We have started to get to grips with Bangkok transport. Options are taxi (some with meters), tuktuk and the monorail. Our flight to Krabi is today at 4pm. Taking into account the slowness of a Bangkok weekday we figured we would have time to go see something Thaiey, the emerald palace or something (the girls showed a passing interest in the King, as there may be princesses). Apparently we can get a boat up the river to the emerald palace area and see gold stuff.
We book a taxi with the hotel. The hotel guy told us to wait at the corner. We start waiting at the corner. No taxi. We get to hot and decide to walk to the main road to hail one. We try hailing one. Tuktuk drivers start asking us where we are going. We give in (it’s too hot) and get a tuktuk to the river – PUBLIC FERRY we say, public ferry. Public ferry. We end up at a tourist ferry with a fat guy behind a desk punching numbers into a calculator. I hate fat guys behind desks with calculators. He quotes us 1500Bhat - We leave and walk round the block to the public ferry wharf, followed by 2 sets of Italian tourists with a similar story. Tickets are 15Bhat each. The ferry is a fun experience. Fast (and slightly dangerous) entry and exit with an annoying guy blowing a whistle at each stop. We get off at ‘Tha Thien’ and exit via the ‘gift shop’ – lots of tourist tat to shield the kids from.
We aim for the closest gold Wat we can see – the reclining Buddah – massive golden Buddah, er, reclining in a big building. There is a cool bit where you get a pot of change and drop coins into metal buckets. Hundreds of people doing this makes for an interesting noise.
By 1pm we have heat exhaustion and decide to go straight back to the hotel. We try 3 different taxis, asking for a metered ride. ‘no meter’ or ‘meter broken’ is the response every time and a price way over the odds. We head back to the wharf to get the boat back – promising the kiddywinks that if they walk for over 1 minute they can have a jewel covered box each (they were spotted on the way through last time). At the jeweled box stall we manage to persuade them that small metal animals are much nicer (as well as much smaller…) We can’t work out which turnstyle to go through to get the boat going the right way – from a flight-catching perspective getting on the wrong boat would have been bad at this point. We are close to getting swayed by another fat guy with a calculator and his tourist boat but we head back to the reclining Buddah tourist hell to get a taxi. Nearing the end of our tethers we get in the nearest tuktuk. 250B is quoted. I say 150. 150. 150. He smiles and agrees to our generous offer.
Riding a tuktuk through Bangkok is a little like sitting on a giant hairdrier going at high speeds through hot clogged streets. Their drivers are always so happy. Maybe it’s the Buddhism, but whatever it is, I want some of it. Of course, unless you know the route, you never know if you are going to be taken to your destination or some tourist trap. The aforementioned Italian tourists we met earlier had just come from a tailor they had been taken to by their driver!
We had a coffee and cake in the coffee shop opposite the hotel (150B) and then hung around in the hotel lobby for a bit to cool down. Eva (and her metal cat ‘the easter kitten’) was a hit with a Japanese man who happened to be there. Then we took a pink taxi (with a meter) to the Don ??? airport and got our airasia flight to Krabi. We have missed an airasia flight before so we were careful to get there in plenty of time. All good. Airasia – the airline that dosen’t even give out drinking water for free.
Once in Krabi (the 2h flight flew by) we took the bus into the town and checked into the 2nd place we saw – there was a storm coming in and we didn’t want to get wet. Got a 3 single bed room with aircon for 600B. For dinner we went to ‘Mr Krabbi’ – really nice place where we drank Chang and had our own Songkran festival with our iced drinking water. Saw Geckos on the way home.
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