Coming home

Sydney is done, time for home. Yah!

What I visited:

- Sydney Tower
- Harbour cruise
- Bondi Beach
- Hyde Park
- Opera House
- Over the bridge (by train), under the bridge (by ferry and walking).
- Light rail to Glebe Point and dinner with Nikki Suebwongpaet
- Apple computer store
- Chinatown
- The markets
- Darling Harbour
- Kings Cross

Room for one

I arrived at Wakeup Hostel yesterday to find my booking had been messed up. Doh. It took them ages to sort it out (I ended up getting a meal, see previous post) but eventually I ended up with a private room instead of the 8 bed dorm I'd booked, and it cost the same. Sweet!

It took me about 4 mins to empty my bag all over the place - the benefits of not sharing a dorm room.

Maaarvelous

Forgive me for feeling like I've arrived home!

I've never been to Sydney before but coming from Bangkok everything seems very familiar.

- Blue sky
- Cool breeze (that's something we take for granted!!)
- Jay walking (it's against the rules in sgp and not worth your life in bgk!)
- Flat whites and F n C (my first meal in Oz, oooh yeah)
- English
- Payment with plastic

It's been a long time between flat whites... 

Mmm f n c. Oh yeah

Epic day - Last day in Thailand

Plan for the last day. The flight leaves at 9.30pm. Get to the airport at 6.30pm, giving me a decent buffer. Visit Goodnews team, pickup shirts in town and visit the highest building in Thailand.

There's no way I can do the day justice in a brief blog post apart from bullet pointing:

- Kanchana and I get a taxi.
- 15 min to Goodnews team office
- Hang out there for a couple of hours, have lunch
- 20 min taxi in to the city train station (only place I know I can leave my backpack so I don't have to lug it around). That was the only unpredictable part of the trip, from here on the rapid transit is very efficient.
- Spot an interesting back alley, end up getting a hair cut (might as well while they're 4 NZD)
- 10min MRT (subway)
- 5 min BTS (elevated train)
- Pickup tailored shirts, buy some other stuff too
- 5 min BTS
- Arrive at Pathaya Thai BTS station knowing that the highest building is around here somewhere... except I didn't write down directions, I don't have a smart phone... the buildings around here are too high to see something ten blocks away and I don't like my chances of getting help on the street... uh oh.
- Orange jacketed scooter taxi guy asks me where I'm going... Ha! Scooter. Down town Bangkok (see the post on courageous people). I tell him about the tower to buy me time while I do an internal cost/benefit analysis...  "How much?" "50 Baht" "Helmet?" Amazingly, he hands me one (guess they take tourists as well as locals, usually tourists stick to Tuk tuks and taxis, for obvious reasons!). There's no way I'll find the tower myself with limited time, there's no way a taxi will get through the traffic, it's too far to walk. What the heck, I have to get to the top!
- A 30 min taxi ride becomes a 8 min scooter ride! We ride up the inside, the outside and between traffic, through back alleys, down the wrong way on narrow streets. Now this is a cheap thrill! (as long as we don't crash!). Now that is an awesome way to get around Bangkok. You should have seen the smug look on my face when we rushed past tourists in tuk tuk's! Haha.
- Tower, 3pm - go to the wrong entrance, some nice guy walks me to the right one.
- Up tower, rush around, take photos, get my complimentary drink and rush back down.
- Scooter taxi
- BTS
- MRT
- Station - pick up backpack
- MRT
- BTS
- Airport link (elevated train) - buy a token and wait for the train, ask the guy next to me if this is the express train... nope. doh. Race back downstairs, get token refunded and get the express arrive at the platform with 3 mins to spare.
- Nice smooth ride to airport
- Arrive at... 6.33pm! Don't know how I managed to get so close to my target! Phew.

The most courageous people award

I'm giving this award to the women of Bangkok who ride side saddle on the back of taxi scooters. You are legendary!

