The Slitherants: Bangkok - Tue 13th April

Bangkok….‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’ So begins a book that I can’t remember the name of but it fits in with our arrival in Bangkok perfectly. We arrived just in time for the three days of the Thai New Year celebrations. This means the city transforms into the scene of what surely must be the world’s biggest water fight. It was a stroke of good luck and it made for a memorable visit to this remarkable city. Unfortunately the Thai capital was still in the grip of it’s worst civil violence and unrest in recent years. The central city was inundated with thousand’s of ’red shirts’ protesting against the current government and calling for the dissolution of the Thai parliament.

The weekend before our arrival twenty one people had been killed when the red shirts and the army clashed near the main tourist area of Khe Sahn road. As I’d booked a hotel away from where the red shirts were camped out and the violence had nothing to do with foreign tourists I thought that we would be safe in another part of what is a very large central city. Unbeknownst to us though, the red shirts had two camps and our hotel was one sky train stop (about 500m’s) from where the red shirts were gathered in their other camp. With the political turmoil still in progress and the fact that we had been staying in ’budget’ accommodation for more than two months, we decided to splurge on a real hotel and spoil ourselves for the three days we would be in the capital. With the civil unrest hotels had never been cheaper so we booked a sweet room on the 21st floor of a huge five star hotel tower in the embassy section of the city.

This place had views that were simply amazing and it made us feel safer knowing that if any chaos erupted down in the streets then we had a nice cosy hotel within which we could hide until things calmed down. As luck would have it the Thai New Year period resulted in a kind of truce being declared between the opposing parties and all those who had just a few days earlier been at each other with hand grenades and machine guns were now squirting one another with water pistols and hoses. I know which one I prefer!

However before I continue with my Bangkok diatribe I would like to take a moment to mention our train journey from the southern city of Chumporn, where we had arrived by ferry from Koh Tao, to Bangkok. We had booked an overnight sleeper train for the eight hour or so journey and I had a kind of romantic vision of a memorable train voyage in a developing nation where I could get some sleep in my bunk, maybe have a couple drinks and watch a movie on the laptop. Kind of like a cross between the Orient Express, the Trans Siberian and the Tranz Alpine Express. You know, kind of chaotic but still very comfortable. Who was I kidding?! Now before boarding I thought you had to watch out for crooks on the train that might try and steal from your packs while you were sleeping. What I didn’t know was that in Thailand the actual crooks work for the Thai railway service! I found this out when I went to buy my first beer from the ’restaurant’ carriage. I didn’t see any restaurant though, more like a shack on wheels where the staff sit at tables drinking big bottles of whiskey and smoking until they eventually pass out on top of the tables for the remainder of the trip. Me being the inconsiderate customer drew one of the staff away from his smokes and card game with my request for a large Chang beer. This usually costs about 40 baht from the mini mart (about $1.10 AUD) but on the train carriage of scam artists it would actually cost 130 Baht which is obviously more than three times the normal price. Once I had swallowed this unwelcome news, and about five cigarettes worth of second hand smoke, the ’barman’ set about persuading me to buy a very pregnant lady, who had seemingly materialised out of the thick smoke a drink! I protested that I didn’t know this lady who looked moments away from bursting and replied that being bought drinks was probably how she found herself in her current predicament anyway so she could expect no drinks from me! Sometimes it’s nice not being able to be understood properly but after much pleading and guilt-tripping on her part I remained firm and turned on my heels and left this den of degradation and disrepute. Unfortunately my Chang beer didn’t last forever and it was with much dread that I made a beeline back to the carriage from hell to run the gauntlet of buying another beer as this train travel carry on is certainly thirsty work. By this time the boys were pretty much smashed and I got away relatively unscathed. After the barman tried to keep half of my change telling me ’half for me, half for you’ I stayed firm again seeing as he was already charging me three times too much as it was. On my way out the door I spotted the barman’s whiskey on the table and sought a bit of ’change’ for myself and I took a long deep draw from his glass before heading for the door. The other boys at his table just about pissed themselves laughing and it was with some pride restored that me and my absurdly over-priced beer retired back to my bunk. The rest of the trip passed relatively uneventfully and required no more trips back to Satan’s carriage and it was actually pretty cool rolling into Bangkok right on dawn although I hadn’t slept a wink on the train. Overnight sleeper, yeah right! However, after making our way to our hotel and seeing our new digs all memory of the crappy train ride melted away pretty quickly. Back to Bangkok!

