Bangkok

We've spent the last two weeks in Bangkok - a long time we know - but we needed to organise visas for Lao and Vietnam. (In a first so far, doing this ourselves made this cost more and take longer than if we'd used a travel agent.)

The first week was spent in the backpacker filled area of Khao San Road, which was a convenient base for sightseeing through the old area of Bangkok including chinatown, the grand palace & main temples. After seeing the sights in that area of town and getting sick of the backpacker scene we moved to a more downtown district, closer to the more modern areas of Bangkok and the sky train/monorail which made getting around quick and easy. Here we lived a cosmopolitan life surrounded by shopping malls which were all connected to each other above ground, so it was possible to go all day exploring the area without going to ground level or crossing the road. Among other things, here we caught up on our movies going to the cinema four times, and each time standing before the movie with the rest of the patrons out of respect for the king as the Thai national anthem played.

Based where we were we got a good feel for shopping in Bangkok, which ranges from discount weekend markets and pirated DVDs to upmarket chain stores. We found the best bet was to avoid the obviously touristy places like the pirated goods market in the red light district, where sunglasses sell for 3-4 times what you would normally pay at an average street stall. In fact this is a good principle in general. When we were staying in Khao San Rd, we stepped off the street into a side alley a couple of metres wide and before long found ourselves walking alongside locals' cramped homes fronting onto the alley with the TV blaring and washing drying.

It's clear that religion is an important part of daily life here. Apart from the famous temples surrounding the palace, most businesses have a Buddhist shrine and there are larger public ones on most streets, including the major Erawan shrine in downtown Bangkok outside a major shopping mall which was most of the time surrounded by local Thai. The major shrines have local support businesses springing off them, making and selling gifts for worshippers to give to the shrine.

Getting around Bangkok was pretty easy in general although the buses were sometimes a challenge - you have to watch your map so you know when the bus heads off in a different direction than where you want to go, because the route map you have is old. The modern skytrain system takes these hassles away avoiding the roads altogether and is quick, although you pay for the convenience. We've timed it - a 30 minute walk in one direction was a 3 minute skytrain trip back.

Having lots of tourists around, Bangkok is known for its scams. The most common one is where you're approached by someone who says where you're going is closed, but can take you somewhere else for a bargain fare. There's usually a stop at a silver shop on the way (if you get to your new destination at all) where you get the heavy selling pressure - with commissions paying for your trip. We were on the lookout to have someone try this one but didn't get it until the end of our stay. Unluckily for them, the shrine we were heading to was the one just outside a major mall, fronting on a corner of a busy intersection - it can't be closed! Earlier on though we'd had someone try kind of the reverse idea with us as we were sitting outside a temple. He approached us saying he worked at the temple, made some idle chit chat, then mentioned a temple that was only opened today - because it was Sunday. He said we should look out for yellow tuk-tuks, which are subsidised by the government and a bargain at 10-20 baht. We said thanks, we might visit it next Sunday. Then it turned out the temple was only open once a year. This was a bit suspicious but he walked off quite happy without asking for anything. It all became clear when a few minutes later a tuk tuk driver walked up and offered us a tour to this temple, for a bargain 20 baht in his yellow tuk tuk. He was disappointed when we turned him down, no doubt after getting an encouraging impression from his friend, who we were quite polite to.

The heat is the major challenge in Bangkok, seeming hotter than other places we've been. We reguarly went through 3L of water while sightseeing before 10.30am. It's not so bad in the early morning and evening, when the locals do their Tai Chi and aerobics in Lumphini park in the middle of the city.

By the end of our two weeks we had finished with the main tourist attractions and went to the forensic pathology museum, part of a local hospital. This was one of the most unusual things we've seen on our trip. On display you can see rows of skulls with bullet holes in them, the preserved body of a serial killer, and the bloodied clothing of someone who was stabbed to death. While we were there, the thunderstorm going on outside added to the atmosphere.