A Fairly Boring Week and a Half in Bangkok

I figured that the best place to get a visa for India would be in Bangkok and then it would be fairly cheap and easy to fly to India from there as well. So it was that a return to Bangkok was in the cards. I decided to try and get to Bangkok on Friday, so that I could get the application in before the weekend. I had read that getting the Indian visa would take five working days. By being able to get the application in before the weekend, I wouldn't have to stay in Bangkok through an extra weekend before moving on to India.

I arrived in Bangkok and got myself to a hotel around noon. I was close to the Indian embassy so I immediately headed over to the visa application center. Apparently you can't apply for the visa directly to the embassy. It is necessary therefore to go through the intermediary of the application center, which is fairly annoying because it involves a fairly hefty processing fee for the center on top of an already fairly pricey fee for the visa itself. Altogether it cost about 80 dollars to get the Indian visa. Plus aggravation. The Indian embassy no longer accepts hand-written application forms, so it was necessary to go and fill in the required information on the visa application form at an internet cafe. I couldn't do it with my laptop as the website expressly said that wifi connections were not to be used. Why? I don't know. There was no explanation. In the application center, they have computers that can be used for the process, but I was told it was quite expensive to do it that way and that going to an internet cafe would be cheaper. Okay. Thank you.

They showed me a sample application and off I went. When I got to the fairly expensive internet cafe, I started to fill out the application, but then came a bunch of questions for which I did not have the information, and which I hadn't been warned about at the application center. Things like the address of the hotel where I was staying, and addresses of places in India where I would be staying. They wanted to know my parents' names and a bunch of things that didn't seem to have any earthly connection to wanting to go and visit India. And I hadn't been warned about any of it. In addition, the application form had to filled out in the space of 30 minutes or the session would be cancelled. This all got me rather annoyed as I had now spent quite a bit of time and energy, and money, to open this session at an internet cafe instead of on my computer so that I could fill out the form that was required with all these surprise questions about which I hadn't been warned and in a time crunch to get it done quickly enough to meet the deadline of 2 o'clock, after which submissions would no longer be taken.

I was annoyed enough that I stormed back into the application center and tore a strip off them, telling them that they really ought to be publishing some kind of information sheet to tell people applying for visas what information is required to complete the form before they open a 30 minute application completion session online that they end up not being able to complete because they haven't the proper information. I find that kind of lack to be extremely annoying. It was much easier to get into China, and I found that to be quite enlightening. If a country doesn't want people to come, they should just say so and go on from there. But if they do want visitors, they shouldn't just put up billboards all over the world with catchy slogans (like “Incredible India”), they should make the process actually simpler.

In the end I got back to my hotel, got all the information I needed, filled out the form and returned to the application center in time to meet the deadline so the visa could be processed by late the next week. Whew!

But then I had to figure out what to do with myself for a week in Bangkok. I guess most people would not have much difficulty with this. Bangkok is supposed to be this wonderful vibrant city with lots of charm. I have never found it so. There are lots of temples and signs of culture and all that sort of thing. But I still find it kind of boring. And the people are very good at scamming money out of the visitors. It's not really my kind of city for some reason, even though I have been to other cities that, in truth, are quite similar. So I really don't know what it is. But I've never been particularly impressed with Bangkok (although this time around, I did find more charm to the place).

The wife of one my friends from Korea is Thai, and she was currently in Bangkok. I got her number from my friend and hoped to be able to get together with her a couple of times. It also happened that another friend from my days in Korea, but who now lives in Japan, was going to be in Bangkok for a few days for a vacation. That would be good for a couple of days as well. It turned out that I would probably have a good few things to occupy myself during this week of idleness, waiting for the wheels of Indian bureaucracy to turn. Yea!!!

I just did a bunch of walking about for the weekend without any particular aim in mind. I wanted to go back to the travel agent who got me sorted around with the bus to Cambodia. I wanted to go and see if she knew what happens at the Cambodian border. I went there on the Sunday, but they were closed for whatever reason. And then I just never could be bothered to go back again. I suppose that was apathy and the dulled sense of annoyance that comes with the passage of time, and I imagine that that is what the scammers depend upon from travellers who are taken in by the scam.

I was walking by a shopping center afterward and I passed by what seemed to be a famous boy band from somewhere. It seemed they could speak Thai, so they were probably Thai, but they looked a bit Japanese, so I couldn't really tell. But I took a photo for posterity.

On the Monday, I met my friend Geoff's wife. Her name is Yuphin. We went to the hospital together. I went to get a booster shot for one of my immunizations, Hepatitis A, and Yuphin went for a bit of a checkup. Later we met her cousin, the wife of another friend from Korea, and we all had dinner together.

