Thailand Teaser

OK, blog fans! Lets rock this party like its July 2015!!

Woooo!!!!

So we came from Siem Reap in Cambodia, into Bangkok. Then hitting up northern Thailand for a couple weeks, before we cross into Laos. We gotta get our arses into gear now blog fans! :/ Zoooop! Keep your shorts tight for this!

SO! We crossed into Thailand by bus, and if you read my last blog, you would know I was feeling pretty sh*t stains in Cambodia at that time... Cat and I weren’t able to get a seat next to each other on the coach, so I had to sit next to some massive guy with a ponytail. He took up his whole seat... plus half of mine... So I had half a cheek on my chair, looking like a shrivelled little worm... On top of that, my sinusitis was in major evacuation mode. I went through a whole toilet roll, and coughed my guts up across the border. Two girls were sitting next to me, looking like I had just brought MERS to town... Wasn’t in a good mood... We got to Bangkok at night, and had a bit of chicken from a street food stall. It was more or less the first thing I had eaten, as I was recovering from chronic diarrhea... Well, I HOPED I was recovering blog fans! Because the next morning, we PLANNED on going to the Grand Palace... but instead, the only throne I got to see, was my bloody shitty hostel toilet seat! Was well annoyed!! I really wanted to get out, but I wasn’t able to leave the toilet for 5 minutes!... Roughly 48 times I went... I don’t think I’ve had diarrhea like that since I was in Croatia in 2011. So that was a pretty “SHITTY” way to start our Thailand trip... After my 49^th visit to the toilet, and 4 pills, I braved the outside world. We didn’t have enough time to justify the Royal Palaces entrance fee now. So we paid a visit to Wat Pho instead. That was a really beautiful area. It had the famous reclining Buddha there, and was surrounded by really nice golden shrines. As everywhere in Asia seems to be... It actually managed to cheer me up, and i felt goood :)

After that, Cat wanted to get a bus to the MBK shopping centre. We definitely don’t need to buy any more stuff blog fans, but according to Cat, its “a must see part of Bangkok anyway”. We walked through a park to a bus station and waited for our bus. Our bus number was marked on the bus stop, so we were sure it was stopping here... It never came... We must of waited AT LEAST an hour, and nothing... We just sat there, watching in hope... as every other bus was running more regular than my bowl movements... Typical. We walked to another bus stop, nothing... So then we decided to walk back to where we were able to see the sunset by Wat Arun. Which is also known as “The Temple of Dawn”. So it was kinda a blessing in disguise seeing that at sunset. We FINALLY got a bus to the MBK. But Cat was kind of stressing, as we were arriving as the shops were shutting... Didn’t bother me... By this time I decided to brave a chicken nugget meal from Burger King, to see if my stomach could handle it... We wondered around the closed shops regardless. Walked through arcades, then to the cinema area to watch trailers of movies that we had no idea were even being made... Then, the trailer for Jurassic World came on... It looked so sick, we decided to spontaneously go to the ticket booth to see if it was on... We were in luck :) So we watched that, and the evening panned out pretty well in the end.

The next morning we got up to visit the worlds biggest market... Cat finally got her shopping fix. Ironically I saw a pretty sick shop as soon as I came out the train station, and bought 3 t-shirts :/ Bit excessive I know... I definitely didn’t need 3 new t-shirts, but what I DID need, was a pair of cheap jeans... We also made plans to go to Banyan Tree hotel for drinks that night. Banyan Tree is voted the best roof top bar in Bangkok, and one of the best in the world. Even better than the one from Hangover 2 apparently... So I needed the jeans to meet dress code standards... Luckily I managed to find a pair that was decent, cheap, and fit me... So we headed off to the bar... Just to give you an idea of the cheapness of the market, and the prices of the drinks we were paying at this bar... My jeans were cheaper than ONE, SMALL Chang Beer :/ Psssht! But when we got there, the views were AMAZING. We were so high up, and there was literally nothing to obscure our 360 degree view. We got there just in time, before the last seat was taken too. We looked around, and even though we made a decent effort, it kinda felt like we were two ragamuffins who snuck in through the back doors of an Oscar winning after party or something. We got speaking to a Swedish guy sitting next to us. He was with his girlfriend, who looked super beautiful, and super high maintenance... She wasn’t too impressed he started to speak to us... But he was pretty cool. He built home cinemas for mega rich people, and was obviously well off. He still seemed super jealous, and super impressed of our commitment to travel for the past couple of years as well though. His girlfriend got up and left us at one point. He was tempted to come to the dirty part of Bangkok to carry on drinking with us, but it was his last night in Thailand, so I suggested he should probably spend it with his lady lol. After we finished our small beers veerrry slowly, we wlaked around the other parts of the roof, and took photos that didn’t do the view or atmosphere any justice. We also walked through the restaurant area. And if we thought the people around the bar were posh, these guys took the biscuit. Some of the women there looked like the type that would be pissed off if their olives weren’t picked off a vine that grew out of Hugh Grants bum hole... “Oh Margaret! I do believe this silly waiter brought me a peanut marinated in unicorn tears, instead of angel tears, as I clearly stated! I shall call the police immediately!”

