The Tsunami

On Boxing Day eight years ago, the world woke up to one of the most shocking stories in recent memory. There had been a 9.3 magnitude earthquake just off the coast of Indonesia, and as it lasted for nearly ten minutes, it was the third largest and the longest ever earthquake recorded, the effects of which are still felt around the world today.

In 2004 I was 18 years old, and I had set off on my gap year adventure. I left in the September, and the plan was to stay away as long as I could afford to. I started off the trip by doing a bit of work in Bangkok, and after a couple of weeks, I was free to go and explore the country. First on my list was the beach!

I think I ended on on Koh Phi Phi almost immediately after I left Bangkok and fell in love with the place. As a first time traveller, it was full of the ideals that I thought I was looking for. Cheap, laid back, lots of alcohol, and somewhere you could get away with wearing only a swimming costume or bikini as evening wear. Idyllic during the day, with gorgeous sandy beaches, jungle topped cliffs that dropped off into the incredibly blue sea, and more marine life than you could shake a stick at, and a notorious party island at night, with (literally) buckets of alcohol and fire displays on the beach.

In fact, it was so much like paradise, that the film The Beach was filmed in part on the larger Phi Phi island a few minutes boat ride away. It was very rustic. There were hardly any buildings made of concrete or bricks and mortar, most of the places to stay were little bamboo huts with a tin roof, as were most of the businesses on the island too.

I quickly made the island my base, and in between trips back to Bangkok to do a bit of work, I settled there and made it my home away from home. I did do a few other trips, one to the nearby island of Koh Lanta, which is a bigger island still in sight of Koh Phi Phi, over to the mainland to do some rock climbing with monkeys in Krabi, some time spent in Phuket, and I had to endure the bane of the Thai traveler’s life – the visa run.

At the time, unless you had a special (expensive, harder to obtain) visa, you could only spend 30 days at a time in Thailand. If you overstayed this limit, you ended up with a rapidly increasing fine, so every 30 days you’d find yourself on a bus to the nearest border to cross over, and cross straight back I to Thailand again to get another 30 day pass.

On one of these trips, I met Paul, a Mancunian divemaster, who was living on Phi Phi at the time. I met Paul on the minibus from the port in Krabi to the Malaysian border. He told me that he was living on Phi Phi and we got chatting and hit it off straight away. It was a very long bus journey, to a fairly unsafe border town, and once we arrived 6 hours later, and had got our stamps, we went for a night out on the very rainy town before catching the bus back the next morning. Once we were back on the island, we met up regularly, with him introducing me to his scuba diving friends, and showing me the ways of island life.

I did my first scuba dives on Phi Phi, with my friend Prab, also from the UK. I remember breathing underwater for the first time, and I was immediately hooked. I looked at my instructor, Bex, and thought that she looked like a mermaid, so totally at ease underwater. As soon as I finished my first set of dives, I emailed my mum straightaway, telling her how much I had loved it, and that I wanted to do more and more, and being very excited at the prospect of where diving could take me in my life. Seven years later, I finally became a scuba diving instructor, inspired by Bex and Paul and by so many of the other people I met on the island.

We were rapidly approaching Christmas, and I’d been away for three months. I’d kept in contact with my friends and family back home and was starting to feel homesick, and when my Grandparents emailed me and offered to buy me a ticket home on Christmas Eve, and returning back to Bangkok for New Year, I jumped at the chance. It was incredibly extravagant, and when I told my friends on the island what I had planned, they laughed and told me what I’d be missing out on. I started having second thoughts, especially when Bex offered to do the next diving course with me, starting on Boxing Day, for a massively discounted price. But, I decided I had made the right choice, and headed home.

I can’t remember my Christmas Day very well, but I do remember seeing my mum’s face when I turned up n the doorstep (I’d kept coming home a surprise), and I’m sure my Christmas was just like all the others, one where I was spoiled rotten and ate too much. I was still in regular contact with Paul and the others on the island, and they were all having a ball, eating their Christmas dinner in the heat and humidity and relaxing on the beach afterwards. I went to bed on Christmas night feeling very relaxed and happy and content, and looking forward to being back in Bangkok in a few days.

The next morning, I already had a text from Paul. I was still jetlagged, and it was very early, and I grinned as I opened up my phone. The message was weird. It said that he had been on a boat as the Tsunami came in, got to the mainland and up into the hills just as the wave had crashed, and that he’d spoken to his sister, and she was fine. He expected communications to go down shortly.

