Sign in with Facebook"Love it or Hate It!!" Bangkok by Cathy&Gary
Bangkok Travel Guide: 10,212 reviews and 22,529 photos
Over the years we have had many trips to Bangkok.
We had a shocking experience with a tour operator for our second visit to the Death railway, Hell Fire Pass, Weary Dunlop Museum etc and I have done a travelogue on this Tour From Hell.
Took the rellies to Patpong Road and had a fun night. Had to laugh at Brett, he disappeared for a few minutes and then proudly showed us his new Rolex, this was his first copy watch, he was so happy, what a bargain he said “I only paid 1,800 baht and she wanted 6,000 for it”.
We couldn’t stop laughing, should have seen his face when we told him that was $60 Australian. The exact same watch was bought again in Phuket but the bartering skills had improved only cost 900baht this time.
Both watches had to be repaired in Phuket as he went swimming with one on and then wore the other in the shower. A few dollars later both were repaired and are still working fine.
Another nice night we had was doing the Wan Fah dinner cruise, the food and show were lovely and well worth the $50 it cost. Though the river level was up so high we couldn’t go down past the Palace and Temple of Dawn (Wat Arun) which look great at night.
I suppose I should mention our little adventure in the taxi that was meant to be taking us to the River City complex so we could do this dinner cruise. We called this trip, "Touring Bangkok at 140kph with a psyco Taxi Driver".
Gary and I have done this dinner cruise on a previous trip and thought we would spend a couple of hours looking around the River City Complex before the cruise as they have a lot of antique shops etc there, then we could have a cocktail or two and go on the boat.
So about 3.30pm we go to the lobby and tell the doorman where we want to go and NO we don’t want a hotel taxi we want a metered taxi. He tells the taxi driver (or so we thought) in Thai to take us to River City Complex and off we go, Gary (as always) in the front seat with his knees up around his ears and Brett, Angie and I in the back.
There was hardly any conversation with the driver as he couldn’t speak English, fair enough doesn’t matter as the doorman told him where to take us. WRONG.
Now this taxi driver liked to speed and run red lights and soon Gary is saying that this doesn’t seem to be the right way, then he said he hopes we are nearly there as he desperately needed to go to the toilet.
Soon we are out on the freeway, Angie can see the speedo and we are doing 140kilometres an hour. This is not funny, we try to tell the driver to slow down and he is laughing and looks around at us and says “can do 170 yes”.
We are yelling NO, slow down as he weaved in and out of cars and buses. After about half an hour we know we are definitely going the wrong way. Gary has gone silent and is in agony; no doubt trying to psyche himself up that he does not need the toilet.
Well after a drive thru Bangkok with a Thai stunt driver we eventually ended up at a gigantic new development (I think it was called Impact). We didn’t care where we were we were just so happy to get out of the taxi and no doubt the driver was happy as he made a nice fare.
Anyway Gary’s goes running into the main building where there is a huge Gem exhibition going on and asks where the toilets are. None available to the public unless you pay and go into the exhibition.
So we go and line up at the taxi rank where you are given numbers for your taxi, we are number 68, we only had to wait about 20 minutes as there were just hundreds of taxis. Yippee, our driver knows where we want to go so we are on our way, back into Bangkok.
The three of us in the back are having a laugh about what happened but Gary has gone deathly silent again, even his color changed he seemed to go a funny shade of purple, what agony he must have been in ha-ha.
We pull up at the River City Complex and he is out of the taxi in a flash and gone. When we see him again his color has gone back to normal and he has a big smile on his face.
So after all this touring around we never had time to look at any of the shops in the complex, we just went and bought our tickets for the cruise, then sat down and had a couple of drinks and laughed, what else can you do.
By now Angie and Brett must be thinking we are hopeless as tour guides because everywhere we took them something went wrong, though we did say if it wasn’t for these mishaps they wouldn’t have seen half of Bangkok nor had half as much fun as they did.
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Comments (12)
Interesting page. I read your day trip to the Bridge on the River Kwai with interest. We also took a terrible tour there. Not life threatening like yours. Just everywhere we went was rush, rush, rush and all the fascinating places we visited could not be experienced properly. Very annoying. Must go back and do it by ourselves one day. Cheers, Irene
Your Bangkok page is excellent. Tips, photos and all those useful info will help the others. All the Best.Bora
i really like ur bangkok page,,,especially wan fah cruise,,,i really love it,,,,
Nice, funny reading! Would not mind going with you next time.
I really like your Thailand page. It's real informative. Teya
Hi Cathy, can I ask who the tour operator was so we dont make the same mistake!!! Emjay xx
your introduction had me laughing - poor Gary ! great tips, theres a lovely sculpture of Weary Dunlop at the Kings Domain in Melbourne
You certainly had an interesting holiday! Good tips.
What a horrible day, can you say what company you went through?
Some really great tips - and found things haven't done, to put on the agenda for next Bangkok adventure! Thanks!