Malaysia by Steve

21 - 30 Aug, Malaysia

I'm going to start this blog off with a picture that pretty much sums up what you're dealing with in South East Asia, and that is, fundamentally different taste buds.



Yes, it is what you think it is. Sweetcorn icecream. And not sold by a street vendor, but by KFC. Where it has presumably passed numerous taste tests in its route to market. I saw another similar advert in Kuala Lumpur, where a fast food chain had turned a picture of the Petronas twin towers into 2 cobs of corn.

I really liked our first stop in Malaysia, Georgetown. The city is a lovely place to walk around, and I don't say that often about cities. Every nook and cranny drips with colonial history. Little India and Chinatown give fascinating colour and vibrancy and diversity. But even lovely Georgetown can't escape the Beckhams. Kudos for Jo for getting this sneaky photo.



If you tire of the city, you could get hot and sweaty in the jungle with the 4 hour walk up Penang Hill, including, halfway up, if you needed any more of a work out than a jungle walk...a Jungle Gym!

At the top of Penang Hill are fabulous views over GT. Here we are at the top looking quite chipper considering we had spent 4 hours walking up and just been told that the Furnicular railway back down had been out of action for the last 2 months.



Melaka was our next stop. Many nations have owned Malaka at some point, tribute to its important past as a major point of trade with Europe, China, SE Asia etc. Personally, I find it much more interesting that they have big scary monitor lizards swimming around in their river.



Melaka was lizard central and here we are with Rocky the 8 year old iguana. Check out the tail and how excited Jo is to be holding it!



Here's an example of the kind of colonial influences that I liked in Georgetown, it's prevalent in Melaka also. Incidentally, this was near China Hill, the largest Chinese cemetery outside China. It's a pretty big place, so big in fact, it has it's own running club that jogs round the hill.



You can get tricycle taxis around Melaka. They're colourful and loud, as they have built in speaker systems booming out various styles of music, none of them good. Perhaps you choose one based on it playing the music you liked? Personally, I'd be a bit embarassed to be riding around town on a bike like this with Celine Dion drawing people's attention to you, but horses for courses eh.



While we were out lizard spotting, we came across a house in the oldest part of Melaka whose owners had lived there as children and were keeping it going as a museum. We sat in the chair that the King of Malaysia had sat in, and were proudly shown the marital bedroom, which looked cosy but a bit dusty.



No visit to Kuala Lumpur would be complete without a trip up the Petronas Towers. I have to say I have to really psyche myself up to get excited by tall buildings, but something about these Twin Towers really is quite staggering when you see them in the evening all lit up like rockets about to blast into space. I bought a glittery Twin Towers bottle opener that seemed like a fitting souvenir.





Being a transport planner, Jo has lots of friends who get excited by monorails. Finding postcards of the KL monorail proved impossible, so Jo's friends, you may find this picture printed out and winging its way to you as an improvised postcard.

Actually to be fair, I find monorails quite interesting too, and my trip on the Mag Lev in Shanghai was cool.

To celebrate the momentous occasion of getting our 60 day Indonesian visas, we popped into Beryl's Chocolate Kingdom and jostled with hundreds of tourists who had been bus-ed in and who, by the looks of their shopping baskets, had never seen chocolate before. We got to try some Durian fruit covered in chocolate. Durian is SE Asia's premier fruit, they love it. It smells vile and tastes, well, let's just say I was glad it was covered in chocolate. For those of you who are interested, according to Beryl's Kingdom, Switzerland eats the most chocolate.

We've experienced a lot of rain in Malaysia. It's the first bit of rain we've seen in months. In KL, it rains every day, one day it rained absolute cats and dogs for 5 hours. This was the scene as we drove into KL on the bus.

At the time of writing, 30th of August, we're going back up to Georgetown for a couple of nights then across to Indonesia. On the 31st the Malaysians are celebrating their 51st year of Independence, 'Merdeka', and so there will be lots of celebrations. We've had problems getting bus tickets because of everyone going home for the party, I don't think it will be quite Full Moon Party but it'll be interesting to see what goes down.

