Saturday, December 11, 2004 (Bangkok - Thailand)
Our very last day in Asia is upon us and it's
time to reflect back. Meticulous record keeping. Sending home another parcel. So
much time in Thailand but so little of the country seen (above ground that is).
The Grand Palace and how not to offend. A selection of photos to reflect on
Asia.
Day 278 (88). It’s finally here. This
will be our last full day not only in Thailand but also in Asia as a whole.
Perhaps now is a good time to reflect on the magnitude of what we’ve
achieved over the past eighty-eight days. Asia, and the world as a whole, is a
very big place and we would have to be travelling for our entire lifetimes
before coming close to seeing it all. There is still so much more of Asia that I
would have liked to see but there have been many factors have contributed to why
we’ve only had a chance to visit India, Hong Kong, China, Thailand and
Cambodia. For starters, there is the obvious limit of time and budget.
We’ve been able to economise on airfares by means of a round-the-world air
ticket but one of the restricting factors of such a ticket is the limit of
twelve months in which to complete the trip. Spending more time in one country
or one region simply means having to cut short time in those to follow so we
have to be judicious in how much time we spend in any particular place. Then
there is the problem of climate. We delayed the start of our journey until
September so as to minimise our exposure to the trailing monsoon season in
India. This, in turn, meant that we had to get to North East Asia and start to
travel South again before the onset of cold weather that far north of the
equator. One of the strategies we’ve had for minimising the amount of
weight and bulk that we are continually carrying around with us has been to
follow the sun. In other words, by staying in warm climates, we not only enjoy
those warm climates but this also prevents the need to carry heavy and bulky
cold weather clothing with us. We are now well into winter in the Northern
hemisphere and by terminating our time here in Asia, we can now drop South of
the equator to enjoy the summer in that
hemisphere.
Over the past several months, we’ve seen some tremendous things. Not least
of these have been several items on our life’s to-do list, including the
magnificent Taj Mahal in India, the Great Wall of China and the temples of
Angkor Wat in Cambodia. We’ve also been on safari for tigers, visited some
truly stunning forts and temples, seen the Hong Kong skyline at night, held
giant pandas, seen the world’s largest Buddhas and seen some of the most
amazing sights underwater. We’ve met new friends, experienced different
cultures and have seen how people live in far away places, many of whom make do
for years on end with what I made in a single day whilst working back in the
West. We’ve broadened our minds and have come to understand just a little
bit more of the world around us. If I were made penniless tomorrow, I’d
still consider myself to be one of the richest people on
earth.
One of the advantages of carrying a laptop computer around with me has been my
ability to keep meticulous records of anything and everything. For our
three-month jaunt around this particular continent, I can record, for example,
that we’ve spent an average of €18 per night on accommodation with a
grand total of €8,422 spent for the entire trip to date (excluding
pre-departure costs such as inoculations, round-the-world air tickets, gear and
so on). That’s an average of €95,71 per day all told that
we’ve spent travelling over the past three months. Much of this has been
spent on such things as diving, additional flights here and there and other
luxuries for which we have separate budget allowances. After taking those out of
the equation, our average daily travelling expenditure has been just €62
per day for the two of
us.
All in all, I’d have to conclude that this trip has so far been a monumental success – and we’re less than a third of the way through so far!
I spoke above about luxuries and the separate budget that we have to pamper and spoil ourselves from time to time. One of the things that we consider to be a part of our overall luxury budget is souvenir collecting. We collect little trinkets as time passes and every now and then, the combined additional weight of these purchases makes carrying the backpacks just that little bit more uncomfortable. So far, we’ve sent two packages back home and we’ve now accumulated enough additional souvenirs to warrant sending our third package.
Once we were up and about this morning, we marched over to the nearby post
office with a couple of arms full of goodies to be sent back to the UK.
Including the cost of the box and packing, we paid 2,027B (€39) to send
the six and a half kilogram package by surface mail. This is the cheapest method
of postage and our package should, by all accounts, take three months to
complete the journey but the previous package we sent from Bangkok, around five
weeks ago, arrived not too long
ago.
Although we’ve spent a lot of time here in Thailand, we’ve seen relatively little of the country as a whole. We’ve concentrated so much on diving that we’ve had little chance to see much of Thailand above ground. The same is also true of Bangkok in that we’ve spent over a week here altogether but have yet to venture out into the surrounding area to visit any of the tourist sites. Today we would rectify this somewhat by means of a visit to the Grand Palace, which is literally just twenty minutes walk from the Khao San Road.
