Swedish Parker!

12 hours in Bangkok (see the full photo album @ flickr)

Bangkok is hot. I ended up going through three t-shirts in half a day. As soon as you walk outside the giant new international airport it hits you. That and the 20 guys trying to get you into their cabs.

Fortunately I went for the bus, and met a few British backpackers on the way into town that I ended up hanging out with all day.

Everyone in this city seems to either be a taxi driver, tuk-tuk driver, or sell some sort of food.

But the funniest guy we met was the “teacher” just after we’d set off to explore the city.

He supposedly taught young kids at the school just over the road. He was quite nice, and when we told him we were heading to the Grand Palace he said “Oh no, that’s closed today unfortunately.” Something about the King and all the royals being there to pray.

Instead he tried to convince us to go to some monument on the other side of town. It was of course way too far to walk, but he would kindly let us use his mates taxi for practically nothing. As a bonus we’d also get to stop at his brother in-law’s jewellery shop and buy some fake gold or handbags or something – we couldn’t quite figure out exactly what he was trying to flog.

He was very convincing, it wasn’t until the offer of a ride across town that we caught on. Then later we read the “teacher” story is pretty common. Sure enough, not long after we left our friend, another “teacher” offered assistance.

After we figured out who was and wasn’t trying to con us, we enjoyed a pretty cool day checking out the giant gold buddhas, temples, random monuments and what not.

By far the best part though was taking a private long-boat ride down the main river and through some of the back-canals.

The slum houses on the river looked surprisingly attractive, although I’m not sure I could have joined the young kids that were swimming in the very dodgy-looking water.

By the time we’d taken a crazy tuk-tuk (which comfortably seat two people or you can squash in three, we had four) ride through the back alley-ways of the city (in an attempt to beat the rush-hour traffic) – almost taking out a little boy in the process – it was time for me to head back to the airport and get my connecting flight to Stockholm.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 13th, 2007 at 11:59 pm and is filed under Thailand. 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.