My friend Sean had come to town in the meantime and on Tuesday we connected and went for a walk and just generally hung out together. We walked along some train tracks, that didn't seem to be in use by trains, but were a small community. Sean and I had a good couple of days catching up and messing around, then he left on Thursday to go back to Japan and his wife and baby. In the past he had liked Bangkok a lot, but this time he left jaded and with a sense of the depravity of it all. I guess becoming a family has changed him.

I was back to my own devices again, and needed to find something to do. I got my visa on Thursday, but still didn't have a ticket to anywhere. The visa was only a single entry visa for 3 months. I would like to visit Nepal since I am in the area, but going to India and taking side trip to Nepal isn't going to work. It had to be either go to Nepal first and then to India, or go to India and at the end of India head into Nepal. I thought it would be easiest to visit Nepal first, so I tried to find an airline that had reasonable tickets for Nepal. Thai Airways was way too expensive, but I had read on the internet that Royal Nepal Airlines flies from Bangkok to Kathmandu for about 250 dollars. I spent Friday trying to find a travel that deals with them. Without success. I also tried to go to the Royal Nepal Airlines office directly in Bangkok. I finally found the building after searching for an hour. I went up and couldn't get to the office because of security doors. I finally just gave up the idea. I decided that India would come first.

I bought a ticket to Kolkata (which used to be known as Calcutta) for the following Monday (to give me time to get together with Yuphin one more time). On Saturday I headed to the house of a famous Thai resident, named Jim Thompson. He was an American architect who came to Thailand and fell in love with the country. He went out and got hold of six traditional Thai houses and had them moved to Bangkok. He cobbled them together into a big house where he lived. He collected all kinds of Buddhist statues, most broken, and other pieces of art. He also set up a traditional silk factory somewhere nearby and began exporting the silk. One day in 1967, he was vacationing in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia. He went out for a hike and disappeared. He was never heard from again, and nobody has ever found any sign of what happened to him. His house in Bangkok has been turned into a museum and there is a foundation in his name for the preservation of Thai culture. It was an interesting way to spend an afternoon.

While I was wandering around I saw this interesting try to get people to walk more, albeit up five rather small steps.

As it turned out Yuphin was unable to meet me again, and so I spent Sunday with a bit of aimlessness. Another friend had told me about a big building made of teak, the biggest in the world, and it seemed interesting. I went to visit the place on Sunday, but if you were wearing shorts, or sandals, or even three quarter length pants, you couldn't enter. I didn't try to find out if there was any way around that, since I was violating two of the rules. Nearby there was a zoo, so I went there instead. It was a small zoo and they some extra shows they put on, all of which cost extra. When I entered the zoo, I thought I might go to one of the shows, but as I walked around, I found the zoo to be poorly organized and there were really not many animals. It really wasn't a very good zoo. I wasn't impressed and I decided not to give them any more money for the lack of experience. I wouldn't recommend the Dusit Zoo in Bangkok.

Even so, there were a couple of cool things that I saw in the zoo. One was this monkey. He seemed very relaxed.

And there was an anaconda doing a good exploration of his enclosure. If this snake can climb up glass like this, then I guess they do well in trees.

And where I have seen many signs showing the way to a bathroom, I have never seen one make the point quite like this.

After visiting the zoo, I headed back to my hotel and got packed up. The next morning, I headed to the airport and flew off for a grand adventure in India.

On to Bangkok

From Patong Beach, I moved on to Bangkok. I wanted to get my computer fixed and with the short visa I decided that I didn't have much time, so I flew there instead of taking a couple of days to go up on the bus. As I was more concerned about my computer than really doing much in and around Bangkok, I didn't actually do much. However, after taking a trip to one of the electronic markets to get some idea of what would have to happen to my computer, I was told that it would need to be completely reinstalled. I was going to have to lose all the data on my computer. I would only be losing a couple of days of photos, as I have been fairly religiously backing them up, but I would be losing my music and a couple of other things that I would have liked to have kept. Since I was unhappy with that answer, I decided to take a walk and think about it.

I had seen a park and thought it would be a good place to go and think. This was Lumphini park. That's where I went. It's a nice park that I never suspected in the metropolis that I had always found to be kind of dreary.

While I was thinking about what to do about my computer, I was told about another electronic market where I might get a better answer. I went and found a spot that services computers. When I got in there, the guy immediately started trying to fix what was wrong instead of recommending wholesale reinstallation. I felt much better. Even if it ended up that he would have to reinstall Windows, I felt it would have been the final option and I was satisfied with that. In the end, the service guy managed to fix the computer and I got to keep everything. Then I immediately backed up everything that could keep me entertained.

Another day, I came across this monument.

