Crazy Tuk Tuk Driver
Originally uploaded by .Taylor.
After the elephant trekking in Hua Hin we said goodbye to Dutch Jon and caught a minibus to Bangkok.
The bus ride was only supposed to take 2 and a half hours but the traffic was so bad it ended up taking 5!!! A lady in our minibus got a bit agitated at Marco because he took a while at one of the stops! Its not often you see Thai people get stressed out (they are usually really chilled out) so this was a bit weird.
Anyway, we eventually made it and then caught tuk tuks to our hotel. Our hotel is a bit out of the way which is good as its cheap but bad as it can be difficult to get around. It is pretty near a Sky Train station though which is handy for getting to Siam Square and MBK for shopping (thats what I've been mostly doing).
I'm over on the khaosan Road now which is pure backpacker territory! There are loads of stalls selling fake goods like t-shirts and CDs - its pretty good. Your clothes seem to take a bit of a battering when you go travelling so I've been stocking up on a few more.
The food stalls on the khaosan Road are ace! I'm not sure if I would have eaten from one 4 weeks ago when I first arrived in Thailand but not I'm straight in there! Just had some Pad Thai with egg and a spring roll - all for 30 Baht which is probably about 40p. Its real nice food too proper authentic Thai stylee!
On our first day in Bangkok we went on a sight seeing tour in some tuk tuks. The guy on the photos was one of our drivers and he was MENTAL!!! He was called Sky and him and his mate only charged us 10 baht each (15p) to take us round all afternoon. We soon found out why though!
We set off in Sky's tuk tuk with a massive wheelie which was a good laugh! I thiught it was real funny so was laughing loads and I think this just encoraged Sky even more as each time we had to stop at a junction he tried to pull an even bigger wheelie when we set off!
Now the roads in Bangkok are dangerous enough as it is (they publish a weekly magazine with photos of all fatalities on the city's roads) the but with Sky driving its 10 times more dangerous! His tuk Tuk was soooooo quick compared to all the other ones, like the porsche 911 turbo of Ttuk tuks! We asked what engine it had and he just said Honda and then laughed and pulled a big wheelie as we sped off!!
Sky took us to see that standing budda which was cool. There was a lady here with loads of birds in cages which you could set free for good luck if you paid her 90 baht. Now this was a bit of a moral dilemma. I really wanted to let the birds go but figured that this would just encorage the lady to catch more birds in the future so she could make more money. I thought about it for a while and in the end I figured that at least these birds would be able to be set free and maybe she wouldn't be able to catch anymore. So I paid her 90 baht and opened the bird cage and they all flew off to freedom... Not sure if that was the right thing to do but its what I did...
You see quite a bit of animal cruelty in Thailand. When we went elephant trekking there was a monkey tied up which hardly any slack on his chain. And yesterday I saw a baby elephant on the street! Its owner was making it do tricks and roll over and stuff and people were buying food from the man to give to it. Thought that was pretty cruel too, made me sad...
Ok back to the story, Sky sped us around to a few sights (buddas etc) and then he took us to a suit shop. The deal here is that the tuk tuk drivers get free petrol from the suit shops if they bring tourists in whilst they are sight seeing. It must work as quite a lot of people were in there buying suits. Then Sky took us to another suit shop so his mate could get free petrol!!! None of us bought anything but it helped these boys out I guess. We also saw Neil Morrisey in one of the suit shops which was quite funny! We all started whistling the theme tune from Men Behaving Badly but he didn't look over!
After that Sky ragged his tuk tuk over some bridges and screeched round some corners to take us to see the Golden Mountain temple. That was pretty impressive and you could see all over Bangkok from there - well you could have seen further if it wasn't for all the smog. Bangkok is pretty dirty and crowded.
We had to say bye to Sky the crazy tuk tuk driver after that. We gave him a tip as his driving made the tour as it was better than the sights themselves!
Stevie, Marco and Joe all went back to Khorat yesterday and Omar had to fly back home to Newcastle. So it was another emotional goodbye! I have been travelling with Stevie and Mark for 4 weeks now so it feels really weird to leave them and be on my own. I better get used to it though as I've only got tonight here and then I'm flying to New Zealand tomorrow!!!
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