Bangkok

Hello everybody, this time from Asia!

The pumpkins on a new continent!

Very exciting for us, especially for Nils, because he has not been here before! We had about 10 hours flight instead of 7 hours because of the strong headwind, couple of times we had to put our seatbelts on because of the turbulences in the 747-300 from Jetstar, "Touristbomber" is the right word because it is crammed and you don't have much space.
Arriving in the brand new Airport with the second highest capacity of planes landing and starting in the world didn't seem to be the same country than outside. One step in front of the door and you get blasted away from the humidity and temperature, about 32C, that means sweating a LOT!!!
Fortunately it was much easier than we thought to get the bikes to the city and we travelled by local bus to Khao San Road, the only place we new, crowed by westerners and lots of cheap accomodation. Very easy to find a room, double with fan for about 380 baat, 11 Au$, not even 4 pounds. Quite hot and with no daylight but after our adventures day we didn't care too much, anyway better than a tent and no cockroaches in sight!
We were really lucky that we made it finally to bangkok because when we arrived at the airport in brisbane, luckily quite early, wanting to check in, they told us that there was no ticket booked and we wouldn't be able to fly. After a while we were advised that to travel to bangkok you need a valid ticket going out of thailand, to a valid destination, meaning england or germany in our case. That hit us hard because neither of us had money to pay a flight that we didn't really need, bargains were not available at the airport and all that under time pressure because our flight was waiting. After a lengthy conversation with a very nice and patient Quantas lady we knew what to do: we had to buy a fully refundable flight to london or frankfurt and than call them once in bangkok to get the refund. Fully refundable means not cheap, over 8000 Au$!!!! So we stood there, thinking, if we couldn't get 8000$ from somewhere we would loose our flights and the money we payd to bangkok, get stuck in australia so george would overstay her visa which means possibly a fine, excellent! After trying all the cards we had, we could just cover one flight. So we had to phone Nils father and get him to pay over the phone for the other flight and convince him that he gets the money refunded...the time was getting very close to check in time but we finally made it after all this unexpected trouble.

Back to bangkok, very busy city, all the locals quite used to foreigner, called farang here, just stalls and stalls and stalls, everything you can dream of and pay for it you can buy here very cheap. So we spend most of the first day, while recovering from the long flight, eating and exploring around the city. The next days we had exciting things to do like the first tuk tuk drive(got ripped off straight away, we found out later), looking at temples, trying all kinds of food, wandering around the Chinatown, very crazy place! One highlight was the floating market where we were the only farang around and sat together with locals eating freshly cooked food (radfish and battered chilli tofu with veges)yummy! Every moment here is adventure for us because it all works a bit different, like haggling for everything you buy (george still pays full price because to friendly to haggle, ha ha!)and we try to learn a couple of phrases in thai language. Quite difficult because one word can have five meanings depends on the tone in which you say it in!

We are now waiting for a bus that takes us to a 12 hour or more bus drive down south to Krabi. (Costs about 10Au$) We are looking forward to see the rural areas and locals that are maybe not as used to farang and the coast, climbing...

So stay tuned you will hear from us soon....

the pumpkins

assembling the bikes in our room
Khao San Road, shaped for tourists
good bye Australia, flying out of Brisbane
our bikes in boxes getting loaded in the plane
temple on the Chao Phraya River

The Grand palace in the distance
outdoor restaurant...great food and very spicy
tuk tuks in action in the always crowded streets


nursery in the suburbs
the floating market
eating on floating pontons
monks depend on daily offerings from locals because there are not aloud to have any posessions


no rules on the streets, cars and motorbikes squeezing through every little gap
public school
lots of markets supply the food for the 9 million people living in bangkok