Scams, elephants, cabbages and condoms
Bangkok Travel Blog
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For Lisa's birthday I had booked a couple of nights in a swanky hotel more in the centre of Bangkok. Given that it was such a reasonable price, we were very impressed with it, by far the best place either of us had ever stayed! Their obsession with blue neon created the 'wow factor', and it had the most free toiletries ever, plus you could even go downstairs and request a 'black tie emergency kit' for when that unexpected invitation arrives. Sadly we did not need that service, but they did ring our doorbell (yes we had a doorbell!) and present us with a single red rose on the first evening and we found a plate of chocolates on our cabinet on the second! I think they were abit confused really, when we checked in they apologised for there only being one bed despite assurances that it really was fine.

The morning of Lisa's birthday we decided to go and find a market we had seen on the map, getting the Skytrain for the first time. It was very crowded but lovely and cold, a welcome break from the searing heat outside. We got off and walked down the street, pausing to take a photo of the buddhist icons outside one of the buildings. A woman stopped and started talking to us, asking where we were from and where we were going. She seemed very nice, I assumed she was a business woman on her lunch break. She said that the market we wanted to go to wasn't open until later and pointed out on our map the 'temple of the lucky buddha' which we could go to while we waited.

When we got to the temple we were accosted by a man who wanted to sell us flowers to put at the door, as a sign of respect to the Buddha. I politely declined but he looked at me like I'd just spat on the Buddha so I backed down. Lisa managed to get us a buy one get one free type offer and we took off our shoes and went inside.

So we get back on our tuktuk, not knowing where we are going because 1. the canopy is too low to be able to see anything other than the oncoming cars and 2.


So slightly drained we made our way through the market, not finding anything much we wanted, had some lunch and decided to go back to the hotel for a bit as there was a storm brewing. Sadly the storm was quicker than we were and we got caught in a huge thunderstorm soaking us to the skin in bizzare hot rain. The doorman found it very funny and asked us if we had been swimming, *oh how we laughed*.

Feeling much more human, we made our way out for the evening heading down the main street. It had stopped raining some time before, but the heat and increased humidity made it feel exactly the same as it does when you walk into the bathroom after someone has had a hot shower, very odd. We were walking and chatting, and I looked up and swore out loud, 2 foot in front of me was a baby elephant. Lisa quickly got out her camera and managed to get a photo of it's bum, I think the man walking it would have wanted money for a proper photo anyway. We couldn't believe it and just stood in shock for a moment, did we really just walk past a baby elephant?
Well, onwards we went to our restaurant destination, Cabbages and Condoms.

After the meal we wandered up to try and find a bar to have a drink in. We quite wanted to see a ladyboy show (its ok, that's actually what they are called!), as we had heard that they were very funny, like drag shows in England. Unfortunatly the more seedy side of Bangkok meant that every bar was full of sweaty, fat middle aged white men fawning over young thai girls, who were lapping up the money and attention. It was really sad and pathetic so we quickly bypassed them for a quiet beer in an 'Italian' cafe. Even so we kept seeing these guys and girls everywhere, even at breakfast this morning when this old guy was trying to explain to his bored 'friend' where France was. It's quite disgusting. Anyway, we enjoyed our cheap thai beer and put the world to rights.
Well there's a birthday you won't forget Lisa!!

