London and Bangkok
What a relief. Back in Singapore.
After seven days of house-hunting in the wind and rain of South West London, as well as frantically getting the best value out of Day Travelcards by batting around London to see as many people as we could we boarded our BA flight back to Singapore.
Rather surreally it felt like going home, whether this was due to our lack of property in the UK or our nomadic sleeping patterns (thanks to those who put us up) or just the prospect of a more temperate location I couldn’t say.
It could just be that as I had my phone nicked in Covent Garden on the last night I was glad to get back to a country where that sort of thing is rare due to extraordinarily harsh punishment and an unwavering judiciary!
We are still without an accepted offer on our new property= due to some nonsense further up the chain involving a sitting tenant, but seeing as we don’t have to move in quite yet we can wait. If you are thinking of buying a house can I suggest you don’t be me and Jo, we don’t seem to be very good at it.
However there was no chance to get over the twisted bodies and lack of sleep as after our 13 hour flight landed in Singapore on Thursday evening we were soon back the air headed for Bangkok. Jo’s schoolmate Abbi has been teaching in Thailand for nearly 5 years and seeing as we were a short hop away via the spacious and comfortable cheap seats of Jetstar, the South East Asian Ryan Air, it would be rude not to.
Arriving in the concrete monstrosity of the new Bangkok airport we were finally met by Jon (Abbi’s chap) whilst being hassled by offers of expensive taxis and avoiding people milling about aimlessly. His (apparently basic, although very impressive) Thai helped us through the mid-evening traffic, leaving us thanking the heavens that we hadn’t tried to find their flat ourselves communicating only with a confused cab driver using a series of hand gestures and badly handwritten addresses.
We went to eat at Cabbages and Condoms, pleasingly this refers not to the menu but to the PDA who run the restaurant promoting sex education to Thailand’s rural poor. The name comes from the founder of the PDA, former Thai senator, Mechai Viravaidya, who believes “birth control should be as cheap as cabbages.”
Not to say that family planning isn’t a key restaurant theme you get condoms instead of mints with your bill and a spermicidal scent as you walk in, wafting from the shop window dummies dressed in their prophylactic-based outfits. Truly a site to see.
Late to bed, due to catching up and jet-lag, led to a remarkably tardy early morning start at about midday. Jo and I wandered off to Wat Pho to mooch around the reclining Buddha. A few photos were taken but the oppressive heat (even compared to Singapore), tiredness and a sense of deja vu from our previous visits to Bangkok mean we looked rather than snapped on our way around. We took the noisy riverboat to a little Cafe near the Khao San Road (as busy, noisy and dirty as ever) where the Gordan Ramsay obsessed chef provided the most elaborate sub-£2 BLT ever created.
The taxi’s in Bangkok have improved massively since my last visit, cruising the streets are new air-conditioned vehicles in a variety of neon liveries, however our inability to communicate with them proved our undoing when returning to Abbi’s place. We arrived in the vicinity of our destination but our, and the driver’s, unfamiliarity with this part of the city meant a five minute phone call between Abbi, the driver and eventually the downstairs guard at Abbi’s flats which can be summarised in English as, “you’re going past it, turnaround its five minutes away on the road you are on.” But in Thai involved repeated pleasantries, questions about the weather, meaning of life and best place to get street noodles before the name of the road was repeated over and over for a period of about 5 minutes with a confused look on the drivers face.
Dinner at a more local Thai place led onto drinks at Three Sixty atop the new Hilton Bangkok. The views were spectacular as were the cocktails, both which may have had something to do with Jo, transfixed by the view, failing to recognise the presence of steps and taking a small but undignified tumble.
Once the woman murdering both English and the art of the bar ballad had driven us from our sofas Abbi, Jo and I went to Patpong. Our plan was not ‘ping pong’ but to head for a bar that Abbi and her teaching colleagues have regularly frequented. However the bar was at the end of the Old Compton Street of Bangkok, except staged like a runway. Bars on either side of the street face their chairs and tables into the centre creating a narrow pedestrian examination walkway, and examined I was – much to the amusement of Jo and Abbi.
A drink or two and time to head back to Abbi’s flat.
Sunday was left for some shopping, massage and eating at the enormous MBK shopping mall in central Bangkok on the Sunday, before we once again boarded the Jetstar bound for Changi Airport.
We’re still jet-lagged, have no house to buy and I have no mobile (Jo now has three). I can’t moan though, it was good to see chums in London (sorry for the short notice!), Bangkok was still amazing in all of its half-built, sprawling splendour, but it’s good to be in a bed for more than a single night.
Andy 13 March 2007
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Hey Andy & Jo,
Sorry to have missed you both when you were back in London. Matt and I had just been back 3 days after our trip to NZ and were both jet lagged, hence being in bed by 8pm. Keep up the good work and catch up soon.
S x
Sheils # Mar 13
Mate, good luck with the house purchase. By the way i don’t want to put the mockers on it but be aware that that place is less than a minute from my flat. I thought i had better inform you of this fact in case it be seen as a reason to pull out of the purchase!
Harley # Mar 13
I like the ability to leave comments on the home page. I want!I want! I want!!
Michael Arrigan # Mar 15