Melanie and Gavin's Travels

Bumming around Bangkok

We've arrived in Bangkok and have joined the throng of backpackers on the Khaosan Road area. For $6 per night for our room (this is how we can afford to travel for so long!) and English everywhere it's kind of worth the insanity of it all. Khaosan road is a brightly lit street featuring bars, cheap clothes, used book stores, street venders selling yummy food (pad thai, corn on the cob, bbq chicken, etc) and tailors galore. This is where I got my favourite Chinese silk stuff made last time, so I'm scoping out the scene for when we return in April.

From London it took us over 15 hours to get here and definitely feels like a world away. We flew British Airways which was such a treat to our usual charter airlines. Free food, booze, and my knees weren't squished against the seats! The security leaving london was pretty intense though. Flying into Bangkok we arrived at the brand new airport, it's only been open a few weeks. It's pretty cool, BUT is further outside of the city and when we hoped on a bus to come downtown we got caught in rush hour. It literally took us 2hrs 15mins to get here. Needless to say after finding a guesthouse and having a shower I was excited to hit a street vendor for some pad thai! We even met a guy from Calgary on the bus so he came with us. then when i was in a store I ran into one of the guys who worked at the warehouse at Sunshine last year. Small world!

Today we have walked around a bit to try and find a room for the same price as ours with a decent bed, didn't happen. Then we checked out 3 travel agents for flights to Kathmandu, NEPAL. We were told they were full for weeks and only had 1st class, then they didn't take credit cards... so finally we found a good one. We fly out TOMORROW to Nepal!!!!!!!!!

For me this IS the trip, for 6 years I have heard the wonders and seen the photos and now I am about to get there myself. We are flying Royal Nepal Airlines where I hope to get a window seat, and we'll get in around 3:30pm Nepal time. Which is probably about 4 or 5 hours ahead of London (so 9 or 10 ahead of Calgary) but I'm not sure. I'm sure we will be in Kathmandu for at least 4 days, that will be nice since I've been moving around a lot in the last 2 weeks.

Other than a leg waxing (for me - HA) on the busy streets with signs shouting out "Thai massage! Waxing! Haircuts!" we plan on chilling out and having a fresh seafood dinner for a few dollars tonight. It's hot here, hot and sweaty and a bit dirty. I can feel I'm getting a bit older as my enthusiasm for these things is waning. Having said that we are having a great time and I'm so happy to be travelling again. This is what I do best, and I'm so lucky that I've got Gavin to do it with.

I will write again soon from Nepal, but that will be in a city. I wonder if I can see the mountains from there. Don't worry Dad, I'm going to try and get a window seat.

posted by melaniewilkes @ 4:29 PM