And so it goes…

After a reasonably comfortable flight - considering that it was over 12 hours non-stop - we landed in a rainy Bangkok. Even though it was midnight and raining, the temperature was 28 degrees. The warm air smelt different to last time. This time it was earthy, dank like the smell of a drain and mud, but it wasn’t unpleasant.

John had parked his car in the underground parking, which was even hotter than outside, it felt like a steam room. Other cars had been parked across ours, so we paid an attendant to manually roll these cars (which had their handbrakes off) apart to allow us to depart. It’s probably about a 20 min drive south towards Hualampong - the suburb commonly know as Chinatown. We went straight to bed, with the somewhat familiar sounds of tuk-tuks buzzing past on the street below.

Yesterday we woke up to fresh Chinese Donuts, and started re-sorting our things. We realised we have brought too much. But we got it this far, so it will probably be coming the rest of the way too.

At about 11 we went down to the shop and met John’s family, Tomoko and little Kento. He has a cousin called March, who was born on the 18th of March. They are both amazingly well behaved children (granted one is 9 months and the other 19 months old). Kento came to dinner with us last night and he just slept a little, or sat silenty and watched us eat.

We went for a walk around the block to a 7-11 and picked up some snacks. A 7-11 is a good place to see the difference in cost of goods. It’s not regarded as a super-cheap shop, it’s convenient. Here you can buy bottles and tubs of Johnson & Johnson or Ponds moisturiser for a little under nz$1 (not that I used moisturiser). Cans of Coke are around 30c and big bottles of Singha or Chiang  Beer are around $1.

We wandered back through little alleys and markets and met John for lunch. He took us to a local eatery just around the corner. It’s pretty much an open-fronted bottom floor of a concrete building, with 5 or 6 little tables scatterd around. We had a really nice noodle soup, with bbq pork, fish balls, fish sausage, shrimp balls, and fried yams (that tasted like coeksisters!).

After that megan and I walked to the MBK shopping mall past large government buildings, over green-coloured canals, over the Central Train Station’s northern tracks, and past new buildings and malls (Bangkok now has a Tescos). There definitely aren’t as many tourists around as last time, but MBK did have a few.

It’s funny this time how nothing feels as exotic or foreign as last time. We kind of know the layout of the surrounding streets of Chinatown and to MBK. We know the smells of the markets, and what is going to be sold at the foodstalls. We know how hot we are going to feel, and what varieties of shower and toilets we are going to encounter. I’ve been learning some more Thai too. I hope I still have some enthusiasm for Japanese!

At MBK we wandered around all the floors, but little interested us as much as last time. We bought batteries, and film for the camera, and I bought a new SIM card for my phone. John is not sure how far this phone coverage will be. Probably Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand will be covered and *maybe* Vientiane in Laos and Siem Riep and Phnom Penh in Cambodia. We will wait and see.

We got a 1 hour massage ($10) on the 4th floor of MBK and then decided to take a detour through an area we hadn’t been through before. It was across the road from MBK and was filled with young school Thais still in uniform, and uni students hanging around in leafy, somewhat sleepy lanes of trendy clothing stores, coffee shops and hair salons. It was pretty cool because there wasn’t as much traffic and you could just wander aimlessly down little streets exploring.

The down-side to wandering aimlessly is that you lose track of direction, and we found ourselves heading East, further way from MBK and John’s place. We got a tuk-tuk back. Megan had a sleep and I chatted with John about possible ways he could come back to NZ.

At about 7 John and Tomoko took us out for dinner to MKs, which is a chain of restaurants I guess somewhat like a Sizzler. This one was located at the new Tescos we had passed. We had a “Steamboat” which I think can be had in NZ. It’s basically a giant bowl of boiling water with a little chicken stock and sliced raddish sitting on your table. You order a bunch of fresh ingredients in little red stackable bowls. You throw everything into the stock and once they are cooked you dip them in some rich spicy sauce and toss them back. We let John recommend some food so that we could be adventurous without ordering anything unusual or stupid. It was delicious.

We are still a little undecided about what our initial plans are going to be. There appears to be another typhoon heading this way, so Ko Samet for a couple of days may be like being trapped in a rainy, dripping wicker basket. Our other option is to head north to Chiang Mai and start our journey. We are thinking about exploring Laos and then returning by train to Bangkok. Then doing another trip out to Cambodia. That way we won’t have to spend too much time in the middle of nowhere trying to get through on muddy roads from Laos and Cambodia.