I want to walk this. Fed up with taxis in clogged-up Bangkok streets. Skytrain to Ratchathewi station. Head west around midday. Stomp down various shanty style roads. They hate pavements, the Thais. Covered in concrete plant pots, street eateries, motorbikes, bits of motorbikes, tables, chairs, anything that stops you walking on them. Walk in road. Dodge tuk tuks and motorbikes. Emerge into a covered concrete warehouse. Smell of fish and the sound of people washing down tables. Must’ve been a fish market earlier. Cross an expressway; no traffic lights; just bloody well walk and hope. Another labyrinthine system of stalls and markets; this time clothing and bamboo. See man sharpening a 6 ft bamboo spear (perhaps to catch one of Steve’s baby-eating snakes). Stop. Big Klong (Phadong Krung Kasem canal, according to map). Find concrete bridge completely covered with women selling loads of green oval vegetables. Make way through, avoid motorbike coming other way (Christ, they’re everywhere!). More subterranean markets. End of street in sight! Lots of rubbish and gravel hill. Christ! Railway lines. (NB: no level crossing, fences, notices, barbed wire, or anything -- obviously the Thais are considered adult enough to look both ways before crossing multiple tracks without the aid of a nanny state!). Back down under tarpaulins of another shanty market. Boring concrete streets now. Walk down wholesale timber outlet street. Emerge into massive square and five lane highway. Giant pictures of the King everywere. Work out signal crossing protocols (and find out pretty quickly that tuk tuks and motorbikes ignore all rules as usual). Identify a key building on map. Aha! Go north. Keep going north. Splosh! Hmm. Must be Chao Phraya River. Ta Da! - reached destination.
By this time I realised I’d worn a whole in my big toe and it was leaking into my sandals. I only mention this distasteful event for two reasons.
1) When I stopped for some well deserved breakfast/lunch/tea and was busy wrapping some complementary table tissue around the offending limb, one of the local tradespersons came up offering me what looked like a shiny, stainless steel, do-it-yourself, surgery kit in a nice compact zipped up carrying case. When I patiently explained that the big toe was survivable without amputation, she looked at me oddly and moved on. On reflection, it may just have been a funky 21st century manicure kit.
2) Shuffling onward, the first shop I saw was one of the new fishy foot spas; you know, a place where you dangle your feet in a pool of carnivorous piranhas that eat all the dead skin off your feet. Now I don’t know about you but I’m not entirely sure that said fish have been on the full training course. If, as in my case, you’ve already done a fair job of taking the first few layers of epidermis off, where do they stop? I’m not a prude (well, OK, I probably am), but I’m not putting my naked metacarpals on display for anyone.
About Banglampoo? Well, yes, the most famous street is the Khao San Road. This is where backpackers of every size, race, colour, creed, age, gender, tattoo design and moral outlook comes to buy stuff. To be honest, it’s a bit overblown. By far the better street is the twisty one that links into it called Rambutri, which has at least got some decent bars and restaurants. At the end of the day I was too knackered to explore any more so found myself at the pier for an incredibly cheap trip back to the Skytrain via the Chao Phraya River express taxi, the sun setting behind me across the river. Part II tomorrow.
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