Full Moon Party by Steve

Although I had vaguely known that beach parties were part and parcel of Thailand, I hadn't known in much detail about the Full Moon Party until a few months ago, before our trip started. Now that we were in Ko Pha Nagn, the site of one of the biggest Full Moon Parties, had paid inflated accomodation costs and taxi fares, I was getting excited. Days spent on boat trips and by the beach or pool were perfect preparations for a potentially gruelling up-until-dawn beach party. Like Olympic athletes, we got into training by staying up later and later in the 3 days beforehand.

On the 16th, full moon night, we went out quite late, no point burning out early! When we got to Hat Rin, which was not far from ours in a taxi, it was absolutely packed. The taxi park was rammed with taxis, motorbikes lined every street. Some people were having a huge argument outside a taxi. Were they going home already? We walked through the centre of Hat Rin. Stalls lined the narrow streets selling the infamous buckets: a sandcastle bucket with a bottle of spirits and a can of soft drink mixer. Lethal.



As we got closer to the beach, we could now hear the music booming. But we could`t see anything yet. It was a struggle to get out from the narrow roads on to the beach because of the sheer volume of people. Finally we emerged to a chaotic scene of thousands of people with buckets jigging up and down to trance music blaring out of huge speakers. It was strange but utterly brilliant, a proper sight to behold. There must have been around 15,000 people on that beach, and I have heard that it gets up to 30,000 sometimes.



Time flew by. Dawn broke quickly. It was quite surreal to be stood in the sea holding a bucket of whiskey watching the sun rise over the beach. Eventually things caught up with us and at 830am we headed home. But, even then, there were still a huge group of more than 500 people on the beach dancing to the trance beats still blaring out.


Some valiant attempts to storm the beach end in tragedy

The next day was, predictably, a non starter...

Scamming the Scammers

The wild beach at Khao Lak and an evening football game (all the locals descend on the beach at dusk, only mad foreigners would expose themselves to midday sun...)


From Kanchanaburi we had a few days R&R in Khao Lak, on Thailand's Andaman Sea coast. It was off season and very quiet, but it was immediately obvious we were in a foreign outpost of Germany. Signs everywhere advertised Artz (doctors) Wir sprechen Deutsch, Curry Wurst etc. We met up with a couple of honeymooning Brits (Tom and Laura) who had ill-advisedly picked this coast for their break - it's pretty unswimmable this time of year, but at least it's attractive I suppose.


The ubiquitous SE Asian men's cooling technique of rolling up the t shirt (perhaps actually taking it off is more offensive?)

We had an eventful journey to the party island of Ko Phangan.


It started well with one of those fun buses you get in Thailand, no air conditioning but all the windows open, people carting enormous boxes and sacks onto the bus and random things happening like the bus stopping to pick up parcels but no customers.



When we arrived in Surat Thani (port for the islands of Ko Phangan and Ko Samui) things went rapidly wrong. We were dropped on the side of the road and immediately jumped upon by touts selling tickets to the islands. At the same moment the strap of my rucksack decided to break so I told them to get lost in a less polite way than that! They didn't though and after some deliberation we took them up on their offer of a 450 baht (around 8 pound) combination bus / boat ticket to Ko Phangan. This was around 200 baht more than we thought but they explained it was because the cheap tickets are only early morning ones. So we got some lunch and waited in the tour office for the bus to arrive. A minibus showed up 15 minutes earlier than they'd said and they told us to get in it. Not knowing any better, we did, but just as we were getting in a guy from the office came rushing up and asked to see the ticket. Steve showed the only ticket we had (no separate receipt) to him, and he grabbed it from Steve, who tried to protest, but he wouldn't give it back.

