One Night In Bangkok
10th November, Bangkok, Thailand
The last couple of days had been a mixture of winding down and gearing up. We were winding down somewhat after our trip through Vietnam, the latter half of which had been quite intense in terms of distances travelled and tours taken; we'd packed as much as we could into a fairly short time. Then, having had a two and a half hour delay getting out of Hanoi airport, we'd pretty much spent much of the day in one of the emptiest airport lounges in the world. Rest was needed and we did get some today. But there was the other part of the equation - gearing up ... for our travels down south.
We had a lot of housekeeping to do today, such as washing clothes, sorting through all our luggage and having another throw away or send home session. All of this was done in the upstairs bedroom that we've been staying in at Stef and Am's, a room that seems to immediately heat up when it gets to around 8am, and Bangkok had suddenly, and a little inexplicably, gone up in temperature during the last week. While we'd been enjoying the relative cool of the northern towns of Vietnam, Bangkok was getting 35 degree (Celsius) days with something like 97% humidity. It was very uncomfortable. Stef's friend Nick reckoned that a sudden ramp up in temperature like this probably meant that it would be one last hot period which would then be followed very quickly by a much cooler period. I hoped this 'snap' would happen soon.
With most of our day's tasks out of the way, we made our way out in the evening to Sukhumvit. This is an area that we had, as yet, not really visited in Bangkok (apart from one very brief trip for a cabaret). The reason we had not been there? Well, a couple of reasons: firstly, this is one of the areas where single (or not single!) men prefer to go eating and drinking, because fairly quickly they can find themselves with a drinking or dining partner who laughs at their every joke, pays them compliments and shows them a good time. This was pick-up central, in other words - the scene that most people associate with the Thai capital. The second reason for not going here is because of what other people might assume about us as a couple (referring back to my first point!). Manda has continually been mistaken for a Thai in Thailand, and as a Vietnamese in Vietnam, so I did wonder what others seeing us together would think. Probably the same thing that I thought about other westerners walking hand-in-hand with Asian girls.
So, why were we here?
We were here to meet Robert, an Aussie whom we'd met on a previous holiday in Turkey. We'd narrowly missed out seeing him when we were in Sydney, so narrowly that we could have crossed the road when we met Louise in North Sydney, as he works in an office block just across the Pacific Highway. That brings the total of people we've met from our Turkey trip to 6 (the others being Barbara and Ted, Brent, Eric and the aforementioned Louise). But here was Robert in Bangkok for a few days, so we made amends for not calling in to see him in Sydney and made our way from Stef's place to Sukhumvit, a journey that ended up taking over an hour.
Robert was just as jovial as we remembered him, despite the uncomfortable heat. We met him at his hotel on Sukhumvit Road, a real 5-star affair. I was totally out of place, wearing board shorts, a Thai market T-shirt with pictures of VW Beetles all over it, wild straggly hair and 6 days' worth of beard growth (the batteries had run out on the shaver and I'd not yet got my act together on that front). I felt that I was lowering the tone, so I called his room, said we were waiting in the lobby then we got out of there ASAP.
The plan had been to try out an Italian restaurant in the area, as I'd been told there were a lot of good ones there, but Robert suggested instead that we try out Gullivers (an English pub). I was happy to go with the flow, and the food was very good and with reasonable prices.
Manda and Robert at Gullivers Pub off Sukhumvit Road
We made a start on beers, ordering pitchers of Singha. As the night wore on, with food out of the way, we carried on with the Singhas until we were quite well oiled (although naturally we were not aware ourselves how well oiled we had become). I think the expression on Robert's face gives a hint that a quantity of alcohol had been consumed:
Hey, I can see stars!
However, we weren't quite at that state where we would have to use a facility that was laid on by the pub's management - a dedicated basin for being sick into. Think I'm kidding? Here's the sign that was above it, with Thai and English description (although if you couldn't read either, for whatever reason, the picture pretty much summed up the basin's intended use):
We talked through the evening about travels, work, anything that cropped up really until about midnight. At that point we realised that we - Manda and I - probably ought to grab the skytrain back in the direction of 'home'; Robert would only have to stumble up the road a few hundred yards. We said our goodbyes and did the customary 'if you're in England, drop us a line and we'll show you around' routine (a genuine offer, might I add. Manda's already worked out several itineraries for various lengths of stay). And that was that - our last night in Bangkok. Well, that was almost us done for the day. Stef and Am still had to endure a drunk and silly Ian when we finally got back to their house. Rest assured, our leaving the following day had nothing to do with any beer-induced faux pas on my part. Heck, I don't need beer to do something stupid - I'm as clumsy as they get at the best of times!