It has a number of arches that are shown on its sides. I don't know if they are real arches or not, but they all have names. There is the Crystal Wheel Arch, and the Elephant Arch. There's the Horse Arch. And then there's the Crystal Finance Minister Arch. That was really odd.

On my last day in Bangkok, I took a walk along one of the rivers of the city. There a community was arranged along the shore. Most of the houses are on stilts and it seems to be a thriving community. It was an interesting walk that day, although I was actually trying to find the floating market that was supposedly nearby. I never found it.

But I did find perhaps the most relaxed dog I have ever encountered.

My First Foot Massage

I'm fairly ticklish. I could never get through an actual massage. I would just be too jumpy, I would imagine. But after all the walking that I have been doing in my travels, my feet sometimes get pretty weary. I had met Sofia again for dinner, during which I convinced her to take a photo with me.

Then she said she was going to go for a massage. I thought I would try one as well, and figured that this might be the best chance I would get of finding a place that would treat me as a customer rather than a single man looking for things other than just a massage. We headed to one of the many, many, MANY massage places around. It was called Mint Massage. They had mint fragrance in the air. It was quite nice. And I had my massage. It did help. I think I will try it again sometime.

The Island That James Bond Built

As I mentioned before, there have been a number of movies shot in and around the Phuket/Krabi area. One of those movies was the James Bond classic, The Man with the Golden Gun. (Well, I liked it and so it's a classic to me.) And, as it happens, there is a tour for that. They call it the James Bond tour. Actually, there are several of that tour, and they have various levels of quality. I decided on the one that visited 8 places and had sunset to boot. Of course, it was the rainy season and the chances of seeing the sun set were slim. And the woman in the booth that sold me the tour got flustered when I said that if I didn't see sunset, I would come back demanding my money back. She didn't understand that I knew the risks and was only joking. Her reaction was kind of funny though.

It was another of the late starting tours. I was to be ready at 9:30. Right around the appointed time, the minibus showed up and off I went. We stopped at various places around town and picked up a bunch of people and then headed across the peninsula to the Phuket area to get to where we would start. As we arrived, it began to rain. And then pour. This was not a very big deal as there was swimming involved in the day and so I would be getting wet. It still surprises me how many people seem to think that the prospect of getting wet in the rain somehow means that the tour where you are supposed to get wet while swimming means the tour is ruined. It actually surprises me that people consider rain to be a something that ruins an outing at all. (But to be fair, there was a time when I let weather tell me whether I would go out and do something or not. I gave up that nonsense a long time ago.) I did however, have my camera with me and I didn't really want it getting wet. And despite the fact that I had seen that it might rain and had told myself that I should one of my ziplock bags to protect my camera, I still forgot to do so. Luckily (har, har, har, as I don't think luck had anything at all to do with it), the people managing the jetty area where were to board our boat just happened to have dry bags for sale. A dry bag is a watertight canvas bag that can be sealed up so water doesn't get in. They weren't very expensive and I do have need of such things from time to time, so I bought one. And I bought it just in time for the rain to stop. Oh well. I still needed one.

There were about sixty of us all to board this one boat. It was a fairly large boat, so that was no problem. Our “guide” (I put that in quotes because a guide usually tells about the sights a tour will be taking in, but this guy didn't have much to say about that sort of thing, although he was quite funny and kept us all on track timewise) was quite the comedian. And he also seemed to work in the we-will-go-places-at-times-when-other-groups-aren't-there game. So despite what I assume would be a fairly popular set of places to go, we really didn't meet other tour groups much at all on this day.

Our first stop was a beach. We stayed for about an hour and did some swimming and frolicking. The current was really strong and swept along the shore so when I was swimming it took a lot of energy just to stay in the same place.

After swimming, it was off to the archipelago further up into the bay. They made for some great scenery.

We had also had some lunch by this point and one of the crew took some raw chicken and started throwing it in the sea. It was unclear why at first. But he was also making some whistles and shortly some birds started to come by. They were eagles and had come for a bit of a feed.

Then we got to the second part of the itinerary. In one of the islands there was a lake in the center of the island. The only way to get to it though was through a cave tunnel from the sea. So we got into canoes and headed through the tunnel. We didn't even have to do anything. We just got to sit back and relax. There were paddlers that came with each canoe. Inside the cave was dark and narrow. There were some people who were a bit afraid of either enclosed spaces or of the dark. But nobody freaked out.

Inside we paddled around for a few minutes. The little lake was quite nice. Then we headed back through the tunnel and back to the ship to carry on.

Then it was back on towards the island group.