I was confused, I ran downstairs to put the news on, and every channel was reporting the news as it came in. I tried to phone and text my friends in Thailand, and I couldn’t get through. My friend Prab and I were on the phone to each other constantly updating who we’d been able to get hold of, and who was still unaccounted for. I tried to go on as normal that day, and went to my grandparents to see the rest of my family. They tried their best to console me, to tell me that Phi Phi hadn’t even been on the news, so it must have been fine. I knew that wouldn’t be the case.

That afternoon, I watched as the reports began to roll in about Phi Phi. The reporters were on the beach, with the dead, dying and severely injured lying on the beach behind them. I could see people I knew lying on the beach, and I watched as I saw other friends trying to aid them.

Phi Phi had been badly hit, but not one, by two waves. The island was only a few hundred metres wide in the middle, and one wave had come in from one side, and a few minutes later, another wave had come in from the other. The next few days passed in a blur. Paul had gone back to Phi Phi to try and help with the rescue and recovery of the island, and I was due to go back. My family didn’t want me to go, and the island had all but shut down. There was no running water or electricity and disease was becoming a risk. I took the easy option, I decided to stay in the UK.

Over the next few days, weeks and months, the stories about what happened that day began to make a clearer picture. Bex, who was at home that morning since I’d refused her kind offer of the discounted diving course, was in her bathroom when the first wave struck. She was dragged across the island and ended up heaped against a wall with a scaffolding pole through the centre of her body. She was dragged to safety just as the second wave crashed, and after 6 months of major surgery and rehabilitation, she met up with me and Prab in the UK for breakfast. She was a changed person. Paul continued to stay on the island to help with the rebuilding, and eventually came home and started working with disabled kids, teaching them about the great outdoors.

21 of my friends died on the 26th December 2004, and over 1000 people died on Phi Phi. 5393 people died in Thailand and it is thought that the total for the deaths worldwide as a result of the tsunami is over 230,000, with casualties as far away as the east coast of Africa.

I went back a year after the tsunami hit the island. The place was very different. Concrete buildings had gone up where the shacks once stood, the place was a hive of activity, with huge rebuilding projects going on. One of my favourite places to drink had also become a tsunami evacuation shelter, and huge evacuation route signs were all over the island. On the beach, there were trees tied with ribbons that served as rememberence to the dead and missing.

I’ve been back to Thailand many times since then, but I’ve never visited Phi Phi again. My story isn’t very unusual, there are far more interesting stories out there of people that had near misses, but I felt I needed to write this. Eight years on, I still think about how lucky I was, with my twist of fate, and wish that my friends and all of the others could have had the same.

When Thailand doesn’t mean Thai

I’ve been in Thailand for a month already and on Koh Tao for half of that time, and I’m gradually getting used to island life once again. Koh Tao is far bigger than the island I used to live on, but the diving community is small and I’m putting faces to the gossip all the time. Because that’s exactly what island life is like- everyone always knows your business. Coming from a very friendly town, I find this reassuring, but I can see why it drives some people nuts.

There are quirks to this island though. It being a huge tourist destination (though I’ve yet to see any straw donkeys), there is a real mix of culture here, but I wasn’t expecting was there so few Thais. The few times that I’ve tried to speak my (limited) Thai, I’ve been met with blank looks. I’ve gone back to the phrasebook feeling very confused and after this happening several times, I spoke to someone about it. Apparently the Burmese migrant community here is huge, and the common language that most people speak is English. Thai seems to get you nowhere here.

One of the things I love most about Thailand is the abundance of temples, even in the busiest section of a city, you can seek solace in the serenity of a temple- but not here. Apparently there is only one temple on Koh Tao, and I’ve yet to find it. I’ve been trying to put my finger on why this unsettles me slightly, and the only thing that I can reason is that temples are such a big part of so many Thai people’s lives, that it feels distinctly un-Thai not to have them dotted around every town.

The island has only been continuously inhabited since 1933, starting off as a prison island, and a few people from neighbouring islands came to set up colonies at about the same time. It only became popular with travellers in the 80s and since then the population has grown massively along with the construction of hotels, guesthouses, restaurants and bars that goes hand in hand with the tourist industry.

Now it is an island that dives by day and parties by night. Sairee beach is the famous party hotspot, but drinking seems to as much as a hobby as diving does around here, and it takes some getting used to.