Taxi scooter context: These guys (guys as in, male's, all males) are the fastest way to get around town. They're fully legit (although they're driving style would not be legal in the west!). They wear a coloured hi-viz jacket associated to the district they're in and because they are on scooters, can get around anywhere very quick and very cheap.

Anyway, back to the award. If you wear a skirt, you ride side saddle. I am in awe of people who ride side saddle! I've still got the image fresh in my mind of this one woman. Her feet weren't on the passenger pedals (this is the main way to support yourself on the back of a scooter but doesn't work side saddle), she wasn't holding the handles (this is the secondary support), she wasn't holding the guys back (it's a taxi driver, not her boyfriend), one hand holding her hair, the other resting on her knee. How the heck did she balance!?  Remember folks, this is Bangkok! 8 lanes of traffic. Traffic suddenly changing lanes, suddenly stopping, suddenly starting. Scooter taxi, races up the inside of the traffic, the outside of traffic, through hotel forecourts, down back alleys, not for the faint of heart. I would've taken a photo of it actually, only problem was, I was *ahem* riding a scoo-cough taxi.

Just another typical Bangkok intersection - spot the orange vested taxi scooters.

Travellers ethos

One principle I try to practise while travelling is to eat local food, when its available. This is an ethos that works really well from my mouth up... Unfortunately, other parts of my body thoroughly disagree, so the last week or so has been a challenge, trying to manage how much Thai food I have. Or more specifically, how much spice I have! Believe it or not, I've been eating some western glutenous fast food to HELP my stomach! Haha. Didn't think I'd ever say that.

Things have calmed down now fortunately. And since I'm in Sydney now, I think I should be fine.

Sydney

Just arrived.

Good flight (only 9 hours to oz, phew! Almost too fast). Got a good chemically induced 4 hours sleep, oh yeah, now the clock is ticking, 51 hours to see SYD.

Hope I have time to blog about my epic day yesterday... #nowifideviceannoying

Nonthaburi

Arrived in Nonthaburi yesterday.

It's kindof like going from Auckland City to Manukau. Same, Same, Different. Here there are no foreigners. There are a maze of quiet streets - although the main roads are still jam packed full of cars! The food and drink are a lot cheaper than in Bangkok, even cheaper than in Chiang Mai.

Agenda.

Yesterday
- Went to a youth centre with the Fah Sai (means beautiful clear skies) kids (an outreach which is part of Nonthaburi church). I don't think it was that far in Auckland terms but it took over an hour to get there due to the normal crazy traffic! Here, a traffic light sequence can take 5 minutes or more...
- Went on a brief (non-insured...) back street scooter mission with Noi Non to get dinner.
- Ate dinner and hung out with Noi Non, Jean, Kanchana and Fah Sai (their daughter, not the outreach).

Today
- Church: I played drums then taught the kids Twinkle Twinkle with Noi Non.
- Shopping trip with Kanchana to an uber-epic mall (that will need another post!).
- Chilled out time (or should that we hot out time...)

Tomorrow
- Visit Good news team
- Go to town to pick up tailer shirts and maybe some tourist things
- Fly to Sydney at 9.30pm

The MCP is done

Day 5 ended successfully yesterday.

There were many taxi rides, many melt downs, many iphone games played in taxi rides, plenty of swims in the pool, train rides, park plays, tailoring, aquariums (the best one I've seen so far), there was an injury induced home day (Jack fell out of bed), market shopping, plenty of child carrying and plenty of heat (yah for air con!).

The Davies now head home this arvo and I carry on with my solo journey. Today I relocate to Nonthaiburi for two nights close to the Goodnews team and the church. Then I'm off to Sydney for two nights.

Lesson learnt this week: Solo travel is ridiculously simple!

