Things to do in Bangkok - Golden mount and Loa Prasat by ferry

Steven and I decided that it was time to attempt the Ferry going down the canal since our New Year’s Ferry ride did not work out as planned. The plan was as follows – take the bus to The Mall Bangkapi, jump on the Ferry, and go to wherever it takes us. Brilliant plan – we know. (You would love to do something like this one day – we know. You wish you could also give freedom to your adventurous spirit – we know. You are jealous – WE KNOW).

Since we had no idea where we would end up or how we would get back home again we decided that it might be a good idea to take a picture of the supposed route that the Ferry would take:

 The Mall Bangkapi is the one second from the bottom and we decided to go right down to the other end and see what it has to offer to our explorian spirits. We waited about 5 minutes and the Ferry arrived:

It cost 20 baht to go to the other end. About half way the ferry stops and everyone has to get off – you can imagine the confusion on our faces as we saw the masses getting off. We decided to explore the area before we try again to get to the other side of Bangkok. We realized that this was an amazing part of Bangkok and we also discovered The Platinum Fashion Mall. WOW! 5 Floors of clothes, bags and accessories – all at whole sale price. Shopaholics this is definitely a mall to visit in Thailand. We grabbed something to eat at the food court and went back to the pier. Jumped on the ferry (paid another 15 baht) and at last ended up on the other side of Bangkok.

This part of Bangkok is amazing. It feels like a part of Bangkok that was somehow lost in time. There is such an old flavor to the area that you cannot be other than amazed by it. We discovered the “Metal Palace” Loa Prasat. It is the only one left in the world:

 Right opposite the Loa Prasat is The Golden Mount. Another impressive building with a picturesque view of “old” Bangkok:

Visa extension - Cambodia borderrun

During January we realized that we are already in Thailand for 5 months and it was almost time for our border run. So we booked our seat on the van with the same company that we did our visa run with.

The border run is a one day trip and you go to the Cambodian border. You leave from Tesco lotus next to the On Nut BTS station at 7 in the morning and return at about 16:00. Here is how our trip went down:

I was very excited since I got an off day from school and got to go to a new country and add another stamp in my passport. We got up very early the morning, packed a backpack full of snacks (‘n trip is nie ‘n trip sonder padkos nie…) and went down to the road to get a taxi. We missed all the traffic since it was about  5:30 in the morning and arrived VERY early at TESCO. Luckily there is a 24h McDonalds so we each grabbed a cup of WAKE-ME-UP coffee.

At 7 the van arrived and all the people had to wait for me – there is certain stuff that needs to happen in the morning okay… And my system does not care if I am on a tight time schedule. So I hopped into the van – Steven saved us nice seats in the front just behind the driver. These are the best seats since you have loads of leg space and the hopping around like popcorn in a tin can is minimized.

After about 3 hours of death-defying stunt driving done by our driver, we stopped at a random fuel station in the middle of no-where to fill up and smoke:

Then we were exposed to some more crazy Thai van driving and eventually ended up at the Cambodian border. The Cambodian border looks like a bad mix between Mexico, Zimbabwe and the Sun…

 It is quite an easy process to do the whole stamp thing. You queue to get your Thai visa cancelled, then walk over the bridge into Cambodia, hand your passport to a strange person together with 1800 baht, stress for about 2 hours, get your  passport back with a stamped Cambodian Visa, walk over the bridge, Thai visa stamped, DONE.

At the Cambodian side you wait at a place that they call a casino – it looks more like a Garage party gone wrong somewhere in the east of JHB – smoke hanging in the air, bad music playing, bottles of alcohol standing around and people that had too much exposure to sunlight hanging around. We opted to rather wait outside and see what we can buy at the duty free shops. And our efforts paid off when we saw that you can buy Marlboro for only 120 Baht a carton (R30 vir ‘n HELE doos sigarette). BARGAIN!! Until you smoke it and you realize that you just bought something filled with grass and a few donkie drolle of iets. It tasted horrible – and we had two cartons!!!

Anyhow we got our passports back, hopped in the van and started the insane journey back home. Nothing like a bit of Kamakazi style van driving to round off a trip to the barren land and back.