Leaving Bangkok

Khoasan Road
As a city Bangkok continues to devour the surrounding countryside expanding on a daily basis. Yet the bulk of the backpackers to the city nearly always head for the same one area that they have done so for the past 30 years - Khoasan Road.

Located in the north of the city near the Democracy Monument the Road is a road which stretches for a few hundred metres. Anyone who has visited it will know that its a place which really hits the senses and that its difficult to find the words to adequately describe the place.

The streets are lined with stalls selling all manner of handicraft goods to tourists at inflated prices. As you walk down the road you are pestered by taxi drivers and tut-tuk drivers saying 'hi sir, where you from? where are you going?. After a while it becomes somewhat annoying. In recent years these drivers have been joined by tribeswomen from the north of Thailand who walk around the streets in traditional costumes selling handicrafts and strokking wooden frog pieces which make a very annoying frog sound. After a while you feel the urge to buy one of the them just to shut them up!

As the day turns into night the stalls are replaced by street vendors and you start to notice increasingly large numbers of Thai women entering the area for one reason or another.

Philippines Bound
My flight was due to leave Bangkok at 10am so I booked a 7am airport taxi. As I stumbled out my hut room barely able to move to the end of the door let alone the other side of Khoasan Road I realised that I was heading a country which I knew very little about - The Philippines. Located offshore from mainland Asia its a country relatively few backpackers visit. With a high percentage of the population being Christian I was curious as to what it would be like compared to other Asian countries.

Leaving Bangkok
As I stepped into the airport taxi I was confronted by one of the strangest Thai people I have ever met. Rather round with a large hat and a cigarette hanging from his mouth he seemed to be trying to be a Thai John Wayne! Smiling at me he joked that the taxi was 'for Chang Mai sir Chang Mai'. As we drove round picking up passengers he told the same joke to various people all of whom had different reactions!