I think I’ve been spoiled rotten with the diving that I’ve done all over the world, but I have to say that I’m disappointed with the diving on Koh Tao. I had been warned that the dives sites were busy, because the island’s notoriety for offering cheap dive courses brings many people here, but I wasn’t expecting the poor visibility and what I regard as a poor selection of marine life. Yes, there are huge shoals of fish (which are readily being harvested by fishing boats close by), but it’s difficult to see anything remarkable to point out. If you’re lucky you might see an eel, and if you’re even luckier you might see a turtle, but from what I can gather the marine life here is in rapid decline. Whether that’s from overfishing at the surface, the decline of the coral, or just the fish not being keen on so many divers invading their habitat is debatable.

All of these things are so at odds with the Thailand that I know, it makes me feel that I could be on any party island, regardless of what coast it is closest too. I feel that the island is suffering an identity crisis.

Once I’ve qualified my course which enables me to be a scuba instructor, I’m thinking of moving on again, but this time I’m thinking somewhere a bit further afield. I’m still not quite sure where yet, but the world is my oyster.

Adventures into the unknown

I was talking to a friend recently about the different styles of travelling. Some people will say that they’ve “done” a country if they’ve been to a capital city, or spent a couple of weeks lounging on the beach of a certain country. I feel that I doubt I’ve ever “done” a country. Despite having spent years in Thailand (on and off), I still don’t think I’ve “done” it, and I’m still experiencing new things all the time.

At 4.30am on Saturday morning, when most people I know wouldn’t have even gotten to bed yet, I was getting up and leaving for a journey to a place I’d never been to, but had heard so much about. Koh Tao is a small island in the Gulf of Thailand, and although large compared to many of the islands that dot Thailand’s coast, it only measures about 21 square kilometres and is famous for being a centre of diving. It was a long bus journey from Bangkok to Chumphon, which is the port which boats to Koh Tao leave from. After being stuck on the bus for six and a half hours, it was a refreshing change on be sitting in the sun on the deck of the catamaran that would take us to Koh Tao and others on to Koh Phangan and then onto Koh Samui (I used the Lomphraya company, and the journey cost 1050 baht). A happy hour and a half was sat drinking beer and chatting to others that were going to spending time on the island.

As Koh Tao came into view, I was struck by how mountainous the island was and how beautiful and crystal clear the water was. As I disembarked there was the usual scrum of people trying to get you to sign up with a dive centre or get you to go to a particular hotel, but I ducked out of this and decided to find a cheap central hotel, and I could explore and decide which dive centre I wanted to try at a more leisurely pace.

Once I’d checked in and had a snooze, I set out and explored the streets of Mae Haad, the main town on the island where the port is located. The streets are fairly narrow with no cars and a few pick up trucks which are used to transporting goods around the island and double up as taxis when needed. Everyone else gets about using mopeds, bicycles or on foot.

So the next day, I decided to do as everyone else was doing and hire a moped. The going rate for this seems to be between 150 and 250 baht a day, and after a quick lesson, I was on my way. The roads connecting Mae Haad to Hat Sairee and Chalok bay are all relatively good, but as I went further off the beaten track the roads got progressively narrower and less decent. Which was when two Spanish guys on an ATV came hurtling round a corner and forced me off the road and down into a deep sandy ditch. Ouch. I escaped without major injury bar cuts and bruises all down my right side, but I was shaken and went back to the town very cautiously indeed. Once I’d cleaned myself up, I found out that this type of injury is very common here, and the cuts and scrapes that people bear are known as “Koh Tao tattoos”. You have been warned.

I wasn’t brave enough to go back out on the bike again that afternoon, so I caught a lift in one of the pick up trucks that was heading to Chalok bay to go and visit a dive centre I’d heard good things about. Buddha View Dive Centre lived up to its reputation with friendly staff and a great atmosphere, and it’s where I’ve decided to take my scuba diving instructor’s course in just over a month’s time. So today has been spent getting back on the dreaded moped and spending the morning looking for an apartment in the area. accommodation seems to vary massively, and I found a really beautiful apartment that’s about double my original budget, but that I’ve totally fallen in love with. Everywhere else that I’ve seen pales in comparison and I’m trying to decide if I should let my head or my heart decide this time…

Chiang Mai and around

I used to live in Chiang Mai, and always found that it felt a lot more than 500 odd miles to Bangkok- it felt more like a million miles away from the chaotic, smoggy, sweaty and frenetic capital. I had fond memories of the second largest city, meeting up with old friends, making new friends, and generally having a great time.

On my return I was immediately remind of one reason I loved this city- the climate. Hot in the sunshine, cool in the shade, and sometimes you even want a jumper in the evenings! The air is much drier than in Bangkok, making it much less humid although the daytime temperature is similar to Bangkok, it feels much cooler.

