Callum’s musings on the world at large…
We went down to China town to see some of the new year celebrations. The whole thing seemed to last all weekend, but we only saw a small part of it, grabbed some snaps and then headed back. The pics are online, click the pic below to see all of them.
I’ve just checked out PortableApps.com (new window), I heard about it a few weeks back but have only just looked it up. It’s a great site with a suite of programs specifically for people who move from computer to computer. Everything can be run from a thumb drive and your settings are all stored on the thumb drive so you don’t lose them or leave them behind. Great. Fantastic for anyone travelling without a laptop.
Yes, there has been a slight break in communications on the blog for the last couple of days. I have left the apartment, don’t worry, it was necessary on a number of occassions. Firstly, we had to buy the playstation 2, then we had to collect it, then we had to buy a sofa, a shed load of beer, you know the sort of thing. Well here are the long awaited photos…
Roland relaxes on the sofa (1′990 baht, approximately thirty British pounds:))…
Our state of the art entertainment centre…
Mum, just to put your mind at rest, the fridge is anything but empty…
Roland went out this afternoon to pick up one of the PS2 games that they didn’t have in stock when we bought it. He came back about half and hour later and told me he’d bought 30 more games! The whole lot came to 1′880 baht, which is about £30 or the price of one game at home. So now we’ve got a playstation 2 and 40 games. If you don’t hear from me in the next few days you can pretty much assume I’m in front of the TV. We might just have to buy a second one so we can both play 1 player games at the same time! I love Bangkok…
We got a Tuk Tuk to see the new apartment today, to check it out. On the way the guy started telling us about a sex show we should go and see, blah, blah, blah. We figured, hey, when in Rome and all that, everybody’s got to see at least one ping pong show in Bangkok. So we agreed he’d wait for us at the apartment and then we’d go to the place and have a look.
It was a dive. I mean, a majorly seedy dive. The guy kept saying young, young girls. We figured, not quite what we had in mind, let’s boost. Aware that the driver gets commission for bringing big spending farangs we asked how much to see China Town on the way back to the guest house. He said 60 baht (our original fare to the apartment), then 150 baht. We figure 150 baht for a couple of hours is fine. We jump in.
We get somewhere near our destination and he stops. We pay 160 baht, don’t ask for any change and he starts saying, no, no. Eventually after much discussion he wants us to pay 60 baht to the apartment, 60 baht to the sex show, and then 150 baht back, total 270 baht. Ridiculous. In the end we walk away.
We’re sitting a few blocks away having a shawarma (chicken in a round pitta) and up strolls our tuk tuk driver along with a gun carrying policeman. Allo, allo, allo, what’s all this then? Oh shit. So we start to have the same debate all over, with the tuk tuk driver providing some sort of translation to the police. Wholy crap. Fairly quickly the policeman says, ok, so to clear all problems, can you help him out with 100 baht.
I immediately produce the cash, hand it over, shake their hands, and say thank you in my best Thai accent. Roland was simultaneously gearing up to be a man of principle, stand by the fact that he was trying to rip us off, or at least it was a misunderstanding and we shouldn’t have to pay extra for his mistake.
It may be having read about how things, particularly the police, work in Thailand, but I think 100 baht (around £1.50) to get a policeman and a potentially crazy tuk tuk driver off your ass is a bargain. Irrelevantly of who’s right or wrong, it’s still only one pound fifty and the problem is permanently resolved. If we ever see the policeman again, he gained face (a hugely important concept in Thai culture) by solving the driver’s problem so quickly, I’m sure it wouldn’t do us any harm if we end up in a more dubious situation with the same policeman!
You gotta love Bangkok… 
It’s official, we have an apartment. We have put down a 5′000 baht (£85) deposit and we’re moving in tomorrow. It will cost us the grand total of around £230 a month for a two bedroom apartment that Roland and I are going to share. Including the additional rental of the fridge and TV and the estimated water and electricity bills.
No less than 3 air-conditioning units (read, massive electricity bill!), two separate bedrooms, a spacious living room with easily enough space for the gigantic beer fridge (we have no cooking facilities, so what else are we going to put in it? :)), a couple of beanbags, and a PlayStation 2 which we’re going to purchase tomorrow. No point hanging about on these things aye!
Bring on the parties… 
Can you believe it? I’m supposed to be ill yet I find myself in another version of the bar we found with free internet. Yes, it’s true, there is a second Gulliver’s in Bangkok. I know, I could barely believe it myself the other day. It’s actually bigger than the Khao San Road version, with no less than 9, yes that’s nine, pool tables.
Although for all the increased size there’s definitely also a larger population of lady boys in this version! It’s in the heart of Sukhumvit, the early part, where the girly bars abound. Naturally, with more upmarket hotels in the area, it’s got much less of a backpacker feel, but the abundance of people and pool tables is making up so far. That and draught beer, you can’t really complain can you? 
At home, I live in a heated house, travel on heated transport, and work in a heated office. If I feel cold I instictively head indoors to find warmth and shelter from the cold. In Bangkok, you stay in air-con cooled accomodation, travel on air-con cooled transport and visit air-con cooled cinemas and shopping centres. If you feel cold, as you do in most places unless you’re wearing a jumper, you head outside. It’s just plain weird!
Not to mention the environment question, why is all this money being wasted on chilling huge shopping centres, offices, hotels, cinemas, you name it, to the point where poeple feel uncomfortably cold? Surely raising the temperature a few degrees would save millions on energy bills with all the benefiits therein. Asian logic…
Recent Comments