That was our last action of Bangkok, part 1 blog fans... We only had 3 nights there, knowing we would be back soon... We were heading up north to Sukhothai next.  I spent the previous night researching hostels, writing down prices, addresses, and phone numbers. Then, when we got to the bus station in Sukhothai, there was a guy advertising his hostel that was better than the rest. So we just went with him... Typical... We weren’t in Sukhothai long. The main draw there was the old temples in the old town... Coz obviously me and Cat haven’t had enough of temples yet(!) After 3 days at Angkor Watt, last week... But we were able to cycle around these ones, go around town, and stuff... So that was a nice change I guess...

Then we swiftly moved on to Chiang Mai. I was excited about this place :) We got a random message from Lena (girl from Birmingham, who beat me at beer pong and made me puke), who also arrived in Chiang Mai the same day as us. We went for food and a few drinks, then wondered around the night market. Had a really good buzzing atmosphere there... We wondered around a bit more, and got offered to come in to watch some Thai Boxing. The guy offered entry at a quarter of the advertised price, so we went in... After barging my wall through all the ladyboys tying to get me to their bar... We got to the ring, front row seats, and managed to watch several mediocre fights. We even saw a blindfolded fight, that was a bit like the one Karl Pilkington did :p So that was funny... We didn’t get too drunk that night though, as the next day we had ELEPHANTS!! :D This was definitely a bucket list thing to do for me... We rode elephants before in Bali. But this was different. They advertise it as “elephant training”. You ride the elephant bare back, and control them yourselves with only words, and wiggling their ears. You get to feed them, and learn 10 commands. Our guide was pretty funny. He confessed that he thought he had the day off, and got really wasted the night before. So he was seriously hanging balls... Seemed like my kinda guy. He loved me too for some reason. He was always shouting “Mr Rob! Mr Rob! Watch this! Mr Rob, come look!” Guess im just a lovable guy blog fans :p The main draw for me with the elephants, was the washing and water fighting :) Its something Ive seen a lot from other tourist photos, and it always looked so cool. We all went to the lakes and the elephants looked genuinely happy, and smiling to be washed and splashed. Was a really cool moment. As all this was going on, there was another elephant from a rival tour company watching us from the banks. Apparently this one hated people, and had recently thrown a Chinese tourist off his back, and fatally stamped him to death :/ Our guides had to get the biggest elephant in our group, Magnum, to protect us lol. Was pretty wild....

After all that excitement, we continued the pace, by heading out to a ladyboy show with Lena that night... I wasn’t too overly excited about this... Obviously I was a bit sceptical... I was expecting it to be really crude, lots of penises, sex jokes, and... gayness lol. Im not homophobic by any means, and I was happy to go along. But I was expecting a lot of awkward moments of men in drag, touching me up, and trying to kiss me... So we went in, sat down, and then a man in drag touched me up, and kissed me LOL! Wasn’t expecting that was I blog fans(!) After Cat and I got a selfie with him, and we tipped him, he left us alone a bit more... Just stroking my chin, or jiggling my tits as he walked past...But honestly, all that aside, the show was REALLY GOOD! Its all cabaret, miming gay anthems, with Thai, male, Tina Turner look-a-likes, lipsinking, and doing jazz hands. But they were all really good performers... It made everyone laugh, feel good, and turned everyone there COMPLETELY GAY... (and by “gay” I mean happy) :D

The night didn’t end there though blog fans. We moved on to a rock bar, where they had a band covering Nirvana, Guns N Roses, Lynyrd Skynyrd, AC/DC... So that was awesome... We got a beer tower, got a bit more drunk, then moved on to “Zoe in Yellow”. Which was a weird little area, full of bars, and drunken backpackers. Felt like we were in Zante or something for a minute. But it was cool. We had a few more drinks, danced, and said bye to Lena, who was moving on...