Another reason to love Chiang Mai is the songthaews. Songthaews are a mix between a taxi and a bus, meaning that you tell the driver where you want to go, jump in the back of the converted pick up truck, and he’ll take you there via the other destinations that the other passengers want to go. Best of all- they are very cheap, most trips should only cost 20baht, about 40 pence.

We arrived in time to visit the Sunday night walking market, which is a makeshift market that sets up once a week on the main road that runs across the old city, Ratchadamnoern, and some of the roads leading off it. On sale are clothes, handmade arts and crafts, snacks and drinks, jewellery and other local produce. It gets incredibly busy, and gets busier the closer you get to Tha Pae gate, so you have to relax and not get annoyed by walking at a snails pace with the people in front of you continuously stopping. It’s a great way to take in the very relaxed atmosphere of the city, with the stalls being mostly comprised of the items for sale being presented nicely on a blanket covering the pavement, without the hassle that you’d find in most markets.

Chiang Mai is a very peaceful and tranquil place, and I think that is part due to the number of temples dotted around the city. We spent two days exploring the temples of Chiang Mai, which was a lesson in architecture as well as relaxing. I had to dedicate an entire post about the temples of Chiang Mai, as it’s far too long to fit into this post.

I had the amazing opportunity of visting an elephant sanctuary about an hour’s drive outside Chiang Mai. I want to tell everyone now, that the ONLY sanctuary anyone should be visiting is the Elephant Nature Park (http://www.elephantnaturepark.org/), as all the other elephant parks are involved in treating the elephants badly, and making the elephants to tricks for the tourists that visit them. The Elephant Nature Park was set up by a very courageous woman called Lek, who has dedicated her life to rescuing elephants from owners that treat them badly, or cannot look after them any more. She stared out with just a few elephants up in the mountains, and has now gained more land and has over 34 elephants that have been rescued from all over Thailand. Rescued from cruel owners that blind them, or by hotel owners that use them as a way of luring guests to their hotel, or from overwork, or from the streets in so many circumstances. We spent the day learning about the conservation centre, feeding the elephants huge amounts of food, watching them interact with each other and playing with them in the river. I also learned about the immensely cruel ‘breaking’ process which turns the elephant from being a wild young elephant to a domesticated one, which involved over a week of torture in a tiny enclosure where they can’t move, are denied water and food, and beated and poked with nails on sticks and tormented until they have no free will left. EVERY elephant that you see in Thailand that is not in the wild will have undergone this treatment- with the exception of new young elephants that were born at Lek’s sanctuary. She has been training them to live around humans by rewarding their good behaviour with food and love. It really is amazing to see the work that’s she’s done- not just with the elephants, but for the community too, as she has created many jobs for a very poor area of the country by setting up her sanctuary in the area. It’s expensive (they have to provide the elephant food someohow!) but very well worth the trip. I was very sad to leave at the end of the day, I can’t imagine ever being able to spend time with elephants like that again.

Unfortunately, I wish I could say the same about Chiang Mai zoo. I was really upset to see elephants being made to perform tricks for visitors, ostriches that had been plucking all their fetahers out and very skinny animals, most noticeably, the beautiful white tigers. The zoo was massive, and you could either walk around, take a skytrain to various stops, be transported around on mini-trains or, you could drive your car. Most people decide to drive their car around the zoo, which makes for a very unpleasant experience for people on foot. In the grounds in the new Chiang Mai aquarium, with it’s eyewateringly expensive (but barter-able) entrance fee. On the face of it, the aquarium was brilliant. Huge tanks, it boasts the asia’s longest moving walkwway through underwater tunnels, but it was strangely dissatisfying. It was as though the business had spent all the money on the tanks and moving walkways, and then forgot that they needed fish to put in it. The fish were very boring varieties, with no bright and vibrant colours to be seen. Apart from, that is, the three ‘mermaids’ that put on a synchronised swimming display at regular interval throughout the day.

The best thing about the zoo was the Pandas. Yes, real life, actual pandas! Chiang Mai had become panda mad since I had been there last, due to the fact the zoo purchased two pandas and then the pandas produced a baby! The Thais are incredibly proud of this fact, and people swarm by the thousands to visit the family. The enclosure is temperature controlled, there is to be no flash photography, you have to walk through disinfectant to get in and the baby panda is on webcam only, as the sheer number of people can lead to infections being brought in. After a few minutes we managed to get into a good position to see the pandas and were mesmerised by them. They are captivating creatures- almost feline, climbing and playing with rope and running around, and almost human when they they sit upright with their legs stretched out in front of them, holding sticks in thier fists and crunching on them with thier obviously very sharp teeth. We must have spent close to an hour in the enclosure watching the pandas, being jostled about, but not caring at all. It was also quite sad, as the thought struck me- will I ever see a panda again?

