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Spent the last three full days in Bangkok slowly choking to death. Picked up the Bangkok Post this morning and navigated to the daily weather report, which also helpfully contains the air quality guide… On a scale from no health risk, unhealthy (about 100), very unhealthy (over 200) through to any reading over 300 as hazardous. With the current figure being at 207 I was beginning to put last nights 8 mile run, and this mornings sore throat together!
Got here Wednesday morning, via a 16 and a half hour train journey from Nakhon Si Tamorrat, less said about that the better…. I’ll definitely fly the next time. It wasn’t just cause I was in 3rd class amongst chickens and goats but it was just soooo uncomfortable. Anyway I’ve since made up for that “uncomfortableness” and indulged in a couple of Thai massages out here. Though worth it for less than a tenner they’re still not a touch of Ralphy. Also have a theory about why all the masseuses over here are so ugly. Maybe they couldn’t make it as prostitutes, so had to settle for the next best career? Is that a bit extreme?
Stayed in a hotel on the edge of Chinatown after not giving myself a chance of making it across the city on Wednesday morning to the main backpacker area of Banglamphu and actually still being awake. Turned out to be a pretty good bet as it was certainly central, away from some of the hustle and bustle but still with easy access to both the older ‘Wat’ and ‘Grand Palace’ side of Bangkok as well as the hip, new first-world MRT (subway)/BTS (skytrain) side further west – with good links from Hualamphong, the train station I’d arrived at. And for 10 quid a night it wouldn’t have got all that much cheaper, maybe a hundred BHT or so but hardly worth lugging the bag across town.
So much to say, and so little time, but one of the highlights has to be the Paragon Cineplex over to the west. Normal price to see a film in Bangkok is around £2…but…spend what you would in a Western cinema and bingo, for £8 you get to go GOLD. Oh yes…I just said GOLD! Basically it means that they get rid of about 200 seats and instead but in 20 huge sofas with electronic controls, waiter service, blankets and pillows. So one got in there 30 minutes early and sipped ice cold coke while piling down buckets of complimentary popcorn (I don’t even like Pop corn now come to think of it) before the film even started. Didn’t even know what it was about. Don’t think they really care over here as there are no blurbs anywhere. Anyway, Fools Gold turned out to be areet. But the story was all in the place, definitely lived up to its Lonely Planet billing: the Nokia ULTRAscreen. Could see this taking off in the West, but maybe at £480 a ticket or something like that otherwise there’d be no money in it…
Oh nearly forgot…got chased down the street by the Bangkok mafia too. Ok might be slightly exaggerating here…but this bloke was helping a couple out with directions further up the road, they walked on fine, then he asked me if I was lost. Even if I was I wasn’t telling him! Well, that’s what I’d normally do, but for some reason I picked up from him that he had pretty good English so I confirmed the street I was on then waited to cross the road. He started talking about how he studied Law here, so just for a laugh I told him I did too and was a student in Dubai. Love doing this for a laugh. He loved it and asked what I was doing in Bangkok just after the lights went to green to cross. So I said I was a travel photographer for Lonely Planet (another great one), hilarious what you can get away with. Anyway, trying to walk away he was just so churpy and kept talking and talking and talking… then it was clear he was trying his best to get me in a tuk tuk and onto a tailors where he’d get some commission, so Sai Bai Dai (I’m fine thanks in Thai) and away I walked only to him shouting up the street and a tuk tuk following behind for 50m or so. Who did this bloke think I was? A travel photographer for Lonely Planet? Anyway, at the top of this road a copper on a bike says he’s tourist police (and not knowing who to believe) I just walked on to him saying, “don’t believe him, he’s Mafia!” Mafia! He should watch the Godfather! Or go for a walk down North Road in Durham.
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