MCP = Mission Critical Phase

Border control - Random Travel Moment #1

Flying in to Singapore, our hostess warns us that drug trafficking is punishable by mandatory death sentence. Nice way to greet us. So, with fear and trepidation (not really, but it sounds good) I get out my passport and walk up to the old, serious looking Singaporean man at Customs. He takes a long hard look at my passport, looks up at me and says "Malcolm David Shearer..."

There's a long pause.

"What do you like to be called...?"

Not sure what to make of that question. Uhmm Malcolm? Or umm, let's see, cleared to enter Singapore? That'd be quite good actually.

"Kiwi or All Black?" Then smiles at me and I laugh realising he's a lot more chilled out than my first impression! Phew.

I carry on, pick up my baggage and head to the declaration area. You know, the one in NZ where they take things really, really seriously? They wave me through the No Declarations area. I'm a little surprised. "Uh, I have snack bars, bread, cereal...?" Still waves me through.

I was tempted to joke... "But what about the illicit goods in my bag...?" However, death before the trip gets started, wouldn't make a very good travel story...

Serene Bangkok

Our Bed and Breakfast in Bangkok is called Serene. It has elements of serenity... lots of greenery, plenty of water features and some interestingly painted walls. It could be better, but I'll keep my criticisms for Trip Advisor...

Serene - View from my balcony down to the pool.

Serene - My room.

Not Serene.

The road, 100m from our B n B. 8 lanes of traffic (and its not a motorway). No traffic lights, no pedestrian crossing. The only way over in a km is this pedestrian bridge. The upside of a very busy road is that an available taxi goes by about every 15 secs! See in the photo, the orange, red, yellow and pink cars...? Taxis.

Spot the animals in these pictures

The first one - you'll need to look real close for.

The second one - you'll need to think outside of the box (hint: one of Thailands favorite animals)

A cashless society...

...this place is not!

It's amazing the things you take for granted at home. Plastic is one of them. Every overseas trip I'm reminded of the convenience we have in NZ of buying everything on plastic, having tax included and not having a silly tipping system (which requires cash most of the time)! Even on the bus in major NZ cities, just tag on, tag off!

Here, however, cash is a constant enemy. Trying to figure out how much cash to withdraw is a pain in the butt. Each time it costs 6 bucks (and that's on a travel card that has no ATM fees, and it doesn't include the conversion rate!). Which means withdrawing large sums each time.

Unless you're buying a slightly more expensive item (like a budget cell phone...), pretty much every transaction is in cash. Taxi's, food, drink, anything bought at a market, in some cases even big stores like Tesco's won't take plastic. Cash, cash, cash, wods of it and plenty of coins too.

Yah for NZ, plastic payments all the way!

Mission critical phase

The preliminaries are over, the mission begins.

Today is day 2 of 5 in the MCP. John is working with Roache medical labs until Friday (today is Tuesday) and I'm looking after the kids with Bex.

1984

I've been thinking about Singapore since I left. Its an impressively epic, futuristic city. However, it has another, more ominous side to it. Its almost a prophetic glimpse of what life could be like. A futuristic dystopia. Think George Orwell's 1984.

- There are thousands of security camera's everywhere.
- Tvs and signs tell people how to act. How to use the escalators, what corruption is, how to queue and board a train, how to keep the toilet clean. It's all covered.
- People are afraid of breaking the rules (unlike a lot of Asia...).
- Political leaders make authoritarian decisions (which get things done but don't involve consultation) - don't even think about striking as you'll have no job the next day.

No doubt if I was there for longer, I'd have even more insight.

Still, its a country of four dominant cultures and religions and many different immigrants.  I'm trying to think of another way to manage the potential chaos...

Here's an example.

Bangkok

I'm back in Bangkok. It's humid. 30 deg here feels a lot more intense than 35 in Chiangmai! My phone is in a bag full of rice... who knows whether it'll be back to normal or not...

Never, ever, ever...

dive in the pool with my phone in my pocket. There'll be less blog posts, voxers and photos from now on, unfortunately. M