In retrospect we should have known at this point in time something was up, but to be honest this kind of thing happens all the time when you're travelling, and up til now it's been fine. We were thinking that the driver would have our ticket for the ferry - this has happened to us before.

Anyway we arrived at the port (60km from Surat Thani) and guess what, we had no ticket, no proof of purchase (as it had been nicked by that guy), the driver claimed ignorance (though we doubt that) and we didn't know the name of the tour office we'd booked from or even where it was.

At this point the route of least resistance (and clearly what the scammers count on) would be to just buy a ferry ticket and cut your losses and we both agreed if we'd been on our own we would have, but we were both so POd that we wanted to get our money back (900 baht plus the 100 baht each it cost for us to get a bus back to Surat Thani.) We arrived back and were looking out for the area where the office was. We found it without too much trouble and as we got there the guy in the office was just pulling the blind up. I nipped under it to prevent him from closing it when he saw us.

He made two mistakes: first he acknowledged that he recognised us, and second he gave us 1000 baht. I'm not exactly sure why he gave us the money, but I think he was trying to claim it was all some terrible mix up and that we would get our money back, less the 400 baht that it cost him to take us on the futile trip in the minibus to the ferry port!

Of course once we had the 1000 baht in our hands we weren't letting go of it, but we wanted a further 100 baht to compensate us for the bus fare back to Surat Thani we'd paid. He, meanwhile, wanted us to give him 600 baht "change" from his pointless bus ride. So we were at a kind of stalemate.

It all got quite messy and he threatened to call the police, we said "please do" and in fact I went off to call the tourist police (specific police in Thailand for this precise kind of thing). In the meantime I think the guy had got scared and decided the game was up and left the office. Not before he'd taken photos of us on his mobile phone and we'd taken a photo of him.



The scammer tries to confuse Jo with some rapid hand movements

Anyway being honest people we were a bit worried we'd technically stolen 100 baht off the guy (originally we paid 900 baht and we'd got 1000 off him) but after hanging around for a while it was obvious he wasn't coming back and he was impossible to reason with anyway - so we went off to buy a legitimate ticket, only 100 baht down for the escapade but slightly paranoid that our mugshots might be circulating around some Thai police stations!

As a precaution we've been checking into hotels under Steve's name since the scam artist had my name!!!


Our bungalow in Ban Tai complete with pet dog

Anyway we're in Ko Phangan now and Steve will report on the shenanigans of the Full Moon Party which is the reason for coming here. Just one photo to whet your appetites - here are the "buckets" of alcohol people buy on the party lined up ready to go....
Buckets of alcohol for sale in Haad Rin, Ko Phangan

Elephants and ostriches

Bangkok Part 2

The Thais played a nasty trick on us by making their beer super strong and putting it in very big bottles.

The scalping I had received in China had grown back a bit so we decided to go and get some haircuts. They managed to talk us into some manicures and pedicures, so for the next few days we were looking at our feet thinking how great they looked. Which isn't hard when you consider we've been wearing sandals 12 hours a day for the last month. I have to say, all the staff in there were completely in love with themselves and whenever they could they would spend 5 minutes preening in front of the mirror. But I guess it's their line of work.

At the weekend in Bangkok, the world's largest market, Chatuchak, gets set up. Its 35 acres and has something like 10,000 stalls. It gets around 300,000 visitors a day. It has its own map and street reference system. It was interesting for about an hour, and then everything looked the same, you couldn't find what you had seen earlier, and you started getting frustrated with the dawdling that is inherent in any kind of shopping situation. There were a lot of stalls selling puppies and these seemed to be the most popular stalls in the market. I asked how much they were, about 80 pounds for a small dog and up to 320 pounds for the bigger dogs. I managed to survive for 4 hours in the place, but emerging was a bit of a relief, I felt like a released prisoner tasting freedom again. You'd probably love it if you loved shopping.

