Goodbye Africa, Hello Asia

Sunset view of Bangkok from the river
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Bangkok

Jan 24 – 27, 2007

Bangkok was not what Barb and I remembered at all from our previous visit here 18 years ago.

What a welcome we received at Bangkok – when our luggage arrived, Karsten discovered that the lock on his checked luggage was missing and that the contents of his PSP game console were stolen. This was the same PSP game console that he had purchased earlier in Germany with most of his savings. I have to give Karsten much credit for taking this development with so much maturity. He remained calm as he waited for Thai Airline’s response to his claim. Their first proposal was to pay $20 per kilogram of lost luggage and that would work out to approximately $10. In the end, Thai Airlines was very generous and settled very fairly with Karsten.

The beautiful Grand Palace of the King
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Bangkok was not what Barb and I remembered at all from our previous visit here 18 years ago. During that time, it has transformed itself from a dirty and polluted developing Asian city into a modern and clean city with many amenities such as skytrains, subways, modern buildings and shopping malls. Eighteen years ago, I remarked that Bangkok was twenty years in arrears in terms of development when compared to Hong Kong. It has narrowed that gap considerably (well, we will see what Hong Kong is like today when we get there).

The Chengs standing guard at the Grand Palace
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Bangkok must be a very educated city as we have never met so many teachers on the streets offering their help to wayward travelers. We met a nice middle aged woman teacher outside the Thai Airlines building as we were looking over our Lonely Planet travel guide. She offered her suggestions for visitations to various sites of the city and even suggested that we use her travel agent who is certified by the government and offers fairs that are regulated and very reasonable. She even called us a Tuk-tuk to take us there right then and there. We were very appreciative of her assistance and Barb even gave her some Canadian mementos for her efforts. By the end of the day we had booked with her travel agent for a trip to Chang Mai and Cambodia for what seemed like a reasonable price. We found out later in Chang Mai that most of the people in our trekking group got there because of friendly “teachers” they had met in Bangkok!

Wat Phrakaeo inside the Grand Palace grounds
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One also has to be aware of tuk-tuk drivers and their stories. Usually, the deal is whatever the site that you planned to visit that day is either not worthwhile or is closed for whatever circumstance and an alternative suggestion is given to get you to get into a tuk-tuk. For example, we were told by a tuk-tuk driver that the river ferry boats are not operative during the day but only during the commuting hours in the morning and the late afternoon. Would we like to hire him to take us around the sights of Bangkok for 100 Bahts per hour? This of course was not true as we found out when we headed to the river by skytrain contrary to his advice. Another example is when a nicely dressed middle-aged man approached us outside a temple saying that it was closed for a special ceremony at the time we wanted to visit and would not reopen to the public until 4 p.m. Would we like to see other sights of the city instead? He could hire us a nice and reasonable tuk-tuk to take us there. Once again, we discovered this was simply not true at all. The site in question was as open to tourists as on any other day! We then started noticing signs all over the city not to trust Tuk-tuk drivers; now we know why. We had good laughs we fellow tourists about the similarities in our stories and the way the Thai touts are so friendly and polite in leading naive tourists astray.

The most exciting find in Bangkok - Root Beer, the first since Canada
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All in all, Bangkok was enjoyable for a few days. If you are a shopper, it’s a paradise. If you love to eat Asian foods, they are good, cheap and literally available at every street corner. Despite the touts, there are still plenty other genuine and helpful individuals that make the visit worthwhile. We have to commend the helpful service technician at Sony’s repair depot for aiding us with our failing hard drive on our laptop computer. The sights themselves are breath-taking as we hope you’ll get a taste of as you check out our pictures.