Our last night in Chiang Mai was on New Years Eve, and we spent it in the Shangri-La hotel, having a (fairly dissapointing) buffet and watching the fireworks and chinese lanterns light up the sky. I would suggest to anyone thinking of spending New Year in Chiang Mai, to spend it out on the streets, and probably around the Tha Phae Gate area- we were told that nothing happened in Chiang Mai for New Year, but were misinformed, and the street parties looked like a much better way of bringing the New Year in. That being said, it was still a very lovely way to start my New Year!

Chiang Mai- Temples

We rented bicycles for 80 baht each (apparently we’d been ripped off, the going rate is 60 baht a day, but I wasn’t going to argue!) to see some of the many temples inside to old city walls.

We started off at Wat Chiang Man, which is the oldest Wat in Chiang Mai, and was built by the king that founded the city in 1298. The stone Buddha that is housed here is said to be over 2500 years old! Wat Chiang Man is an excellent place to see how Wat architecture has evolved, as there are many different styles of buildings in the compound. My favourite bit was the beautiful gold chedi behind the main building, which is supported by rows of carved elephants.

From there we went to Wat Phra Singh, a large compound with many buildings housing various Buddha images. This Wat seems to be the grandest of the Wats in the city and it is certainly one of the most famous. It was founded in 1345, and has a school on the grounds, as well as a reclining Buddha in a pavilion. When walking around this temple, it’s well worth taking a look at some of the beautiful wood carvings for which it is famous.

The next Wat on our agenda was the Wat Chedi Luang, which houses the city’s foundation pillar, which is thought to be the home of Chiang Mai’s guardian spirits, who have to be regularly appeased if the city is to prosper. The most incredible feature of this temple is the huge ruined chedi. It used to stand an incredible 90 metres high, which must have towered over the surrounding area, but in 1545 an earthquake badly damaged it, making it a still-impressive 60 metres high today. It has undergone various restoration attempts, but because the job is so immense, and because people can’t be certain of the way it used to look, the projects are often shelved. It is still incredibly grand and beautiful to walk around.

After seeing Wat Chedi Luang we decided to get a songthaew up to Doi Suthep, which is a temple on a mountain overlooking Chiang Mai from about 1000 metres above. The legend goes that King Ku Na, who ruled in the 14 century, gave a white elephant the task of finding an auspicious site for a temple that was going to be used to house a relic of the Lord Buddha. The elephant climbed the mountain, and at the spot the temple is founded, it turned around three times and died. The view over the city is impressive, and walking around the incredibly busy complex is interesting if not particularly relaxing.

A few days later, we decided to rent bikes again and go and see two temples outside of the old city walls, to the north of the city. We started off at Wat Umong, which was about five kilometres bike ride from the old city. It is an unusual temple as it is built in an underground network of tunnels in what would have been dense forest when it was founded in 1371, but is now just on the outskirts of suburbia, but still surrounded by many trees. The complex is more like a park with temples in it, and many Thais do come here to take a walk and relax. Above the main temple is the chedi, and a statue of the monk that founded the temple, a monk that is said to have fasted for six years- and the statue of him is quite scary, carved out of black stone, and all of his bones are very prominent as are his veins trapped between the skin and bone. There is also a lake here, and you can buy fish food pellets to feed to the giant catfish that live there, as it is considered lucky to do so. Though if you want to see the fish, don’t feed them pellets which they are definitely not interested in, buy bags of popcorn which they go absolutely mad for, and you’ll have dozens of catfish swarming and jumping out of the water and splashing by your feet.

The last temple that we went to see was Wat Suan Dork, which houses the ashes of the royal family in white, variously shaped chedis. The main chedi behind the cemetary is said to house eight relics of the lord buddha, and is definitely the shiniest chedi I encountered on my trip! The walls inside the main temple have beautiful murals on, and the outside is decorated in incredibly detailed carvings depicting legends, including the tale of how the Buddha’s mother was impregnated by a white elephant. There is apparently a fantastic vegetarian restaurant here too, around the back of the temple, but we were either looking in the wrong place, or it was closed, so we didn’t get to go there.

Seeing the temples in Chiang Mai was a real contrast to ones that we’d seen in Bangkok, which had a completely different feel to them. It was really nice to relax and wander around the temples and take it various astonishing features of each place, which made it so different from the others, and the monks were very friendly and often stop people to talk to them and practice their English. There are over 300 wats in Chiang Mai, and if I’d had time I’d certainly have visited more.