Later on, we met our American and Australian friends, Robyn and Jess. Robyn had seen an advert for an Ethiopian restaurant in a Bangkok area called Little Arabia, but we couldn't find it, we reckon it had been demolished to make way for a hotel. So we settled for a Lebanese place who wouldn't give us any plates to eat off so we improvised with serving dishes and tea saucers. It was either that or eating off naan breads.

A visit to Bangkok wouldn't be complete without a visit to the Red Light district. I won't go into too much detail on this. The theme of the night seemed to be imprisonment, as the tuk tuk driver tried to kidnap us and take us to his shop, and then one of the bars didn't want us to leave when we wanted to. Another theme was tipping. Everyone wanted a tip, and for not seemingly having done anything for it. Or they would tell you one price, then try and charge a bit more. A bit like some kind of Red Light tax.

Anyway, if you want any more detail than that you'll have to force it out of us or visit it yourself. Suffice to say it's unique.

Bye Bye BKK

Our next stop was Kanchanaburi, about 2 hours north west of Bangkok. It took ages to get to the bus station, and the driver overshot the entrance so had to reverse up the dual carriageway. It was the finest bus station I've ever seen, all escalators and food courts and helpful staff showing us the way.

Kanachanaburi is the town where the Bridge over the River Kwai is located. To get the most out of a visit to the bridge most books say to visit the museum so we made the short walk down the road from our lodge to the museum before it closed. It's very sad. There are some pretty hard hitting relics such as the letters sent home to families telling them their husband or son was reported missing in action, later to be told that they are in a PoW camp. An awful bit of correspondence to have to receive.

The lodge where we were staying had an interesting set up. The bar/restaurant area was lovely, open air and over the river. It also seemed to be an extension of the sitting room of the old lady who did all the cooking (the Grandma of a family affair I reckon.) Any activity that she did was always ended by sitting down in front of the telly. In fact, sometimes it felt like we were interrupting by asking for some food, like they were a bit reluctant to cook as something good was on TV. Most guesthouses thrust a menu in your face as soon as you enter the place. Also, whenever we did order some food, you always saw the young guy get on his moped and return 3 minutes later, preumably to get some missing ingredient. A massive floating restaurant went by on the river, pulled by a tiny wooden boat, like a tug pulling an ocean liner.

We retired to our lodge and I spent 25 minutes hunting for the mosquito I knew was there, before giving up and climbing under my mosquito net.

E-Day (Elephant Day)

I woke up excited - it was Elephant Day! We were on a tour with a couple of Americans and several Dutch people. There are a lot of Dutch people around here, I think because Holland suffered many casualties from the Burma-Thailand railway. When we got to the elephant centre we met an elephant who was 72 years old. I didn't know they got that old. 4 or 5 elephants wondered over with their riders, and we climbed the stairs to the mounting platform. Everyone else got massive elephants and we got a small one, which I thought was unfair on the elephant as there was one toddler in our group. But then, I'm probably massively underestimating the strength of an elephant. I wasn't sure how to get on the seat on the elephant's back until the driver just said to step on the elephant, he doesn't mind.

We set off. Our elephant seemed slow. The seat was incredibly uncomfortable, I wondered how it was fastened. We climbed a hill that I would probably have struggled with on my own legs, let alone with 3 people and a wooden sofa on my back. I got to ride on the elephant's neck towards the end. The neck didn't seem broad enough and I felt like I would fall off sideways if I didn't hold on to the two ropes holding the seat on behind me. I looked a bit like I was limbo dancing on the back of an elephant. There were a few hairy moments where the elephant started walking straight towards a train of elephants passing the other way, and then when we went downhill. He was only 10 years old, a child, so fair enough he was a bit inexperienced. As we got off his trunk snaked across the mounting platform looking for the bags of bananas we weren't allowed to give him.

King and Queen of the Jungle?

