Refreshed from our first night’s sleep in Bangkok, and awake early due to the building work taking place next door, we had breakfast and planned our day.

Our first day in Bangkok was a Sunday and we’d heard the weekend market was particularly good.  We decided to head here and then head to the Grand Palace to do some serious sight seeing.  After chatting to the receptionist to find the bus route to the weekend market, we discovered the Grand Palace closed at 3.30pm and therefore decided to swap our itinerary around and head there first.

We dutifully trotted off down the road in the direction of the palace.  Whilst waiting to cross the road, a seemingly-friendly local helped us across (SE Asian roads were still a bit of an unknown menace to us at this point).  Whilst on the other side he asked where we were from and where we were going.  We politely responded that we were off to the Grand Palace for a bit of sight seeing.

“The Palace? No, no, not today, today’s Sunday! The King and Queen are there today” was the response we got.

“But of course!” I thought. How silly of us not to consider weekend, and in particular Sunday, rituals into our plans.

The guy told us to get our map out and he very kindly pointed out some other places we could go – mainly the trio of buddhas and the Golden Mountain.  We pondered what to do for a while but he won us over by telling us to be careful about how much we pay for a tuk tuk – and for the route he told us about we should only pay 20 baht. 50p – bargain!

We decided on the spur of the moment to go for it.  We had no other morning plans and it was so cheap – why not? The guy then proceeded to tell us about a new Government scheme (along with the usual cries of “We have a new Prime Minister. Our first woman!”) where the tuk tuk drivers can get petrol vouchers by taking tourists to certain destinations.  He mentioned the protests from last year and how it had affected the tourist industry – a fact I had yet to see given the teeming tourist area we were staying in. But, it made sense to me.

He flagged down a tuk tuk for us and agreed the price with the driver.  We dutifully headed off in our tuk tuk, trying not to breathe in too much smog and discussing how friendly the guy was and how rude our receptionist was for not telling us the Grand Palace was closed. Tut.

We went on a flying tour of the standing Buddha and the sitting Buddha.

On the way to the Golden Mountain, our driver told us about some special initiative at the moment in shops where you can get clothes made up with the fabric free and only pay for the labour costs.  He asked us to stop off so that he can receive some vouchers.  It was inconvenient but I understood the reasoning behind it so we agreed.  We went into a suit shop, got some horrific sales patter and eventually a quote for a suit… for £200!

We hot-footed out of there and headed on to the Golden Mountain.  I loved the giant bells to ring all the way up the stairs of the Golden Mountain, the stairs, not so much.  I had enough of going up hill last year on Kilimanjaro, thank you very much.  The views from the top were amazing though, and it really highlight how diverse Bangkok city is.

We headed back down the steps, at a much more rapid pace than on the way up.  We were really feeling the heat and humidity by this point, it was stifling.  It hurt to move sometimes and the phrase ‘wading through soup’ was really beginning to make sense to me.

So imagine our disappointment when we headed out to the street and looked for our tuk tuk driver… and looked…  and looked.  He was nowhere to be seen! It was particularly strange as  he hadn’t been paid yet.  So we looked some more, wondering if he’d gone for some food or was having a nap somewhere.  He was gone!

We were approached by a tuk tuk organiser who told us our driver had to go. I didn’t believe it, I still thought he had just popped off somewhere, but of course this woman had seen an opportunity. What choice did we have?  We had decided to skip the sleeping buddha for now and head back to the hotel to grab the bus to the weekend market, so we started negotiating with the woman.  She offered us 10 baht as long as we stopped off at a suit shop.  We told her we wanted direct, to which she quoted 200 baht. After a good 5 mins, we agreed to just jump in for 1 or 2 stops.  We could just walk in and back out again, I reasoned.

This reasoning quickly went out the paneless-window when we realised that in taking us to these shops, he was taking us well out of our way and therefore adding quite a lot of time to our journey.  We didn’t mind so much for the first stop – we were much blunter in the store, no sitting down and hard sales talk this time.  Just in and out, allowing the guy to get his vouchers.  I had a thought – what if our original driver had driven off as he had done enough to get his vouchers? He’d been particularly touchy when we’d said we weren’t going to go to the tourist information office to book a river cruise – another place where he can collect his vouchers.  He’d clearly just realised he’d get more out of other customers and had decided to leg it!

When the guy came to take us to another store, we start to refuse. Tired, irritable and hot, OH was quite adamant that we were not going to another store.  The driver got quite arsey about this.  The end result was us being unceremoniously dumped on the side of a random road with no transport.

We’d so far been driven around Bangkok without paying a single baht, but this wasn’t the end result I was looking for.  We looked at our map, trying to decipher where we were and if we could walk back, but it was pretty futile.  So we started flagging down tuk tuks, trying to get back and once again getting into the standard argument of “Direct? No, NO stops. We’re not stopping. Direct” until finally a driver took pity on us and agreed to take us back for a reasonable price.

So, we headed back, jumped on the bus and had a relatively pain free journey to the weekend market.  We wandered around in the heat and scorching sun, looking for bargains and oddities and occasionally searching out some water.  After a couple of hours of wandering, we decided to grab a couple of beers and go and sit in the nearby park in the sun and relax.  It was glorious!

Being typical Brits, we sought out a spot in the sun whilst the entire population of Bangkok sought out the coolest spots in the shade.  Ah, I love conforming to stereotypes.

The next day, we decided to once again head to the elusive Grand Palace.  We headed down there again, and whilst once again trying to cross a (much bigger) road, we were approached by another man who advised us against going to the palace as the King and Queen were there.  Again?! I cried.  How inconvenient of them! He tried to talk us into the buddha tour again but we quickly told him we had done that and walked off to make our way to a big shopping centre (and some air conditioning. The hangover was kicking in at this point.) Whilst walking off, I saw him motion to some nearby tuk tuk drivers.  I told OH and told him my suspicions that he was on some sort of commission.

This suspicion quickly spread to the man from the day before. Our friendly local resident.  I should point out that when we ran into the guy the day before, he was carrying some shopping and so really looked like he was just on his way back from a quick shop.  Within about an hour, about the point we got to the shopping centre (which, incidentally, we travelled to by taxi to avoid the tuk tuk shop debacle again) our suspicions had fully formed that we had been done over. Twice!

When we eventually did make it to the Grand Palace the following morning, we avoided countless ‘helpful’ people on our route telling us that the palace was closed.  Even as we approached the entrance, and could clearly see people going in and out, they were still trying! We batted them out of our way like pesky gnats and purposefully strode towards the entrance.

I liked the Grand Palace.  It was busy, and touristy, but magnificent.  It is a literal beacon of Thailand’s history, shimmering and glittering in gold.  I also had a sense of home, with the changing of the guard very reminiscent of the bearskins in London (except at the end they swap a cardboard pass. Completely ruins the grandeur for me).

I felt like we’d been a bit naive.  But, at least we hadn’t lost out on any money or put ourselves in danger.  We’d just had to shuffle our itineraries around a little bit.  We actually saw our mate from the first day later on, approaching another bunch of tourists who were looking a bit lost.  We’d certainly never fall for that again, and had taken to taking taxis over tuk tuks to avoid the stress of negotiating a direct route.

CatDog xx