I have?’ ‘pretty pretty pretty please’ ‘I don’t want’ and ‘c*nt’. Excellent. And we learnt a bit more about Thai culture, the reds v yellows war and the Thai opinions towards black and white people. Really fascinating and great to have someone around like Taya. Thanks Taya! I feel like we have been in a tourism programme with all this help!
We spent a day or two unsupervised to really feel like tourists again - lost and ready to be scammed! The most popular scam we came across, and heard other people had actually fallen for, was the ‘it’s closed’ scam. This is when you get near a tourist attraction like the Grand Palace or a Buddha and someone quite innocently tells you the attraction is closed for the next few hours for ‘lunch’ or for ‘sleeping’. It will open again in 2 hours or so but if you like his friend can take you on a tuk-tuk tour of the city. See how that works. Usually you will be taken to a Buddha, gem shop and tailor. In the best case scenario you pay the tuk tuk driver and go to your original destination eventually. Worst case scenario you are physically forced to buy something from the tailor or gem shop. Not good. Luckily we had heard of this scam so just said thank you and carried on to the original destination and surprise, surprise it was open!
The Grand Palace was amazingly beautiful! The detail in all the architecture was so impressive. From the very Asian roofing structure to the mosaic decorations, mini-mirrors and painted halls of elaborate scenes. All of which is constantly under restoration to keep it beautiful and perfect. The abundance of Buddha’s everywhere is quite astounding too. I imagined that there would be just the one maximum in each building or place a bit like just one God but there are always loads, all over the place, even several in one room. It is also great to see people who really truly still believe in religion and respect it. Not a big fan of the lack of interaction allowed between monks and women though. Anyway...
Loving Bangkok!
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