We then walked down to the river, where there was another platform. We donned some life jackets, jumped on an elephant one at a time and they waded out and dived down so just our heads were above water. An awesome experience. I nearly fell off, maybe I'm not designed for elephant riding, and I had visions of a watery grave being crushed between two massive elephants. The rider was a bit of a spoilsport and wouldn't let the elephant blow water with his trunk. Maybe accidents happen that way, a pressure jet to someone's face probably hurts a bit.

We still hadn't been able to give our 2 bags of bananas to anyone so one lucky elephant at the end got them all, and some that the monks had. The elephant ate bananas like my Dad eats M&Ms, one after another until they're all gone. We were then presented with our Jo and Steve Limited Edition Elephant Riding Memorial plate, which shall take pride of place in our future residence.

One lucky elephant (and some monks)

When we got back, and Jo had seen a big snake in the river outside our lodge, we walked to, and across, the Bridge. I don't think you could fall off but one Chinese tourist in stupid shoes I was hoping would prove my theory wrong. As we got to the end, we were rewarded with a train over the bridge. People milled around in front of it like it was automatically programmed to stop in front of them when they wanted it to. We noticed when it passed that it was a working service.

On the walk back, we went into a strange but cool open air bar where they had to go out and fetch the drinks, had an aircraft refuelling tank as pride of place in the centre, and pet ostriches.

The Beer Barrel's pet ostriches.

Tiger time

The Tiger Temple is a pretty unique place about 45km from Kanchanaburi, where you can go and touch tigers. It is a place run by monks so there is a strict dress code that mainly applies to women and which we did not really know about until we got there. Jo's bare shoulders and shorts didn't go down very well with the gatekeepers. She didn't have any other clothes though, so our taxi driver kitted her out in some massive black trousers and an Everton football shirt. She looked like she should have been labouring in one of the nearby rice fields. The taxi driver was struggling with some bags so I offered to help him, turned out it was a bag of 12 dead chickens for the tigers!

Tiger Temple was a popular place despite only having been open to the public for 4 or 5 years. We joined the long line queueing for their photo with a tiger. A monk sat on a rock by the tigers to lend some gravitas to the tourist chaos, and occasionally helping to manhandle a tiger's heads onto someone's lap. There were about 8 or 9 tigers lolling about in the sun, with a big tiger chained to a rock at the back pacing backwards and forwards. About 30 staff supervised the tigers and sprayed them with water. I was led by the hand through the tigers to get a photo. I wasn't allowed to touch some of the tigers I posed with, and I never got to touch their heads. They're docile, having been hand reared from birth, but I still felt afraid to touch them or step on their tails. I bet they get that all the time, people stepping on their tails, but they grin and bear it. There was one scary moment when I knelt behind 3 young tigers stretched out on a rock, and as I stroked one it started to roll over and waggle it's legs.

Everton's newest supporter poses with a tiger.

We were then told we had to vacate the area as it was the end of the day and the tigers were going to be walked up the hill we had come done, back to their cages. So we walked up the hill. As we waited for the tigers to march past, a pig got stuck in some railings that then collapsed on it (it was ok in the end), and then Jo got hit by a stray slingshot fired by one of the tiger handlers who was trying to clear the area of pigs. That could have had someone's eye out! The tigers came walking along, we were about 50m away. There were a few bits of commotion as some of the tigers 'playfully' attacked their handlers. It was a strange scene, 20 or so supervisors walking tigers back to their cages. I imagine the tigers are fed before and after they are walked, so that all the tourists milling around don't tempt them on their full stomachs. At the end of the procession the monk leads one of the tigers: presumably this is some kind of symbolic man-animal head monk-head of the tiger family ritual. Jo took her peasant outfit off and we drove back to Kanchanaburi.

That evening we did a Thai Cookery Course. We were attracted by the name, Tasty's Thai Cookery School. Tasty ran the place but was away, so we had a woman with a deep voice called Micky. I spent the whole 3 hours trying to work out whether Micky was a he or she, before settling slightly for she. We cooked Pad Thai, Coconut Soup and Spring Rolls. I then won the Spring Roll Eating Challenge 2008, easily beating Jo's pathetic 4 with 8 (although she maintains I ate 10, unfounded allegations). We were given some roots and spices to take away but had to abandon them as soon as we realised there was no way Australian Immigration would let them in.

