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

We wrote this blog already a week days ago, on our way from Bangkok to Cambodia. As we spent some time on an island without internet, it had to wait to be published. In the meantime, Cambodia has received us with a bigger smile than Thailand; we are safe and well and made a good start in the New Year  - Happy New Year to everyone!! May your wishes come true and we hope that everyone stays healthy and happy!

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Thailand: Land of smiles - we called it land-of-being-fed-up-with-tourists.... We try to leave the christmas crowds and therefore are on our way to Cambodia, after only a short time here in Thailand. A train will take us to Aranyaprathet, where we will cross the border, making our way to North Thailand via Laos.

5 nights ago we arrived in Bangkok. We're shocked. With too much stuff, the  heat is unbearable. This is supposed to be the winterseason, but temperatures at daytime still climb way over 30. 
When we arrive at the airport we still walk around in hiking boots and long pants - everybody else in flipflops and shorts. A clean airport that looks newly built; it's a massive contrast with Kathmandu. On the left is a full waiting room with - sorry to say - overweight, white (red!) western people that make their way home or to another beach we dont know :). It's the first time we see so many tourists! We realise that so far we've just been on our way with backpackers, most on a similar trip as we are. The "holidayers" as we like to call them feel strange to us again. We're not sure that Bangkok over X-mas was such a good idea. But we are supposed to meet friends again, so we give it a try! 

We picked the cheapest hostel in BKK we could find online, in the middle of Chinatown. It's unclean, it's small, its too hot (no AC, only a small window and a fan to turbulate the sticky hot air :)) and the staff is super, super unfriendly. He doesn't listen AT ALL! It sucks, this is not what we had in mind. And after a month of China, we're not impressed by Chinatown! The streetfood is a little bit different and ok, but more expensive. The first thing we do is look for another hotel, as we won't spend X-mas here!!! Of course our own fault, as I thought the (only 2) reviews the hostel had were not that bad (we thought "how worse could it be?"). Self-inflicted suffering. And the heat drives us crazy. We really had our lowest point here, for a brief moment  we felt like going home into to snow, rain and ice :).

The promised pc was continuously occupied by the hostelstaff that chat themselves... And we are sick of being dependent on this. It's time to find what we already looked for in Hong Kong, China, Japan and Nepal: a notebook....
Pathip plaza is a massive shopping mall with just electronics. Cheaper then everywhere else, legality questionable. We bike back on our waaaay! too small folding bikes we rent with a precious X-mas gift for ourselves now we are at least independent and can organize ourselves better :)!! And... A real hotel with pool and Airconditioning for 2 nights. Not that the service was better, but at least we could cool down the chocolate we so carefully saved for the December days and swiver around the pool during the hottest time :)

The touri highlight was the Grand Palace and Emerald Buddha. With prices 4! times higher than our lonely planet from 2009 we had to think twice, but it was the first time we actually liked a temple!! We simpy love the details of the shimmering little mosaics all over the towers. Gold everywhere :) very decorativen and a different style than any other buddhistic temple yet!!

Our hotel was near Khaosan road, an (in)famous street in old Bangkok. Full of market stands and bars all over, Bangkok is a really lively place! A new t-shirt and bikini were negotiated. But... Prices seem fixed here; Bangkok looks too developed and too many tourists just buy! One guy told me literally: "are you looking or do you want this? Go back to your own country. Buy it there" I was baffled - the shirts he sells were 100, down the street it was 40. I know we only talk about 3 vs 1 euro, but it's about the principle. And land of smiles turned into land of grumpiness, greediness and carelessness.

We met Jen and Blain again (our Mongolia and China travel companions) and had a really marvellous time together. X-mas is nice when you don't have to spend it alone! With some lovely people around us, being able to chat with our families via webcam and finally uploading photos again, we felt much better. 

We visited Soi Cowboy - the street with bars and shows where ladies are capable of doing all kinds of things with chopsticks or ping pong balls or whatever the rich tourists are willing to pay for to see like "pussy electric", "pussy this", "pussy that" :)) The Cockatoo bar hosts lady-like-looking girls with an extra bodypart, some have "a few good looking and many ugly girls" and 16 euros enables you to take anything you like back to your hotel including "bumbum" as they say :). The sex industry is enormous, and it is shocking in some way, as we westerns enable it. No Thai men were to be seen. We can only hope that the girls get some sort of security and safety. Also the amount of older men with young Thai women was large. What to say more? 

The tons of shopping malls with western clothes, the sex industry, the heaps of white tourists, the tuk-tuks that try to rip you off; I guess it is all part of the modern Thai culture of today. (or maybe just of the Bangkok culture?) but it is not as cheap, nor as authentic as we wanted it to be. But what is authentic? Isn't the idyllic picture we have of south east asia more the picture of a poor country? And if so, shouldn't we be happy that S-E asia is doing really well? We don't know. We just know that in the peak season it is just not our thing. And the idea of going to one of the islands right now died, as we don't want to spend New Year with just white tourists. No guarantee that Cambodia will be better, but it is worth a try!! Thats why we head off to cambodia straight away :).

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Travelling is hard, it's tiring and wears us out. And many of you surely think that we just sit on our butt all day, drinking cocktails, feasting 24/7, while you are working yours off; its taking it's toll as well. There are nights that we hardly sleep, waking up every hour as we don't want to miss a plane, or skyping with family and friends until 04:00 our time,... Which happened for almost a week in a row right now. There are days when we drink too little water, spend too much time in stinky busses or trains... The loudness, the constantly wathing your stuff and the many impressions overload our brains. It's again, a self-inflicted, luxury-first world-problem. Don't get me wrong, we don't ask for your sympathy, but it's not all always just rose-coloured and happiness. Some of you envy us, but it has it's downsides too!! Not knowing where you sleep, where to get food or even money or a simple thing like water. Not feeling wanted by haggling locals, not getting all the stuff done what we wanted to see. There are times when the city or our travel companions get on our nerves, when eventually we get on each other's nerves (fortunately not many!!)  and in the end we just feel like going home. But it's not necessarily the going home we want, it's the strange mixture of longing for something we know, spending time with our friends back home, or even the simple routine of getting up for work; combined withe the undying need to "get out there". And routine is the one thing we do not have. Except for routine in how to pack our bags, although everyday it seems to get heavier, not lighter:( and we have so high expectations about what we want to see, want to experience! This "letting go and see what happens" mostly gives us the best times, but it is hard learn not wanting to plan happiness. 
This was meant to decrease the "envylevel" as one of our friends called it ;)....

Not knowing where to sleep can be a real bummer. In the West we had our lovely friends to stay with, in China we prebooked a lot (always cheaper than on the spot), in Japan we had friends again... In Nepal we made the mistake to prebook the first few nights and to negotiate too little. You could find space on all corners. Now on our way to Cambodia we didn't book a thing; it will make us more flexible, and hopefully cheaper (easier to say noto bad hostels as well). I hope this is the right decision; it feels strange to be really homeless. As we left the tent in Bangkok, the backup security is not there. We will find out in half an hour :)