Onwards & Southwards

(Written 13/01, 09.00) 

My final two days in Chiang Mai involved further temple visiting and enjoying food! I did not mention the famous Chiang Mai night bazaar before, but I found myself there on a couple of occasions. With bright lights and sections of different styles, it was one of the more impressive markets I have seen on my travels! Yesterday I took the iconic Chiang Mai red-taxi-come-shuttle-bus to Doi Suthep, a temple at the top of a mountain. It was majestic, big and very golden! Contrasting to what I expected, it seems Buddhism (in Thailand) has fallen into the human-trap of making religion into a spectacle: gold statues, donations for the monks, professional photos, and the likes. I thought Buddhism had held truer to the spirituality than other religions, but in Thailand that does not seem to be the case. 

At 6am this morning I reached Bangkok on my overnight bus. This was a pretty fun experience! Everyone was lugged onto the double-decker "VIP" bus, which had suitably reclining seats (almost to the horizontal!). After about half an hour of taking in the experience, I took out my book and settled in for the 10-hour journey. Then they swithed off the lights! That made me chuckle a little. Everyone started setting up shop for bed, and surprisingly some reasonable sleep was had! However, they did occasionally turn on the excessively bright lights at which everyone awoke thinking UFOs had landed on their face. No kidding, the brutal awakenings did feel like the apocalypse, and each time it took a few moments before it became funny that everyone was in the same boat. After our 2am stop, I began speaking to the guy next to Mr and discovered that he was a professional Muay Thai fighter down from Canada! With 11 knockouts in his 12 fights, he sounded like quote a serious guy. He proceeded to tell me he was going surfing in Australia, and he planned on carrying a knife while surfing so he could kill the sharks. Nutter.

I have not seen much so far, but from what I have seen Bangkok seems like a bit of a hole*. Nothing except MacDonalds and Starbucks was open before 8am, and I have already been approached by several 'masseuses'. Nice. I probably won't see the best of the city on this visit, however, as I am keeping on the down-low to avoid the massive protests and shutdown starting in Bangkok today. Quite the adventure! Overnight train and morning ferry to get to Koh Samui tomorrow. The islands should be rather different (hopefully)! 

*I apologise if this sounds rude, but this is MY blog!