Straight into the hustle & bustle of BKK

Well guys here I am in Chiang Mai writing my first blog from abroad. I am thoroughly loving it to far. Especially the weather and the cheap prices (for the most part). It is about 26 odd degrees right now. Not too hot, spot-on really. It is the coolest day so far. Well what have I and Bridget been up too...

Our first day was nasty. We had to be at the Welly airport by 4am, with the time differences, travel and stopover in Sydney, well by the time we got to bed in Bangkok we had been up over 29hrs. Sydney was rushed. Took the train into town for 7hrs, did some last minute shopping, had a look around then got back to the airport for our flight to Bangkok. It was long and uncomfortable. Too tired to watch movies, too uncomfortable to sleep. Moan Moan :-)

We arrived at Bangkok airport at 11am. It is enormous. Biggest building I have ever been inside in terms of floor space and overall massiveness I am sure. Wondered through immigration and customs with no issues at all. Quite surprising I thought. Good though. Got ripped off by a taxi/limo thing. Paid about double what we should have. Still it was only $28 for a 45min, 160kmhr, 39km taxi ride. Quite an experience when you are stuffed. Hotel was great though, a small relief.

Got up the next morning after not sleeping well for the provided buffet breakfast. It was great. Very scrumptious. On our first day in BKK we headed to the temples and Koh San road. We spent the whole day up this way. Took the river taxi. The temples were very impressive. Went to the Grand Palace and the Wat (temple) of the Emerald Budda. This palace was enormous, though one is a little pretentious to step through the gates with armed guards and their AK47s. We then went to the Koh San road district. What an amazing street market setup. Very cool I must say. You can buy anything here, mostly rips offs but none the less some good quality clothes, not to mention the California drivers licences for 20 bucks :-).

We found a wharf after getting lost to catch the river taxi and headed to Riverside, where we were staying. Got our first proper meal, very yummy and went to bed. We were stuffed.

On Saturday we planned to look around Siam (centre of BKK if you can call any part of this enormous place the centre). We went to 4 huge Malls. 1 mall the flashiest I have ever seen. Nothing in the States I had seen compares, even in Vegas. 8 odd floors by general theme with a massive sea world on the basement floor. Ferrari, Maserati, Porsche shops on the 5th floor. Branded electronics stores on anther. Everything was very expensive. There is some serious money in BKK. 2 more Malls next door were both bigger than all the malls in Christchurch put together but not quite as flash as the Siam Paragon Mall. Across the 8 lanes of madness was the MBK centre. Basically and indoor permanent market. I have never seen so many stores/stalls selling cellphones and small electronics. Good prices, probably because every 2nd store was selling the same thing. Heaps of competition.

• Skytrain was great way to get about BKK
• Smog like I have never seen before. They say Chch is bad. People who say this have no idea. You feel this in your chest, especially near the major roads
• Traffic congestion was out of this world
• Golden Buddhas were great. Most were gold plated and very large. Like well over 20m high.
• Taxi drivers are crazy. We thought we were going to crash at 160kmhr in a corolla on the way to the airport to head to Chiang Mai. Nuts. Serving at that speed through traffic like a play station.