Things to do in Bangkok- Jim Thompson’s House

Jim Thompson is famous for single-handedly creating the reputation that Thai silk has today. He moved from New York to Bangkok in the 1940s, and saw the potential in the fabric which was slowly dying out in Thailand, in favour of cheaper imported textiles. He slowly gathered success, and his big break came in 1950 when he was asked to make the costumes for the Broadway hit ‘The King and I’.

He spoke no Thai, but loved the Thai culture, and during his time spent in Bangkok he designed a beautiful home, and collected many antiquities (and fakes!) which you are able to view on a tour. The tour starts in the beautiful gardens, where there a lots of exotic plants and trees and a pool with terrapins in, as well as vast vases dotted around with various different fish inside. The gardens are surrounded on three sides by the different buildings that make up the house.

The house is actually a collection of six different buildings, some of them built closely next to each other so you can move from one to another like you would move between rooms, and others are entirely separate. The idea was that each building would act as different rooms in a house. The buildings are made entirely from teak, and all of them a few hundred years old. Thompson had the houses broken down and transported to Bangkok from all over Thailand and then re-built.

In every building there are various artefacts, some sculptures of Buddhas that are several hundred years old, and some more recent items, such as very beautiful wooden doors inlaid with mother-of-pearl, which used to be the doors to a Chinese pawn shop. Our guide took particular delight in pointing out the unusual chamberpots in each room. The house has been left as he left it, all of the art, and the building’s layout as exactly the same as when Thompson last saw it.

Thompson is almost as famous for his mysterious disappearance as he is for his textiles- he disappeared while on holiday in the Malaysian highlands in 1967. His friends say he went out for a stroll and simply never returned. No body was ever found, and there are many conspiracy theories surround the disappearance. Some say that he was lured into an ambush set by the former disgraced prime minister of Thailand, others say he was abducted by Vietnamese communists and brainwashed into becoming a prominent communist. Whatever the explanation- there is a framed fortune telling on the wall in one of the buildings, written while Thompson still lived in Bangkok that predicted that he would disappear, and that he would disappear in 1967.

It was Thompson’s nephew that made his estate into a museum, as he was left everything in Thompson’s will, as his only relative, and he wanted to show the world what great taste his uncle had (there are rumours that he was gay…).

Jim Thompson’s house also has a beautiful shop attached, selling items made of Thai silk- beware the hefty price tag though!

Things to do in Bangkok- Canal tour

Bangkok is criss-crossed with canals, which is why it has been (dubiously) dubbed the ‘Venice of the East’. The canals have been used for many years as another means of transport around the city, which gives a welcome break to taxis or tuk-tuks. We did not get in a gondola for our tour, but a longtail boat, which is a really long, skinny boat with a simple engine, engineered to skim across the wakes of other boats along the very busy Chao Phraya river. We had chartered this boat for 800baht, which is fairly expensive, but there are organised trips, or you could get together with a group of people to split the cost.

We zipped down the river for a few minutes before turning into one of the canals, and I quickly became jealous of the people that had waterfront homes. Some of the houses were made of wood and balanced on posts (which made me wonder what happens when one of the posts begins to rot), and others were made of concrete and looked a bit more stable.

As we turned into narrower and narrower canals, we started to notice that the houses had mail boxes on the canal side of their homes- the postman comes by boat!- and some had small boats outside, and many had beautiful seating areas with many well watered plants decorating the outside. We also noticed that street vendors had adapted, and were paddling the canals selling their wares- from food to brooms and (of course) souvenirs. Once the vendors had someone interested, the person buying would put some money into a bucket, attached to a pulley system, the vendor would swap the money for the item and send the bucket back. The ultimate shopping experience!

We even passed through a lock, though I couldn’t work out how the water level a few miles downstream of the main river could be higher than where we started off. It was quite fun squeezing 8 boats into the small space, and all banging together while the boat drivers caught up on gossip as the water levels changed.

If you get given the option of ‘feeding fish’- take it, it looks great fun. I passed up on the opportunity as I wasn’t sure how much extra it would end up costing and what unsavoury delicacies we might end up feeding them, but I really regret it. Most of the temples on the waterfront sell ‘blessed bread’ to feed to huge catfish, which gather by the dozens and wrestle the bread off each other, some of the catfish even stick their entire heads out of the water to take the bread from your hand. They really are blessed fish, with boatloads of people feeding them loaves of bread every few minutes.

We didn’t go for the option of going to the snake farm or the floating market, having heard that they got pretty busy with tourists, but the boat drivers can arrange all sorts of tours, including going to Wat Arun, the Grand Palace and the royal barge museum.