Although not nearly as oppressive as when we first arrived here in Thailand, the
heat of the day was still very present but we decided to walk the short distance
to the Grand Palace as opposed to trying to negotiate a tuk-tuk ride for a
reasonable fare after all. Passing through a couple of parks, it was actually
quite a lovely walk, in as far as walking through any city can be lovely. The
various buildings that comprise the Grand Palace complex shoot into the sky and
our visit started once we were in sight of them really. We made it across the
busy roads and all the way to the ticket office where we were met with a bit of
a surprise. Apparently, our exposed arms and legs were an obstruction to our
getting into the complex. Sandy was all for ‘borrowing’ a wrap from
the available supply to cover her legs but I didn’t much fancy pulling on
clothes that had been worn by half a dozen other hot and sweaty people so I
elected to go back to the hotel to get changed whilst Sandy waited for me. I
made a half-hearted attempt at flagging down a passing tuk-tuk but eventually
made it well over half way back before I gave up on the idea and continued the
rest of the way on foot. Now suitably and respectfully covered up, I went back
out. Having walked back and forth several times now in the full heat of the day,
my body temperature was now hot enough for the walk to be less comfortable so I
flagged a passing tuk-tuk to take me the few minutes back over to the Grand
Palace.
I deliberately went with a passing tuk-tuk as opposed to one of the bottom
feeders that were circling and continually badgering me. I didn’t much
fancy the idea of several detours
today.
The Grand Palace and the surrounding buildings are indeed and amazing sight and certainly well worth the effort we went through to visit them, not to mention the 200B (€3,85) we each paid to get in. Brilliantly decorated golden intricacies and stunning architecture makes every one of these buildings a wonder to behold. Retrospectively, however, I think we would have been better off visiting the Grand Palace at the start of our tour through Thailand as opposed to at the very end. Perhaps the past three months have slowly taken their toll on my enthusiasm for sightseeing but I felt all ‘templed out’ by mid-afternoon and couldn’t muster enough energy to maintain my usual gusto for admiring the wonders that befell me. Sandy was in her element with the camera, however. My failing enthusiasm isn’t by any means a reflection on the quality of the attraction, just the fact that we’ve simply had enough for now. The timing of our visit to see Ree-Ree in Australia could not have been better. We are both very much looking forward to escaping paradise, even if for just a few weeks. It will be a well-needed rest that will give us a chance to recharge our batteries again.
Back at the hotel, I trawled through all the photo libraries that we’ve accumulated as we’ve meandered around Asia. Of the eight thousand six hundred and eighty odd photos that we’ve kept (about that many again that we’ve deleted), I picked about a hundred to represent the best of Asia, popped them onto a memory card and took them to a nearby photo print centre to be printed onto photo paper. The results were much better than we had expected. The photos look very much better on paper than they do on the laptop screen – bonus!
We’ve been able to economise on airfares by means of a round-the-world air
ticket but one of the restricting factors of such a ticket is the limit of
twelve months in which to complete the trip. Spending more time in one country
or one region simply means having to cut short time in those to follow so we
have to be judicious in how much time we spend in any particular place. Then
there is the problem of climate. We delayed the start of our journey until
September so as to minimise our exposure to the trailing monsoon season in
India. This, in turn, meant that we had to get to North East Asia and start to
travel South again before the onset of cold weather that far north of the
equator. One of the strategies we’ve had for minimising the amount of
weight and bulk that we are continually carrying around with us has been to
follow the sun. In other words, by staying in warm climates, we not only enjoy
those warm climates but this also prevents the need to carry heavy and bulky
cold weather clothing with us. We are now well into winter in the Northern
hemisphere and by terminating our time here in Asia, we can now drop South of
the equator to enjoy the summer in that
hemisphere.
Over the past several months, we’ve seen some tremendous things. Not least
of these have been several items on our life’s to-do list, including the
magnificent Taj Mahal in India, the Great Wall of China and the temples of
Angkor Wat in Cambodia. We’ve also been on safari for tigers, visited some
truly stunning forts and temples, seen the Hong Kong skyline at night, held
giant pandas, seen the world’s largest Buddhas and seen some of the most
amazing sights underwater. We’ve met new friends, experienced different
cultures and have seen how people live in far away places, many of whom make do
for years on end with what I made in a single day whilst working back in the
West. We’ve broadened our minds and have come to understand just a little
bit more of the world around us. If I were made penniless tomorrow, I’d
still consider myself to be one of the richest people on
earth.