Masterchef at work.

Waterfalls, Waterfalls, Everywhere.

We had gone a bit crazy with the tours over the last couple of days so decided to strike out on our own to visit the Erawan waterfalls, a 7-tiered waterfall set in Erawan National Park, about 90 minutes drive from Kanchanaburi. We had the usual run around by the buses, no bus stop to stand at, a bus failing to stop for no good reason and then 30 minutes spent wondering if we were in the right place. When it did arrive, it was the oldest, most uncomfortable bus I've ever travelled on. It must have been built for people 4ft tall because the leg room was non-existent.

We got into the park and a guy took a picture of us on the walk in, then tried to sell it to us on a plate. However, the Steve and Jo Limited Edition Elephant Riding Memorial memorial plate was not in danger of being usurped! We hiked up the 7 tiers, past turqouise pools with fish in. We passed people in different attire, some looked like they were climbing a mountain, others like they were walking back from the beach. After the 6th tier the climb became a little steeper, rockier and wetter, but it was worth it for the 7th tier. We jumped in the water and were a bit creeped out by the fish that came and nibbled at our feet. We discovered they couldn't catch you if you kept moving.

7th - 10th August

We spent the 7th and 8th travelling from Kanchanaburi down to the middle of Thailand, taking in some dubious guesthouses, making some locals deliriously happy by eating their streetfood of rice pudding with meat and raw egg, meeting a Canadian tsunami victim with a strange sense of geography, and being driven round the town of Lang Suan looking for a bus stop whose only identifying marks were 5 sheets of A4 pinned to the wall. We were trying to get to the Islands of the west coast, in particular Surin Island. These are the less well known islands, the better known ones being those on the east coast (Ko Samui, Ko Pha Ngan, etc). But luckily we were told en route by a helpful lady at Kiwi Guest House in Ranong that we'd be lucky to get over to the Islands at this time of year, in particular from the pier we hoped to sail from, and we'd be better off going a bit further down to Kao Lak. Which we did, but decided we didn't have enough time to go over to the islands, what with needing a bit of R&R after 2 days on the road and needing to be in Ko Pha Ngan on the east coast in time for the Full Moon Party on the 16th.

So we're holed up in Kao Lak. It's low season so pretty quiet. We have a lovely lodge with a porch we can sit out on. The sea is a raging force and only for the brave. We leave tomorrow for Ko Pha Ngan and some Full Mooning.

Goodbye Cambodia, It Was Great

30th July 2008 - A fond farewell to Cambodia

It was border crossing day! Our hotel had booked us a car to take us to the border. The guy turned up in an oldish Toyota Camry - they all drive Camrys here - with a massive gas cylinder in the back. The 120-ish mile road to the Cambodia - Thailand border town of Poipet was under construction and had been for the last 3 years, due to finish in a year. It was in various degrees of completion, varying from seriously rutted to complete, but mostly dirt track. There were bridges being put in every mile or so, and the road made a sharp detour round each one. Our driver absolutely hacked it round these blind bends and I'm surprised we didn't hit anything coming the other way (or going our way come to think of it). Half way along a truck reversed into a car who should have known better than to try and squeeze through as the truck tried a 3 point turn. We passed pickup trucks with people sitting on the roof. They pay about 6 dollars, alot of money in Cambodia, to sit on a roof and hang on at speeds up to 70 kmh. I saw one guy (although it was only one) with a crash helmet on. I'm not sure what good that would do him if he got hurled off at 70Kmh. I suppose it’s the same theory as for motorbike riders but they’re not 6ft above the road.

