Tuesday, March 27, 2007

One Night In Bangkok

Well 2 actually - and I can never remember the second line to the chorus - something about humble which being an over-cashed westerner here it is hard to be - I really struggle in Asia - I constantly feel guilty - it also doesn't help that the ATMs only dispense 1,000 Baht notes and the price of a coke (the cola kind Rachel) is about 15 Baht.

Anyhoo today we saw a lot of temples - I'm talking sitting Buddha, reclining Buddha, standing Buddha, lucky Buddha - I think we even saw one Buddha doing a handstands - seriously though even in Bangkok the locals are very helpful - my natural defences borne from China had me on gaurd when folks were in fact entirely ingenuous - as a Taoist at heart I think I love Buddhists :-)

Met with the group we are doing the tour with - one Irish, 2 English, 2 Yanks and a Brazillian (how much is a brazillion anyway?) and so far 1 no show. Our guide is a local Thai - "Soon" - and she is a rookie in terms of guiding trips solo but I'm pleased we have her - I love it that we have a local guiding us.

At our briefing tonight Soon made it quite clear that were we are heading is remote and VERY, VERY conservative - women need to bathe in a t-shirt and knee length shorts and men should wear knee length shorts as a minimum all the time!!!

Jeepers batman - I guess my Nike and Diadora's aren't going to cut it - so instead of the early night we had envisaged it was down to the night markets for a bit of shopping - I now have 2 pair of knee length shorts that make me look like an Oompa Lumpa on steroids!

Well tomorrow we head off into the boonies so not sure when I will blog again - wish me luck ;-)

9 comments:

Simlin said...

Now all you need is an orange tan.

Lulu said...

Can't wait to see the photies of that look! Good thing you didn't borrow Miners' ironman outfit then.

Spark Driver said...

No running Buddhas??

One Irish, 2 English, 2 Yanks and a Brazillian sounds like the start of a joke I know.

speedygeoff said...

Looks like you will be setting a new fashion standard on your return to Oz.

Samurai Running said...

It's when you start dressing like "Augustus Goop" that you should start to worry.

Tesso said...

Now I have that song stuck in my head. But wasn't there another song that mentioned a reclining Buddha. Might have to Google it.

Maybe the dress code thingy is just a gimick so you go and spend money at the markets :-)

Tesso said...

Just looked, its the same song of course - d'oh!

Unknown said...

One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble...

photos?

Unknown said...

One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble...

photos?