Again, this trip was a first for me, and watching the world go by at a snails pace and getting kids waving from their gardens was a very welcome change of pace. A definite must.

Things to do in Bangkok- Wat Po

People generally visit Wat Po (known as Wat Chetuphon to the Thais) straight after going around the Grand Palace, but we felt hot and frazzled and so decided to go to Wat Po later on that afternoon. We arrived at about 4.30, which was perfect as there was hardly anyone else around and it was cooling down enough for us to really explore the grounds.

Wat Po is the oldest temple in Bangkok, and actually older than the city itself, as it was founded in the seventeenth century. It is most famous for it’s massive forty-five metre reclining Buddha, which you can walk around and gawp at- the Buddha’s smile is five metres wide alone! It’s absolutely beautiful and the mother-of-pearl inlay on the bottom of the feet is amazing. The pose apparently depicts the Buddha entering Nirvana, which would explain the giant smile!

Most people don’t realise, or choose to ignore the rest of the grounds and go straight to the reclining Buddha, but I urge you not to do this, as you’d really be missing out.

There is a turtle pond, and a huge collection of Buddhas in different poses, as well ninety-nine different Chedis, some of which are very tall, incredibly ornate and very impressive. There are also some great statues that seem to be guarding the gates, looking very much like a very gruesome westerner, some of which have top hats on! These statues were brought from China and used as ballast on ships before they came to rest in the temple grounds.

Wat Po is also very famous for being a centre of tradditional medicine, including Thai Massage. It is described as the first university of Thailand because it has been teaching Thai Massage techniques for so long. You can even get a massage on the grounds, but there is usually a very long queue. The Thai massage isn’t just used for easing aching muscles and backache- people believe that it can cure all sorts of illnesses, including viruses, by working on various pressure points on the body.

Wether you decide to have a massage or not, it is a very relaxing experience after a busy day!

Things to do in Bangkok- The Grand Palace

The Grand Palace was built in 1782, and it housed the royal family, the royal court and was the administrative seat of the government for many years. The royal family moved out in the 20th century, and so now the Grand Palace is home to the war ministry, state departments and the treasury. It’s built up of the outer courts and the inner courts.

The outer courts are the most obviously dazzling, with gold, red and mirror mosaic tiles decorating almost every wall, it’s breathtaking. No camera has done justice to the amazing hues and glittering light that bounces of the Chedis and the walls, the roofs and the statues. You can also wander around taking in all the different architectural eras in one small space, with hundreds of years of history being built next to each other. What is surprising is the very obviously Chinese influence in the decoration and the sculptures. The history is literally painted on the walls, with the entire outside walls being painted with incredibly intricate murals, with lots of details picked out in gold leaf, which are being continuously restored.

The outer courts also hold what is undisputedly the most sacred site for all Thais- Wat Phra Keow. Wat Phra Keow houses the Emerald Buddha, which holds immense significance for the Thais. The story of the Emerald Buddah is a long convoluted one, so bear with me. The Emerald Buddha is said to have been made in India in 43BC, but 400 years later, when much of the country was gripped by a civil war, the Buddha was moved to Sri Lanka for it’s safekeeping. While it was there, King Anuruth of Burma asked for it to be sent to his country, along with some Buddhist Scriptures to inspire Buddhists in his country, and his request was granted. While the Buddha was being transported however, the ship got lost in a storm and ended up in Cambodia. When the Thais captured Angkor Wat in 1432, the Buddha was found there and taken to the the capital of Thailand, Chiang Rai, where it was hidden. But, many years later, the Chedi in which it had been buried in got struck by lightning, and a crack exposed the Buddha, and the new King decided to move it to the new Capital, Chiang Mai, where it was housed in (my favourite wat) Wat Chedi Luang. Cambodian legend says that they recaptured it again during this period, but many historians dispute this fact. The Buddha then moved about from City to city, depending on where the current ruler hailed from, and eventually ended up in Vientiane. In 1779 a Famous Thai General captured Vientiane, and along with it, the Emerald Buddha and returned it to Siam, where it was given it’s home in Wat Phra Keow on the 22nd of March 1784. It’s an incredible story for a 45cm piece of carved jade!

The wat that you can see today is still the original building, though much restored. It is incredibly busy inside Wat Phra Keow, but at the same time, very peaceful, and is a great place to stand quietly and take in the incredible opulence and see people making offerings of beautiful flowers, praying and burning incense.

