Thailand, Bangkok: Thailand's Congested Capital

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Travel to Bangkok from Koh Tao, despite its long distance, was quite easily achieved in one day. We thought we were going to have to travel overnight by bus or train, but luckily we found a tour company on the island of Koh Tao which offers a same-day boat and bus service. We left Koh Tao at 10:00am and arrived in Bangkok the same evening just after 8:30pm. To get to the mainland from the island, we boarded a catamaran and rode 2 hours to the port town Chumphon, where we boarded a large air-conditioned bus to travel a further 8 hours north. 10 hours of travel to arrive at Thailand's capital was actually not to difficult and went by very quickly.

With an estimated population of over 10 million in a country of only 60 million, Thailand's capital is the urban and cultural heart of the land. Choked with traffic, polluted, and corrupt, the city is also the financial capital of one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Although it's a city on the rise, with new construction and growing suburbs, much of the city center still is under-developed or in poor condition, but this is likely to change and vastly improve over the next several years. Despite some of the poorer areas, some parts of central Bangkok are all columns of glass and steel, hulking shopping malls and hotels. A newer addition to the city centre is the useful elevated rail line (the BTS skytrain), as well as a new subway system which opened back in 2004.

In Bangkok, we stayed in the Silom Road area, in a hostel called The Urban Age. It is situated just off Silom Road, on Silom Soi 8. "Soi" in Thai means "lane" and many major roads have several soi leading off them. Once we figured this out, it was quite easy to get our bearings in the area. For the first time in a long time, we had a/c in our room in the hostel, and was heavenly. Also, the room was very clean, modern and comfortable which contrasted greatly to some of the island accommodation in which we previously stayed. Three girls run The Urban Age and were extremely helpful with our plans in Bangkok and in the surrounding areas. They were constantly smiling and generously aided us with our travel plans, and for that we were most appreciative.

The seedy Patpong area of Bangkok is located off Silom Road and it amazed us how blatant the Thais were in offering their "special" shows and entrance to some of their interesting establishments. We noticed many similarities to the Patong Beach area of Phuket (including the name) but overall we think that Patpong in Bangkok was less "in your face" than Patong Beach. For anyone interested, we did not accept anyone's invitation for a ping pong show or razor blades show, as we didn't fancy seeing Thai women manipulating their privates with these common items.

There is a large and good night market in the Patpong area near our hostel, and if you can avoid letting the people touting ping pong shows harass you, then the night market is a nice place to find many Thai handicrafts and good clothing. The market is very crowded in the evenings as it is lined on either side with girly bars and dance clubs (with many girls dancing topless), and since Bangkok is a large city, it is good to keep your bags and valuables safe.

During our first full day out in the enormous, sprawling metropolis of Bangkok, we set a goal to try and obtain our visas for our upcoming visits to Vietnam and China. As many of the countries we are visiting in Asia require us to have visas before entering the countries, we needed to work time into our itinerary to go to embassies and request tourist visas. As embassies are usually only located in capital cities and you need to allow at least one day but sometimes a few days for a visa to process, Bangkok was the best place to start looking at obtaining these visas before moving into Laos and Cambodia, as it was hard to determine whether or not we would have enough time on working days in the capitals of Laos and Cambodia to sort out visas.

The visas with which we thought would be the most problematic obtaining were the Chinese visas since we needed multiple-entry visas to cover us leaving from and returning to China in order to visit Taiwan and Mongolia. Therefore, the first embassy we visited was the Chinese embassy, located several subway stops northeast of Silom Road. Thais are not good at giving directions and the directions for the embassy given to us by one of the girls at our hostel were "slightly" off, causing us to walk around the area for quite some time before actually finding it. Kyle managed to spot a very Chinese-looking man with a really long silver beard (he looked like Mr. Miagi from Karate Kid) who fortunately knew where we should go. We were told the embassy was open until noon for visa applications and we arrived promptly at 12:00pm in order to apply. When we arrived, we were told that, on Fridays, the embassy closed at 11:30am, but we managed to talk the office manager into letting us come back later in the afternoon. Our confidence at this point was pretty low as the manager didn't speak English very well, but we left the building with high hopes for a successful trip later in the day.

At this point in the day, we were flummoxed with what we could do, as we were far from the city centre and even further from the western, older part of Bangkok where the old temples and historical sights reside. We had three hours in which we could see or do something, and we chose to visit the Grand Palace in case that was all we could do in Bangkok in our short time there. We should mention at this point that we initially booked 5 nights in Bangkok, but then shaved off one night in order to spend more time on Koh Chang. That brought us down to four nights but we also decided to leave Bangkok for a couple of days and stay overnight in Kanchanaburi, which reduced the number of nights to three. We really didn't have much time to explore the city and as Dan was adamant about getting to see the Grand Palace and Wat Pho (temple with the largest reclining Buddha statue in Thailand), Kyle reluctantly agreed (he was beginning to feel a bit "templed" out) and we hopped into a metered taxi to cover the long distance.

