Day 1 - Day 2 (Tim)

6.3.06

We touched down at Bangkok airport at about 8:30am local time(1:30am GMT), about 2 hours later than the scheduled time due to delays at Doha, extremely tired following a long period of sleepless travel. After a confusing hour spent filling in an arrival form, exchanging money, passing through customs and reclaiming our bags, we met the taxi driver John had arranged to pick us up. He explained to us in broken English that he had been waiting since 6am for us, for which we felt very bad but could not fully express our apologies due to the language barrier (we ended up paying him more than he asked for, so I think he understood our sypmathies).

We arrived at John's place with the intention of sleeping straight away, but had to visit the local supermarket first in order to pick up some bottled water (with the tap-water being undrinkable). It was a strange experience being part of a minority and drawing curious stares for being a clueless outsider.
After some much needed sleep, we ventured out to the soup stall on the corner of the street where I attempted to use some phrases I had learned before coming (such as "hello", "excuse me", "Do you understand English", and "I would like to eat something please"). This seemed to confuse the stall owners for a bit, and a local policeman stepped in to help translate. We ended up with a bowl of soup, in which strange balls of unidentifiable meat and lumps of custard floated, and a plate of rice and squid. It tasted good..sort of. Certainly different, anyway.

In the evening our host, Pryad, knocked on our door unexpectedly and said he was taking us to a BBQ place to eat. We accepted the offer of a second meal gratefully and were driven to a night market outside of Minburi, serving had some of the best tasting meat I have ever tasted, and went down well after the squid. On the BBQ stall, you pick as many scraps of raw meat of all varieties from a buffet and cook them on a small candle-heated metal cone..I wasn't quite sure what was going on to begin with, but after it was explained I ate so much...the food here is really very good.

Day 2

We felt a little more adventurous today, after yesterday's trip to the supermarket, and managed to hitch a ride to the marketplace in a taxi-bus hybrid (open-backed vehicle you jump in if it's passing the same way you wish to go). It was so incredibly hot around the markets, we easily lived up to the stereotype of the Wester foreigner - large, sweaty and clueless. Now we have learned from the Thais and wear an undervest to absorb all moisture, and wear a shirt on top of that for appearance, so now we're just large and clueless. We also use a special cooling talc. We still have a lot to learn in language skills. For now though, we will just have to get used to it.