Bangkok is home to some of the best shopping malls anywhere and as April is the hottest month in an already very hot country, it was with great pleasure that we retired to the interior of these sparkling palaces where consumerism is King. I had done my homework before arriving and thanks to Google I had located an indoor skate park attached to a skate shop inside one of Bangkok’s biggest malls! The Esplanade Complex housed a skate shop called Preduce which had a pretty much perfect skate park next to the shop and it was air conditioned! You know a mall is big when one of the hundred’s of shops has room for a full size skate park inside. Needless to say I had a great time getting back on the shred stick and blowing out the considerable cobwebs I had accumulated in the previous two months. After I had skated myself to a stand still Kate and I went for a look around the mall and on the level directly above the skate shop/park there resides possibly the best shoe and clothing store on the planet. The place is simply called ’Yeah!’ and I can see why. As soon as you walk in that’s the first thing that comes out of your mouth when you see what they’re selling. They had the best range of Vans I’ve ever seen including the collaborations between Vans and Iron Maiden, Slayer and the almighty Suicidal Tendencies! These, if you don’t know already, are all very famous and well known bands that you probably should have heard of, so to say I was excited would be a bit of an understatement. The bad news was that as the shoes were real and not fake you had to pay ’real’ prices, about $100 AUD a pair. I agonised for a few moments but in the end I had no choice really and I am now the very proud owner of some Suicidal Tendencies Vans shoes-mean! After we had a traipse around the mall and Kate had made some ’mandatory’ purchases it was back to the hotel for a bit of a chill before setting out to find where the evening’s water fights were at.

Our plan had been to make our way via a subway and a river ferry to the Khe Sahn Road which was supposed to be the scene of one of the larger water fights in the city. As it turned out when we went to change trains at Silom station we were swept along in a tide of people so we decided to see where everyone was going. The scene that we encountered outside the station is something I would have a hard time describing. It was absolute madness! There were upwards of fifty thousand people all over Silom Road. Traffic was not just stopped it was completely trapped. There were Thais (not tourists) squirting each other with water pistols, dousing each other with buckets of ice cold water and just pure mayhem in every direction. There was even what looked to be a two year old toddler on the bonnet of a ute with a water pistol letting everyone have it! We knew it was going to be wet and had dressed accordingly and even had sealable plastic bags for our camera and cash so we could keep them dry. Within seconds we were soaked right through and mobbed by Thai’s all screaming ’Happy Nooo Yehhhhh!’ In addition to the copious amounts of water that you are squirted with the locals also have a kind of clay that they carry in a bucket which once combined with water is used to rub on the face of anyone and everyone else you meet as they wish you a Happy New Year. Every few seconds another stranger would be wiping this unusual mix onto our faces and Kate in particular was singled out for some kind of celebrity treatment. Not as many people wanted to rub my face as they did hers, I wonder why?? Anyways I literally had strangers hands all over my face and sometimes in my mouth and one guy even managed to get his fingers up my nose!! I’m sure it wasn’t deliberate but still…it was a little disconcerting.

We walked as best we could through the throngs of people, spraying as many as we could with our super soakers stopping only to buy more water for our guns. At the busiest intersection the local fireys were parked and sitting on top of their fire engine. They were literally hosing down the crowd with their fire hoses and the place was going absolutely nuts, can you imagine our fireys doing this?? Water was literally flowing over our feet mixed with all the street gunk and of course the clay face mixture, all of which combined to make for a pretty surreal scene. We even saw one big angry unit ark up at another bloke and give him a couple of punches while his mate broke his water gun over the guys head! The fireys had a solution in store for the trouble makers and simply hit them with the hose forcing them to cool off! The remainder of the night is a blur of water pistols, clay all over my face and body and trying to squeeze our way through the enormous crowds. After it was all over we both felt pretty lucky to have experienced such a unique night as the one we had just had. Definitely a memorable evening.

The remainder of our time in Bangkok was spent lounging in the hotel pool and spa, chilling on our wicked balcony where we could hear the red shirts leaders speaking down below and sifting through another air conditioned shopping mall. As we will be back in Bangkok in another couple months I hope that the political situation will be back to normal and we can get out and about a bit more and do some serious sight seeing. It was an awesome place to visit in spite of the troubles and being there for the New Year celebrations was an amazing bonus. I can’t wait to get back there and do some serious shopping but in the meantime we still have more travelling to do.

It was with some regret we left Bangkok and caught a flight to Saigon/Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam. Now this is one seriously crazy place but more about that next time. ’Til then.

The red shirts. They had taken over the main shopping area so we had to go to malls that were a bit further away. This photo was taken from the sky train so it is kind of blury but you can see that there are many, many red shirts camping out on the street.

Below are some photos of the water fight. You would get soaked in the day time when you were walking from place to place. Also there are photos of the massive water fight we went to one night. There must have been at least 50,000 people on this one street - it is the biggest water fight I have ever seen. It was sooo much fun!