NOW... This is where it gets controversial blog fans... The next day, we were planning on going to TIGER KINGDOM!... DUM DUM DARRRR.... The place that so many people have divided opinions on. Arguing that its either the greatest place in the world, or an animal torture house, full of drugged up cubs... This is where I stand on it blog fans... I’ve always been annoyed by the tourists taking cheesy photos of wild animals, and exploiting them for that “one special profile pic” shot... On the other hand, Im also a bit annoyed by the people who so confidently blast “OH THEY’RE DEFINITLEY DRUGGED”. Like they’re animal behaviour experts or something... I always live my life with the philosophy that “Idiots think they know everything. Whilst smart people know, they know nothing at all”. And as Cat LOVES tigers, and i’ll never have the chance to do this again, we decided to go... I figured, if I think its cruel, my reviews to my MILLIONS of blog fans, will do more damage, than my measly entrance fee contributes... Anyway, when we arrived to Tiger Kingdom, we had several choices of packages we could pay for. Categorizing them by “Big, Medium, Small, or Smallest”. You also get the choice of seeing 2, or 3, or all of them. I said to Cat, I wouldn’t mind seeing the smallest ones. Maybe they would be like little kittens to play with. Cat really wanted to see the biggest one, as she seems to get a boner over the sheer size of them... So we went to pay for the Big and Smallest package... But there was a problem... They had a little theme park style measuring wall, and Cat was TOO SMALL to see the big tigers! :D Mega lolz blog fans haha... So we settled on seeing medium and smallest instead. As we walked round, waiting for our number to be called out for the cage entry, we saw lots of big tigers, playing with their trainers. On first impression, they didn’t seem sedated, or depressed. The trainer had leaves on the end of a stick, and he was waving it around for the tigers to pounce on... Just like a domestic cat... Other, bigger tigers we saw were the same. There were trainers in there, tigers playing with leaves, in water, all seemed fine to me... Then me and Cat had our numbers called out. We went into the play pen area of the medium sized tigers, that were still pretty bloody big! There was 3 of them, lying in the shade, resting... Then one starting playing near us... Kinda scary... We were told to approach them from behind, stroke firmly, don’t be scared... We asked them a few questions... Louis Theroux style lol...

“They sleepy now?”

“Yes. Rest in day. Play at 6 oclock”

“They friendly?”

“Yes... Only boy tigers here... Females more dangerous”

Everything they said seemed feasible and made a lot of sense...  We left the medium sized tigers with a few good photos, and heading off to see the “smallest” ones... The smallest ones were actually a lot bigger than i imagined... I pictured kitten you could pick up, but in reality, they were the size of a big dog... But, as I approached the play pen for these little ones blog fans, I didn’t seem as convinced as I did before. There was a LOT more high demand for pics from tourists here, and we were going in and out like a chicken factory... When we went in, a keeper introduced us to one, who was completely konked out on the floor. He told me to stroke it, lift its paw up to feel the weight... But to be honest, I just wanted to let the poor bastard sleep lol. He took us to a few others, said we could lay next to them and stuff. We did it pretty discretely, then let them be. After that I was kinda feeling a little bit bad for them... If I had to conclude my personal opinion on the place, I would still say I don’t think they are drugged... I think the worst thing going on here is sleep deprivation lol. Which is pretty bad for a tiger cub, who grows so fast and needs his sleep... So im not gonna throw fuel on the fire, and jump on the druggy bandwagon... All in all, I don’t think this is a bad place... Ive been to the Steve Irwin zoo in Australia, and seen a zookeeper swim and play with 2 big tigers there. No one battered an eyelid at that. Ive also been to a zoo in Argentina that was TERRIBLE! And I think that MAYBE people are a bit racist, and I like to assume Asians tend to be more cruel to animals, and therefore must have really bad zoos. Where other countries / continents don’t get that rep... I know its not ideal. No “zoo” is ideal... Im a pretty left wing kinda guy... But, you know, most wild animals are not exactly living an ideal life right now either. And I think this place generally does a good job raising them, keeping them healthy and happy... I just think maybe the little ones should get more undisturbed sleep lol.