Along the way I met another nice young woman. Her name was Meshkat. She's from Iran. Now I really want to go to Iran. :)

Shortly thereafter we switched to smaller longtail boats for the rest of the time in the archipelago. At the time we wondered why. We found out later as we were on our way back to the ship. The bay in archipelago is very shallow. The ship couldn't have gotten in and out. We found this fact out the hard way. We got stuck on a sand or mud bar. A couple of the passengers in the boat had to get out and give it a push off the bar in order to get going again. The scenery was quite nice through the islands. We passed another hole in the rock. It was possible to take a canoe through it as well, but we had other things to get done, so we just passed by.

Then we headed through or past one of the mangrove forests of the bay. They are such funny looking trees.

After the mangroves we headed to the Muslim “floating” village. It's not really a floating village, and at low tide it doesn't even resemble anything like a floating village as the very shallow area underneath it is out of the water. But at high tide the water sweeps in and the village is definitely sitting on stilts above water.

This was our chance to get souvenirs. I had no money left after buying the dry bag and if I had bought anything, then I would have had to carry it as well. So I just wandered around, despite the fairly hard sell on buying something. After spending a while in the shop, we headed through the village to the other side to catch our boat and go. But going through the village gave us a chance to view the daily life of the Muslims who live there.

From the floating village, we went to check out some rock drawings. I don't know how they would have been found. They were in an awkward sort of place. But they seemed well-preserved.

Then it was on to the namesake of the tour, James Bond Island. It's actually called Koh Phangan. And because it had been saved for last, all the other tour boats had been and gone. The souvenir stands were closed up and we were the only ones there. It was refreshing.

And I can now say I have been to where James Bond fought the evil villain Scaramanga in The Man With the Golden Gun.

I had a nice time on the tour and as we headed back to town, I marvelled at how the weather had been so nice, as the sun disappeared behind the clouds over the horizon.

Off to Phuket and Patong Beach

A few years ago, when I was working at a school in Korea, a group of us talked about going to Thailand for our winter vacation. It sounded like a great idea to me, so I went ahead and booked a ticket. Unfortunately, the others were not as solid about the idea and it ended up that I came to Thailand by myself. A couple of years later, they all decided to go to Thailand, while I had booked a ticket to the Philippines, where I met with a rather disappointing mishap that saw me being drugged and robbed of all the money in my bank account. At that time, my friends went to Phuket and frolicked on the beach. Now I finally decided to get myself to Phuket, thus symbolically completing the trip that we had all thought to go on together.

I headed to Phuket leaving rather late for such things, at 9:30 in the morning. When I booked the bus to go, I was told that I would be in Phuket by 12:30 or 1:00. If I had gotten into the minibus and it had just gone straight to Phuket, perhaps that would have been so. Instead, I got in the minibus, then it drove around for a while picking up the rest of the passengers, some of whom were a bit hard to get to. Then we were taken into Krabi town and dumped off at a main depot of some sort. Some people were going to different places and this is where all that switching took place. There seemed to be only two of us traveller types who were going to Phuket, plus two Thais. Whether it would have been different if there had been a full load of people, I don't know. But there were only the four of us. So we were put into another minivan and driven to a bus station, where the minibus driver got tickets on another transport for us and left us to wait for the next one to leave that station. We had waited at the depot for about 40 minutes and now we waited at this station for about 20 more. We were finally heading off at about 11:30.

The other traveller was a Swedish girl named Sofia. She had asked at the first depot where we stopped about going to Patong. I had wondered myself if I wanted to go to Phuket or to the beach/tourist spot of Patong. I was still deciding this, when I heard her asking about Patong. Once we were under way, I told her that I was thinking about going to Patong as well and if it were necessary to take some kind of taxi, I would be willing to share the fare. We got to Phuket town at about 2:00, arriving at a bus station. We got out and were immediately accosted by people wanting to know where we were headed, so they could take us. We brushed them off and started looking for a bus or something to get to Patong. Eventually someone told us that there was no bus running because it was a holiday and we would have to hire a truck thing. I have never, ever heard of a bus service that would normally be running not running because of a holiday, so I didn't really believe the guy, but we had no idea of how to find such a bus, or where it would be. And it had been a long enough day, so we decided to just hire the truck thing and go. Shared between us, it was not likely to be too much more than finding a bus.

We arrived in Patong about 30 minutes later and the guy took us to a higher priced hotel, despite our having told him we wanted to go to something cheaper. He then took us to the other end of town to a guest house hotel and we had a look. It being low season and because we were checking in at the same time, having arrived together, we were given two rooms for about 13 dollars each. Not bad. And the rooms were quite nice. So it worked out well to manage the trip together. Besides, Sofia is one of those stereotypical Swedish women. So it was even better.

After checking in, I went for a walk around. The hotel was quite near the beach. The beach is in a bay and it is quite a nice view.