Feb - June, 2001

Thailand has sort of become our second home from home while we have been darting back and forth around SE asia for the last 6 months. Bangkok in particular seems to be the quinsentissial (sic) travellers junction in these parts of the world, with everyone either comming off a plane or heading to an island or going overland, to just the plain old "sitting- around-all-day-on kao san road types" it's all here and you don't have to keep getting another one of those f**k$ng visas! to enjoy it all each time you pass through.

Our time here has been mostly divided up into either being stuck in Bangkok to try to get things done or not done!, spending several weeks up north in the Chaing Mai, Pai, Chaing Rai area, chillin and motorbike exploring. The NE Issan part of thailand from Nong Kai, Pak Chom (played guitar there with this thai DJ), Chaing Khan, to Sukothai. Finishing down to Koh Tao in the Gulf of Thailand for a bamboo bungalow, ambient music and diving.

The first time here in Bangkok, was on our way to Vietnam and we had to wait for our visas, we arrived late in the day from our flight from Rangoon and we didn't really have much choice but to stay on the "khao san road getto" area which is basically a one (and growing) street strip of bars, guesthouses, street hawkers, hair braiding, tuk tuks and food vendors, all to a pumping techno 2001 soundtrack of an asian carnival street circus wrapped up with westernized comforts. actually it's a good place to get things done, such as getting a visa or booking a train/bus ticket and it really comes to life at night when alot of thais come around and blend into the mix. We unfortunatly were staying 'right on' KS Rd and it was immpossible to get any sleep before 2am with the guarantee that you would be woken up around 5am for good measure. most rooms around these parts are pretty much coffin like, where the walls don't actually reach the ceilings.

On our second stop there in Mid-April we arrived during the Thai New Year, which is gloriously celebrated by everyone throwing water on everyone else and plastering each other with this baby powder and water mix, so everyone is running around mad looking like wet plaster ghosts! We were in a taxi comming from the bus (back over from cambodia) and it was wild with everyone using these high powered water guns, just spraying every which way, complete bedlam as if Bangkok needs more of that! We had great fun going out to KS rd (this time our guesthouse was away from there!) and just spraying all these thai people down with water, it was the most fun we had in street party/carnival like atmosphere. It was good to see the the local people more than the fahrangs for once strolling down there and having a good time of it as well.

Now on our last time through (comming back from the NE of Thailand and Laos) we really just wanted to get out of there since we had a series of bad and missed bus connections just to get there (got dropped off in on the side of the highway north of bangkok when we were trying to take a gov-bus to Attuthya, another story in itself!!) Bangkok wasn't as fun this time around and certainly not as fresh (the hot open sewers) we also arrived late in the day and even though it was the 'low' season we still had some trouble finding a place to stay and our first night was spent in a room over this bar/GH off near KS rd that was ok the first night but the second night it got out of hand with all the usual bad-boy brits yelping all night "right who wants to go down to patpong road?" shouted four or five times for the deaf blokes! early the next morning we awoke to another screaming brit ('ere's alot ov em over 'ere) who was yelling at the owner that someone had 'nicked' his 'rucksack' after a half an hour of him prancing and yelling it turns out that his "ladyboy", I guess he had picked some one up the night before? had been stealing a bunch of things from him like, "you have my bloody mini disc player...take off your pants and lets see what else you've stolen you bloody slag!!...you have my bloody lighter bitch! and my Valium...you nicked my BLOODY VALIUM!!!!!.......

Needless to say we checked out that day and spent our last remaining days in Bangkok at one of our old haunts. Bangkok is always full of surprises even when you aren't trying to find them. That's probably one of the the best things I like about this city...even if you don't mind getting no sleep.