The Cambodian Pick Up Truck Display Team out for a practice

We got to the border and jumped out of the car. We walked through the Cambodian exit point. We then seemed to be free to just roam along this road with no obvious sign posts to the Thailand entry point. It was very strange, the flags of both countries seemed to be everywhere and there was no clear ‘Cambodian side’ or ‘Thailand side’. Presumably they’re hoping people get lost in the casinos dotting the road. Jo got incredibly excited at the sight of vehicles moving over to the left hand side of the road due to the different sides they drive on in Thailand and Cambodia (right in Cambodia, left in Thailand.)

It was a shame to leave Cambodia. Cambodia is a beautiful country with many lovely beaches and islands. It has some fabulous sights in the shape of the temples of Angkor. A staggering history with the Khmer Rouge. And the people are brilliant, with a special mention to our tuk tuk driver round the temples who gave us the change from the money we gave him for lunch, when he could easily have pocketed it.

We got into Thailand no problem. On the other side, a tuk tuk driver took us to the train station, although she did treat us to a visit to the bus station first before realizing. The tuk tuks are different compared to Cambodia, here in Thailand they are more like small cars as opposed to Cambodia’s motorbikes with people trailer.

We then paid the princely sum of 1 dollar each to go the 6 hours by train to Bangkok. It started raining cats and dogs just as we got on. For some reason SE Asia have their own window closing system which is only known to them, so we struggled with the open window then a guard came to the rescue. Thai police with big smiles and guns walked through the train, but declined to see our proffered passports.

We rolled into Bangkok. It seemed like one big flyover. There were lots already and they were building some more just to make sure. They even build flyovers here solely for the purpose of enabling people to turn round on the dual carriageway.

31st July 2008 - The Urban Jungle

In the morning we booked onto a Bangkok cycling tour scheduled for the afternoon. I was very excited as we climbed onto our new bikes which were a serious upgrade from the Penny Farthings I was used to riding around. We were joined by two Dutch guys. One of them rode his bike very strangely, he was all over the place and I thought he was going to seriously scrape the walls on some of the narrow bits. I was convinced he was drunk. Later on, he nearly died twice when the back end of his bike came out on a slippery corner and then he nearly went under the wheels of a taxi.

We cycled through what can only be described as the tidy slum areas of Bangkok, their equivalent of the Chinese hutongs. It was fascinating, people living in such small areas, very few open spaces. And, on the whole, it was remarkably clean. We put the bikes on a boat and sailed across the river. A massive picture of the King of Thailand adorned a high rise building. They love the King here, his picture is absolutely everywhere. We got off the boat and into the Bangkok jungle. It seemed strange to be in a jungle so near to a major urban centre, although this particular jungle is well populated. We rode along a long pathway system that is elevated about 5ft above the jungle floor. It seemed cool until we had to get round the 90 degree turns and then you had to remember the guides advice about always looking ahead. Apparently people have fallen down there, and I thought that if I was some serious stunt biker I would have loved to jump off. But I’m not, so I didn’t. We stopped for some lunch in a clearing and the guide put about a bottle of lime juice in his plate of Thai food.

The elevated pathways through the Bangkok Jungle

Round the corner from the end of the ride and we stopped at a Thai Boxing gym that was had about 20 kids on its books. We milled around for a bit before a fat old guy with no shirt on and twisted teeth that were the obvious results of many a foot in the jaw opened the dusty gym up for us a bit. We were too early to see any of the kids knocking the stuffing out of each other.
After the bike ride, we made our way to the world famous (although I’d never heard of it) Ko San Road, aka Foreigner Street. On the way we had the shortest bus journey ever and Jo took part in Bangkok’s unofficial "Pump in the Park". So we took a bit of a long time getting there, but it was pretty underwhelming when we did, all gaudy neon lights and stalls selling t-shirts that seemed like a good idea at the time. We met a friend from the hotel who regaled us with tales of tuk tuk scams that everyone we were to meet in Bangkok had fallen victim to, then we all went for some dinner at a restaurant set up on a petrol station forecourt.

Pumping in the park