28 Apr 2002 Bangkok -> Samui

Hi all,

Here i am mailing you all from better conditions all around.... We left
bangkok on Saturday and i can safely say it's the best decision we've made
so far. Everything was just to much over there. I think it was just a big
culture shock.. a case of too much too soon. The first couple of days had us
both knocked out but we eventually did get to see a bit of the place. It's
hard to imagine how people can live there as it's so poluted and shabby.
There's no real structure to the place at all. On the same street you can go
from the classiest place to the lowest of the low. All in all it would take
a fart a couple of seconds to pass through each class. And this fart would
be like a breath of fresh air compared to the aroma's thrown up at you. The
heat just keeps hitting you in the face and there's a million vendors on the
roads cooking all sorts of foods. God knows how long the food was sitting
there before it was heated, then reheated and then sold.
Got up on friday and went for a walk, no sooner had we left the road we were
staying on i got talking to a nice friendly bloke from Perth. He was touring
the city visiting temples and had a map in his hand. He asked where i was
from and all that and we continued chatting as we crossed the road. Myself
and Kelly were heading in the same direction as he was, funny enough !!
He was going to visit a temple that only opened up once every month to
tourists. He pointed out about 5 other temples on the map that were not
supposidly as good as this one. I was interested... what a sucker i am. But
just as i was about to keep walking with him i looked at Kelly who was not
too comfortable with the situation. And with that the penny dropped. Now as
i've just stated i was a sucker... It's not that im an expert on people from
Australia or anything but i've heard that people from that neck of the woods
would usually have something to indicate this.... like maybe an Australian
accent and not a broken english one, they would also 9 times out of 10 have
circular eyes not oval, and also probably wouldn't look like they were from
lets say....Bangkok !!
So after all this sunk in...i turned to him and told him sorry we're going
to go this way instead... he wasn't impressed... neither was i !! I was
nearly conned. I'd read all the mails from a friend who had travelled and
had been approached by con men and thought i was ready for it all. I
wasn't... from that point on i trusted nothing. Later on that day Kelly
noticed that we were being followed too. Every time we slowed down a girl
would do the same. So we let her go ahead to have a look ...she did the same
again... and waited for us to pass. She must have been a local in the area
as she knew all the street vendors and stopped to talk to them and wait for
us to pass her again. In the end we just stood there and stared her out of
it and off she went... strike 2. After this we saw a couple of temples and
then a buddah here and there and everywhere..took snaps and left...enough i
say !! Later on that day we went to change money but found it impossible to
try and get the attendant to tear himself away from the mirror in front of
him. It wasn't that he thought he was beautiful...it was that he was trying
to pop all the zits on his pot holed face.... As we couldn't wait around
till he got each and everyone of them we decided to try somewhere else...
now you know how money gets so dirty.
This was the first and last day we had wandered outside the security blanket
of our accomodation... it would be the last !! That night we booked our
flights to Ko Samui and here i am now.
Of course all didn't go as well as it could of on the first night. Kelly
spotted a cockroach in the room so that meant an up all nighter with her.
She just wouldn't go asleep and wouldn't let me go asleep either. I don't
think that can last too long...well thats the way i was feeling last night.
I mean there's going to be millions on them everywhere on this side of the
globe... i can't kill them all. But if you look at the other side of the
coin i could just bump off Kelly !! problem solved !! ( only kidding)
So this morning (Sat 28th) we got up and moved to cleaner accomodation for
the same price...result !!
Got the football in all day yesterday and had some nice tasty food... We are
now staying with our friends Diggers and Jade for the next couple of weeks..
will update you again soon...

All the best

Butch !!