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. 

Bangkok rooftop party at The Imperial Queens park (Part 2) Altitude party

So yet again I ate myself till I could barely walk (You know that feeling where you ATE SOOOO MUCH (!!!!) that you don’t want to walk, don’t want to sleep and don’t want to sit down?). And still we had this amazing Altitude rooftop party ahead of us – and apparently this had to be done feeling like a stuffed pig over Christmas. Well after waiting an hour for the Altitude party, we went to the swimming pool and relaxed for half an hour and went up back to our 5 star room at The Imperial Queens park hotel.  We spent 5minute to make sure that we look like rock stars (with our genes we did not need more time to achieve this).

And then exhilaration kicked in!!! We want to party on the rooftop of The Imperial Queens park hotel – Altitude party!!! You could hear the music of the party all the way to our room. (I wondered by my elf “Self, how will people react tonight at 12:30 when the music still played as loud...”)

 Sooooo the time finally came to head up to the Altitude rooftop party!!! Do you know how weird it feels if you sit in an airplane and its ready for blast off? Now that’s exactly what the elevator felt like. The moving speed of the elevator is remarkable. After taking 10 seconds from the 10^th floor up to the 32^nd floor your exuberance reaches peak levels - you just want to go party. When we got there we saw there were a lot of people…. (NO. Not a bunch of fellow party animals…) The employees of  The Imperial Queens park hotel… We were the only 2 (party) people there… now that feels strange (awkward moment) …. So I said to Brian that this really feels awkward… so yet again we decided to go to our room for 30 minutes or so, to let the party start. So after waiting again for 7 hours (and drinking some rum with Red Bull) we finally headed back to the Altitude party.

And we found a scene closer to what we expected…. More people. So we had to get something to drink because this is going to be a big night. (Our first rooftop party in Thailand and our first New Year’s party outside the borders of South Africa)  We were on a tight budget as we only had 2500 baht and this had to last us for the whole night. So we first had to go buy coupons. After buying the coupons (125 baht a coupon our eyes stretched and our mouths went “ f!@#$% this is expensive….”) Anyhow, we went to the bartender to buy ourselves a really expensive drink… 300 baht for a beer (even in rand this translated to be expensive R75 a beer), apparently we were going to do the countdown sober tonight…

So after paying 600 baht for 2 beers we finally got in the party mode…. Music playing as loud as a sound competition in Boksburg… we enjoyed ourselves.

 Here are some pictures:

We saw some coupons (about 1000 baht worth of coupons) and there were about 500 people so we could not return it to the owner thus we decided to randomly shout “thank you” into the crowd and buy us a celebrating drink. Cheers to us!!!

And the countdown finally started!!! :

And The Imperial Queens park hotel surprised us with amazing fireworks at the Altitude party:

After an amazing show of shooting stars and exploding umbrellas we danced for hours -untill my head started to make his own music in my body... DOOOF!!!#$% DOOF!@#$% BANG!@#$BANG!!!!!! I said to Brian “I’m done now”, so we decided to head back to our room. Brian went in search to find me some headache pills. While Brian went out I fell asleep. After half an hour Brian retuned with some pills. He woke me up and told me to drink!!! You know that feeling (you are sick nobody must touch, speak or look at you) that was how I felt. Then we finally went to bed. The next morning we had an amazing brunch at The Imperial Queens park hotel.

More pictures:

And after brunch we returned to face life as normal (not rock-star) people.

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