The cab journey took about 45 minutes and cost us under 200 Baht (around £3 or $5.50). Despite the incredibly cheap fare, we felt a bit cheated as the driver tacked on an excess fee of 40 Baht that he said all taxi drivers charge. He did not speak English and could not articulate why this fee was needed and we both got extremely frustrated with having to pay extra money for something we did not understand (on a taxi journey later we did NOT have to pay an excess fee of 40 Baht and whilst we still do not understand why we paid extra, it may have something to do with using the highway across the city).

While we were arguing over the excess fee, the taxi driver got in trouble for parking outside the Grand Palace; a security guard shouted at him and this increased the driver's frustration considerably. As a result, when the driver pulled forwards in an area where he could drop us off, he sped off very quickly as soon as Kyle paid the fare, and while Dan was halfway out of the car. As Dan was leaving the vehicle, the driver quickly sped off with one of Dan's legs still in the car, and Dan barely made it out of the car without losing one of his flip flops. Luckily he had a good hold on his backpack in all of this madness! For any travellers going to Bangkok, we advise you to travel by meter taxi whenever possible, as they are cheaper and more comfortable than tuk-tuks as they have a/c. Plus, many Thais in Bangkok will try and cheat you out of money. For example, we arrived in Bangkok in the Khao San Road area and a tuk-tuk driver said he could take us to our hostel for 500 Baht (£8 or $15). The distance was only a couple of kilometres and we managed to negotiate a much cheaper fare (150 Baht), but the far would have been even less had we taken a metered taxi.

Another thing we had to watch out for in Bangkok is the many scams which occur. One of these includes slick, smartly dressed guys who speak very good English and other languages and try to take you to somewhere and rip you off by explaining that a sight or historical place is closed and that they could take you to another sight. Outside the Grand Palace we were approached several people offering tours and other deals but it was very hard to know whether someone was trying to take you for a ride or just being naturally friendly. We decided that the former was likely the case and therefore we chose not to trust anyone lurking around the palace entrance.

Having only a couple of hours before we were required to return to the Chinese embassy, we put ourselves on fast-forward mode to explore the Grand Palace and temples located on the palace grounds. Before paying the extortionate entrance fee (250 Baht each for non-Thais), we had to borrow some long trousers to cover our legs as you are not allowed to enter with sleeveless tops or shorts. Once we donned some super-trendy surgical trousers, we were ready to move speedily through to see everything. The palace was spread out over a wider area than we initially expected and it was quite amusing to zip around all of the temples, shrines and tourists to capture those "perfect" photos and learn a little bit about Bangkok's historical past.

Several of the temple entrances were adorned with menacing statues that were humanlike figures with dragon heads standing powerfully upright and fiercely proud. The temples themselves were brightly decorated with millions of reflective tiles in a wide range of colours and patterns. Windchimes and burning incense were scattered around giving the place a laid-back, relaxed feel that took visitors a million miles away from the hustle and bustle of Bangkok's busy streets on the other side of the huge, surrounding palace walls. We only had 45 minutes to view the palace and its grounds before travelling to our hostel to pick up our China departure flight information, and then travelling back to the embassy to try and work our magic on the manager there. We were a little disappointed that we didn't get the opportunity to see the largest reclining Buddha in Thailand that afternoon but as we were hard-pressed for time, there wasn't much we could do.

We opted to ride a rickshaw back to the hostel as we thought it might be quicker than a metered taxi in Bangkok's heavy afternoon traffic. Boy, were we wrong. The journey took nearly an hour to travel 3km and we absolutely detested the ride through the hot, very seriously polluted and completely gridlocked streets of Bangkok. It was a great experience to see the chaotic streets by rickshaw but once was enough for us. Once we made it to the hostel (dirty, hot and gasping for fresh air), we grabbed our travel documents and headed for the air-conditioned subway (London needs to take notes from Asians on air-conditioned trains), which would take us to the Chinese embassy in time for us to apply for visas.

We were met immediately with bad news from the clerk whose window we approached at the embassy. We explained that we needed multiple-entry visas due to the nature of our travel plans, and the clerk informed us that our first visa for China could only be a single or double-entry one. She did not speak English very well and when we kept asking her to explain what we could do in order to keep our travels plans as they were (a smile can get you a long way in Thailand even if you are in the Chinese Embassy), she gave up in the end and asked her supervisor if she could grant us the visas. It was Friday this day and we think they all wanted to leave for the weekend, and she returned to the window very shortly, stating that it would be no problem to receive the visas, and that they would be ready in 20 minutes. We were extremely lucky as afternoons are only meant for passport and visa pick-ups, not applications!

