Like it or Lump it

Day 3 we decided to get away from the madness that is Bangkok and its crazy traffic, as we’ve seen quite a few temples, well a lot of temples, we decided to go to Lumphini park on the other side of town.  So instead of breathing in the very poor air we decided to use the underground, which was air conditioned and had the extra security of a metal detector that you had to walk through to enter, which went off when everyone went through, and only the odd person got checked, so a token gesture deterrent. Speaking of tokens that’s exactly what you get from the ticket machine, which was easy to use once we changed the language to English, which really means American English and paid 19 baht each for a plastic disc that you scan at the barrier and later insert as you exit, the journey takes about 30 minutes so it was grab a seat if you can, and count down the stops.

  Finally we arrive and head outside to Lumphini park, an oasis in the middle of Bangkok’s finance district surrounded by cars and a wall of heat that slaps you in the face like a cricket bat.

 In the park we go and look at the information point and I take a step back before Trish stops me, there is a little tortoise on the floor trying to find a place out of the midday sun,as we look closer, Johnny foreigner, Mr French man appears and suddenly takes ownership of it, we look at it, albeit clamped in a French hand,then as suddenly as he came he was off to save the stricken tortoise, pity the French weren’t so animal friendly in the 80’s when they sank Greenpeace’s ship “The Rainbow Warrior”. 

So we head further in and look for the food hall but it’s only noodles served with more noodles on the menu, so we continue round, stopping every now and again every time we catch some shade, until we see something in the boating lake. It’s only a crocodile a real live crocodile, all be it a small one but all the same it is a boating lake in the city not the wilds of the Amazon. We take a few pictures and start nodding politely to the Thai family in a boat very near the said creature who are smiling as if it’s nothing, just another day on the lake.

Now we are very hot and fed up with the park, so we head to the famous Silom Road for some much needed food and drink, we walk down the road and stop at a vendor at the side of the road and get a bag of fried soft shell crabs and fried prawns which we then proceed to eat outside costa coffee, later notice there is a sign saying no sitting or eating, what do they say ignorance is bliss, bit like the crabs! We then notice a woman selling weird looking drinks at the side of the road that seem to be going down a treat with the locals, so I go and try to ask what it is and before you know it there are about thirty Thai people around trying to explain, and that is a lot of noise for your ears to take, the best I got was it’s a fruit drink. I choose at random one of the drinks then we sit down and try and work out how you open the drink, that’s in some sort of freezer bag. I manage to get the straw in and slowly manage to take a gulp, god knows what it was but it was dreadful, the sort of thing that makes you baulk, it gets worse, once you polish off the drink there is strange fruit in it. No think of the film “Alien” and you are now getting close to what this thing looks like in the bag, Trish tries it first, then I have a go and immediately launch it out my mouth, told you Alien, “rank” is doing a disservice to the word rank.

We have to find a beer now to get rid of the awful taste, so we head into an Israeli bar playing dodgy middle eastern music, at least it’s cheap for the Silom road, 70 baht each. After our beer we head back across the road to one of the local Thai noodle shops for a big steaming bowl of chicken noodle soup for only 40 baht each 80 pence; and it’s so good, lip smacking good, but me being billy big licks put in way too much of the spice mixture you find on every table in all the restaurants in town. The owner starts laughing and says you like it hot, to which I couldn’t speak because of the heat, I was now so hot that I had torrents of sweat dripping down my brow instead of a bead. I was glad I polished it off now, because when I went outside I was fine in the fierce heat, properly acclimatised and loving the wonderful Thai sunshine.

We decide to go for one last walk in the park, when we hear loud music in the distance, we go and investigate as we get nearer we lots of people doing some crazy exercises to banging rave tunes that had been remixed with Thai music; there was other parts of the park doing it as well to all types of music, there must have been about two hundred people danceacising (my new made up word) and about a thousand others jogging.

Making our way through the now heaving park we head back to the underground and the air conditioned trains, and back to the hotel for a rest before heading out later to get some food in neon extravaganza that is China town.