ANYWAY... Enough of that... After Tiger Kingdom, we got a scooter and drove up a hill in a national park to see more temples... We were going cold turkey... Had been at least 3 days without a temple by then lol... We then went to a market, ate, and looked around the stalls. There was also a free concert going on in town. Some sort of celebration of South-East Asian culture. Theres always something going on in the evenings, in Chiang Mai. Its so cool... Saying that though, we had another action packed day the following morning... We got to cross off something that been on Cats bucket list for a long time... “ATV and White Water Rafting” :) ATV, meaning, “All Terrain Vehicle” aka... a quad bike lol... Cat loves driving quad bikes. We shared one bike to save money. But as she doesn’t have a licence to drive real cars, and she cant drive the scooters whenever we hire them, I let her drive 75% of the time. They took us on an awesome route, and had a decent amount of time on it too. After that, we had lunch, and got straight into white water rafting. This is one of those things ive never really thought about doing, or been bothered about. But knew I would like it once im there. We shared a boat with a guide and 2 Irish girls, and it was SCARY! We all had to work hard together, paddling, and listening to instructions... We went down the first rapid or two, then Cat went OVER BOARD :0 I saw her fly off, and under the choppy waters, and I was like “So... Cats dead”. Luckily, the instructor, who didn’t seem too shocked or flustered pulled her back in quickly... I was expecting a bone to be protruding from her shin, or one eye dangling from her face... but she was actually fine! We both somehow managed to get through it, with no major injuries... or death... and we had a good laugh doing it. Had water fights with other boats on the calm bits, prayed for our lives on the scary bits...

We finished off our stay in Chiang Mai by going to the “Saturday Walking Market” with a French girl from our hostel. Again, we didn’t really need to buy anything. But I managed to get some 2^nd hand hiking boots, as we have a few treks coming up in Laos... Also stuffed my face with the good food there too :)

So, that was 5 action packed days in Chiang Mai! We were sad to leave... We decided to go head to a place that had NOTHING in common, and no similarities to Chiang Mai, AT ALL.... Chiang RAI ;) Completely different blog fans... Which is where we are now actually :) We came here just for one night, mainly to see the “White Temple” Wat Rong Khun... We were expecting to get here today, and go on an easy bike ride to the temple, then come back to rest before heading off to the Laos border tomorrow... Didnt happen that way blog fans... The hostel had no cheap bikes left, so we went for a walk around town looking for a bargain rental, in the SWELTERING heat... We finally found one, got ready to go, then she demanded we gave her a drivers licence. Which i didn’t have on me... So we power walked, in the heat, sweating our tits off, back to the hotel, to get my licence... Got it, and headed off... The lady at our reception previously told me both of the two main roads going south, headed to the temple... “They both meet in the middle, just go down”. You can see where this is going blog fans... I drove, and drove, and drove, and drove.... By this point I knew we had about an hour til the temple shut, so I just kept bombing it down... Then it came to the point it got ridiculous... We stopped and asked how much further it was. The old lady couldn’t speak English, but pointed back the way we came... Cat checked her watch, and we had 30mins left... I was so angry... I tried speeding back up... then realised from road signs we were 30km south of Chiang Rai... And I knew the temple was 13km south... We knew we wouldn’t make it... I was so pissed... We could of gone straight to Laos today, but instead we got the bus here, paid for a room, looked for a bike, and now its all gone tits up... On top of that, the weather took a drastic change from sweltering hot, to PISSING IT DOWN! By this point I was tempted to drive on the other side of the road, just to crash into someone, to cause damage to myself, the bike, and someone elses vehicle... Thats how i get when im that angry blog fans.... We pulled in to some shelter safely though. Safe, but drenched and fuming... I just sat silently, taking deep breaths, staring out in the distance... as Cat read the guide book, trying not to laugh at me lol....

That was a few hours ago now, and I feel better blog fans... We are gonna try to see the temple early in the morning, then come back to get a bus across the border to Laos. It doesn’t seem to be a straight forward process though... So Ill let you know how that goes in the beginning of my next entry blog fans ;) Keep your shorts tight for THAT!

So yeah... Thats it for now. Laos next, then back down to Bangkok, and the south of Thailand. Looking forward to seeing the darker side of Bangkok, and the beautiful partying islands down south.... Might even enjoy a game of ping-pong whilst im at it ;)

Thanks for reading again blog fans...

Hope it aint as much of a pain in the arse to read, as it is to write lol

Until next time....

Zoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooopaaa!!