With ten minutes to spare before the embassy closed for good for the weekend at 4:00pm, the embassy provided our passports with firmly-stuck visas inside. We were extremely happy to have achieved this in the space of five hours, and also with the fact that we managed to travel completely across town to see one of Bangkok's most treasured sights. Despite having forked over $75 each for our Chinese visas, we were overjoyed knowing that we were set to visit China later in our trip. The other of our goals on this day was to obtain a Vietnam visa. This was a little trickier as we were not able to get to the Vietnamese embassy earlier that morning. However, we were in luck when we spoke to A&F Tour Company, which was located right around the corner from The Urban Age.

Travel to Koh Chang needed to be arranged and therefore we went to discuss this with A&F. Before discussing the travel options, we asked if they could sort out our Vietnamese visas while we visited Koh Chang. A really helpful and friendly girl worked there and she offered to sort our visas in time for us to pick up our passports when we returned from Koh Chang. The company seemed trustworthy and very reliable so we paid them and left our passports and photos. After this, they offered us a really good travel deal to Koh Chang which included a pick-up from our hostel, a transfer to the ferry terminal by a/c minibus and a ferry ticket to the island. We ended up buying a round trip package from them that included travel back to Bangkok after four nights on the island. We were so happy to have sorted our visas and onward travel to Koh Chang that we decided to treat ourselves to a delicious Mexican dinner at Charley Brown's, just off Sukhumvit Road on one of its "sois", we think it ws Sukhumvit Soi 11. Our good friends from London, Lori and Ian, recommended it to us (thanks!) and it was one of the best Mexican meals we have had. A little pricey for Thailand, but still cheap compared to the UK or US prices. We ate loads and went to sleep that evening very satisfied.

Planning our future travel seemed to be a common theme for our time in Bangkok and we also managed to book our overnight train tickets to Chiang Mai, which would be our destination after Koh Chang. A really, really friendly Thai woman that knew everything there was to know about the train journey, and who also spoke really good English, helped us with our decisions as to what train we wanted to take, what time we wanted to go and in what type of cabin we wanted to stay. The tickets were around 800 Baht each (£13 or $20), but for a 14-hour overnight journey in an air-conditioned cabin with our own private beds, we felt this was definitely worth it.

In the middle of our Bangkok experience, we broke up our time in the hectic city with a trip to the much slower-paced Kanchanaburi. Our two-day, one-night trip became a three-day, two-night trip as we both loved the town as soon as we stepped off the train. If you would like to read about our time there, be sure to look at the next journal entry to find out why Kanchanaburi is one of our favourite places in Thailand. When we did make it back to Bangkok from Kanchanaburi, we had a couple of hours to spare in the afternoon and we visited Wat Pho (the temple with the reclining Buddha) as the bus station we returned to was fairly close.

We met a nice old English couple inside the temple who clearly needed to speak some English were carried away with that fact that they were having a fantastic time in Thailand. They needed to tell all, but since we were in a rush to get to the hostel we had to cut them short and wish them well. The temple and statue were indeed massive and the reclining Buddha statue stretched out along the inside was pretty amazing. The enormous gold-plated statue is 14 metres high and 50-odd metres long. We had a heck of a time trying to squeeze the entire thing into the small camera viewfinder, but managed to capture some good images in the end.

As we were in the same vicinity of the Grand Palace, we decided to try and walk to the nearest subway station in order to catch a train back to our hostel. The Bangkok map we were given when we arrived was not drawn to scale - no maps in Thailand have been geographically accurate yet - and therefore what looked like a short distance was actually an hour-long walk in the 38-degree Celsius (100-degree Fahrenheit) heat of the afternoon. Looking back on this miserable walk, we were happy to have done it as it allowed us to wander through Bangkok's large Chinatown district and to be thankful that we were not staying there during our time in the city.

After cleaning up when we arrived back at our hostel, we decided to escape the heat and busy streets by checking out one of the nicest malls we have ever visited, the ultra-modern Siam Paragon shopping mall. This colossal building houses an enormous marine aquarium, massive food court, gigantic 15-screen cinema multiplex and hundreds of shops... this place was right up our alley!

When we returned from Koh Chang, we picked up our passports from A&F Travel and were pleased to see our Vietnam visas attached. We had an hour to spare before our train left for Chiang Mai so we had a quick meal and hopped on the subway to Hua Lampong, the subway station which shares its name with the overland rail station.