The Inner courts are closed off to the public, and so you can only walk around the outside of them. The buildings are much more European looking (apart from the roofs), and these building used to house the King and his family, with an area dedicated to just his wives and daughters- and area in which no boy past the age of puberty was allowed in. The buildings are rarely used now, except for very special occasions such as coronations.

Bear in mind that this is Thailand’s most sacred site, and you’ll have to dress appropriately- men have to wear long trousers, and women have to wear skirts that reach below the knee, and make sure that their shoulders are covered. It’s always best to go early, as it get incredibly hot and very busy as the day goes on.

If you do one thing whilst in Bangkok, you really have to sure make sure it’s the Grand Palace. It’s hot, busy and bonkers, but it gives you a real insight into Thai society, and it goes a long way to show the absolute devotion Thai’s have always shown for their Kings.

The road well travelled

Because so many of the narrow Bangkok streets look the same, I used to navigate my way around the city by working out which skyscraper I could see and work out what part of the sprawling city I was in by that. This time, on my way in from the giant glass and canvas slug that is the very expensive, very troubled, brand spanking new airport, I had real difficulty. The skyline had been peppered with so many more skyscrapers that I could no longer work out where I was with a glance. I had presumed that skyscrapers couldn’t go up in only four years- I mean, look at the BurjDubai- but I was wrong.

We stayed at the amazing Shangri-La hotel right on the river bank of the Chao Phraya river, and we were lucky enough to have our room upgraded- twice- so that we got a huge river view room on the 22nd floor. The view was breathtaking, particularly at night. It’s seriously pricey, and to eat there, or to stay there any longer than we did would have required us to re-mortgage our flat, but it was worth it. We didn’t spend a vast amount of time at the Shangri-La as it turned out, in fact we probably spent more time in taxis than anywhere else, stuck in traffic trying to get from one destination to another on the opposite side of a city with more traffic than anywhere else I’ve ever visited.

We went straight to the train station on our first morning in Bangkok,to book our train tickets to Chiang Mai four days later,but when we got there we found out that all the trains for the next week were full. This was a real surprise as I’d never had to book a train more than a day in advance before- a sure sign that the tourist trail around Thailand is getting stronger, not weaker.

Our plans had been thrown out the window as we headed to the famous Khao San Road to find some other mode of transport to Chiang Mai. On first glance, it looked pretty much the same as it always did, though maybe with even more new shops and stalls. On closer inspection, entire buildings had been knocked down and ressurected, and then the same shops and hotels had been moved back in. The inhabitants seemed much the same too. Possibly with more people walking along Khao San with a view of visiting it as a tourist attraction, a ‘not to miss’ of Thailand, rather than a cheapish district in which to stay, which does mean less body odour and fewer dreadlocks than years gone by. While we were there, we did stop at my favourite restaurant in Bangkok- a small, no-frills indian restaurant called Rainbow, which has one of the quietest guesthouses in the area, where I’d always stay when I was in the city. I was amazed to find that the staff still recognised me, even after being away for four years- though I did spend a lot of time there eating the best aloo gobi this side of Mumbai!

We got a chance to go on the (newly extended) skytrain, which to me is the quickest, most time efficient and scenic way to get around Bangkok. It does what it says on the tin, a train that runs a good 30 to 50 metres above the city, connecting the main downtown hotspots. Which also meant I got to see the new hotel where my old apartment building used to stand too.

My husband commented to me that Bangkok had no obvious features of being in Thailand, rather than in Burma or Cambodia of any other southeast Asian country. He possibly has a point, as many older generation Thais have been saying the same for years- that the tradditional culture is dying out, younger Thais aren’t behaving as is thought proper, acting like they’re the Europeans or Americans and staying out all night drinking. New buildings and highways are being built over old houses all the time, and Thailand is continously trying to prove that it can compete with the rest of the world industrially and economically, quite often resulting in obviously ostentatious displays such as skyscrapers and malls. Maybe Thailand is having an identity crisis, but what I see as Thailand is present on almost every street in Bangkok- incredible traffic, street food vendors, smelly rubbish, calm and peaceful people going about their daily business, beautiful temples- all of those things, good or bad, represent Thailand to me. I also think the more you get to know Bangkok, the more you see ”Thailand” on every street.

This trip has shown me yet another side to Bangkok which I’d not experienced before, but strangely it’s the side people most commonly see- as a tourist. When I was here on my gap year I didn’t even visit the Grand Palace, I was so ensconsed in my Thai Fishermans pants on Khao San road. This time I’ve seen and done things that I really ought to have done at some point during the time that I lived here, and I’m quite embarrassed that I didn’t. I was really missing out.