One of the advantages of carrying a laptop computer around with me has been my
ability to keep meticulous records of anything and everything. For our
three-month jaunt around this particular continent, I can record, for example,
that we’ve spent an average of €18 per night on accommodation with a
grand total of €8,422 spent for the entire trip to date (excluding
pre-departure costs such as inoculations, round-the-world air tickets, gear and
so on). That’s an average of €95,71 per day all told that
we’ve spent travelling over the past three months. Much of this has been
spent on such things as diving, additional flights here and there and other
luxuries for which we have separate budget allowances. After taking those out of
the equation, our average daily travelling expenditure has been just €62
per day for the two of
us.All in all, I’d have to conclude that this trip has so far been a monumental success – and we’re less than a third of the way through so far!
I spoke above about luxuries and the separate budget that we have to pamper and spoil ourselves from time to time. One of the things that we consider to be a part of our overall luxury budget is souvenir collecting. We collect little trinkets as time passes and every now and then, the combined additional weight of these purchases makes carrying the backpacks just that little bit more uncomfortable. So far, we’ve sent two packages back home and we’ve now accumulated enough additional souvenirs to warrant sending our third package.
Once we were up and about this morning, we marched over to the nearby post
office with a couple of arms full of goodies to be sent back to the UK.
Including the cost of the box and packing, we paid 2,027B (€39) to send
the six and a half kilogram package by surface mail. This is the cheapest method
of postage and our package should, by all accounts, take three months to
complete the journey but the previous package we sent from Bangkok, around five
weeks ago, arrived not too long
ago.Although we’ve spent a lot of time here in Thailand, we’ve seen relatively little of the country as a whole. We’ve concentrated so much on diving that we’ve had little chance to see much of Thailand above ground. The same is also true of Bangkok in that we’ve spent over a week here altogether but have yet to venture out into the surrounding area to visit any of the tourist sites. Today we would rectify this somewhat by means of a visit to the Grand Palace, which is literally just twenty minutes walk from the Khao San Road.
Although not nearly as oppressive as when we first arrived here in Thailand, the
heat of the day was still very present but we decided to walk the short distance
to the Grand Palace as opposed to trying to negotiate a tuk-tuk ride for a
reasonable fare after all. Passing through a couple of parks, it was actually
quite a lovely walk, in as far as walking through any city can be lovely. The
various buildings that comprise the Grand Palace complex shoot into the sky and
our visit started once we were in sight of them really. We made it across the
busy roads and all the way to the ticket office where we were met with a bit of
a surprise. Apparently, our exposed arms and legs were an obstruction to our
getting into the complex. Sandy was all for ‘borrowing’ a wrap from
the available supply to cover her legs but I didn’t much fancy pulling on
clothes that had been worn by half a dozen other hot and sweaty people so I
elected to go back to the hotel to get changed whilst Sandy waited for me. I
made a half-hearted attempt at flagging down a passing tuk-tuk but eventually
made it well over half way back before I gave up on the idea and continued the
rest of the way on foot. Now suitably and respectfully covered up, I went back
out. Having walked back and forth several times now in the full heat of the day,
my body temperature was now hot enough for the walk to be less comfortable so I
flagged a passing tuk-tuk to take me the few minutes back over to the Grand
Palace.
I deliberately went with a passing tuk-tuk as opposed to one of the bottom
feeders that were circling and continually badgering me. I didn’t much
fancy the idea of several detours
today.The Grand Palace and the surrounding buildings are indeed and amazing sight and certainly well worth the effort we went through to visit them, not to mention the 200B (€3,85) we each paid to get in. Brilliantly decorated golden intricacies and stunning architecture makes every one of these buildings a wonder to behold. Retrospectively, however, I think we would have been better off visiting the Grand Palace at the start of our tour through Thailand as opposed to at the very end. Perhaps the past three months have slowly taken their toll on my enthusiasm for sightseeing but I felt all ‘templed out’ by mid-afternoon and couldn’t muster enough energy to maintain my usual gusto for admiring the wonders that befell me. Sandy was in her element with the camera, however. My failing enthusiasm isn’t by any means a reflection on the quality of the attraction, just the fact that we’ve simply had enough for now. The timing of our visit to see Ree-Ree in Australia could not have been better. We are both very much looking forward to escaping paradise, even if for just a few weeks. It will be a well-needed rest that will give us a chance to recharge our batteries again.
Back at the hotel, I trawled through all the photo libraries that we’ve accumulated as we’ve meandered around Asia. Of the eight thousand six hundred and eighty odd photos that we’ve kept (about that many again that we’ve deleted), I picked about a hundred to represent the best of Asia, popped them onto a memory card and took them to a nearby photo print centre to be printed onto photo paper. The results were much better than we had expected. The photos look very much better on paper than they do on the laptop screen – bonus!
Posted: Sat - December 11, 2004 at 03:51 PM
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Published On: Mar 04, 2005 08:49 PM
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Published On: Mar 04, 2005 08:49 PM