Bangkok – The most “western” city in Asia

The first thing that I have noticed about Bangkok is that traffic law seems to apply to most people here. It is the first place I have been since leaving New Zealand where all the cars drive on the right side of the road (even if the scooters do drive on the pavement on occasion!). Also red lights mean that cars stop, which is a rather novel feeling.

Although I have been here a couple of days I have not had much time to have a look around too much as I’ve been trying to get a few things sorted out for the rest of my travels. Since I know that I am coming back here I am not really worried too much as I will take a look at everything else when I’m back.

The other reason for not seeing too much is that the moment I arrived my room mate invited me out to a pub crawl which with the hostel which I went to and got quite messy. Wasn’t super drunk but didn’t exactly want to do much the next day which is why I am going to put off drinking for a little while as I don’t want to keep wasting time.

One thing I did go and see was Wat Pho which is where the big sleeping Buddah is located in a pretty impressive site. The complex is quite large with a lot of different quirky statues and buildings with the massive gold buddah. The best thing about the little trip though was getting there on the boat service along the river. Runninglike a bus service these boats blaze up and down the river, stopping at the the platforms briefly before shooting off again. It is quite impressive to see as when they get close a guy jumps off the boat and wraps on a rope before the driver puts the boat into full reverse to make it taught and pull the boat close. As soon as its done it shoots off again as we are back on our way. It seems like the public transport system here is pretty well designed as that only costs about 30p and was a pretty quick way to travel and their are also the sky trams here that are also speedy, all for about 50p a ride.

I am looking forwards to coming back to Bangkok again as it is somewhere that I could spend much longer