After another poor nights sleep on the train, I'm still not convinced by the two straps to protect you falling off, we are awoken at 5.30am by the deep voiced lady conductor shouting one hour to Bangkok. Five minutes later it was the same shout but this time saying half an hour. No word of lie, 7 minutes after waking up I was ordered off my bed. I guess that's what you get for third class travel! What annoyed us most was the fact we were still sitting there an hour and a half later!
Anyways when we finally arrived in Bangkok just after 7, saying goodbye to a few people in the process, we strolled back to the main hotel with me now as the only boy! Thank you Sheree, Tammy, Andrea, Howey, Jhansi, Sarah. Lena and Martin for being such brilliant people over the last week! After spending an hour or so at the hotel the general view was to relax all day. I thought I would take this chance to visit a couple of places that did not interest other people.
First stop was the snake farm, for a show at 11am where they did venom milking on cobras. After a short journey on the metro system I arrived around 10 and had a good look at all the cobras, pythons and vipers to name a few. There was even one snake stalking a mouse! It was then time for the cobra milking, and despite being behind a big screen was a very tense experience as they showed how to grab a cobra by the neck by hand and then extract the venom. The snake farm was opened in 1927 with goal of creating anti venom for people bitten by snakes. They somehow inject the venom into rabbits and do something from there.
After the show was over I was told there was another show at 2.30pm, so I headed for the Beiyoke Tower. This did involve me walking straight through the protest however which seemed to have got bigger. Apparently election day is when I arrive back in Bangkok which could make things interesting! After finally arriving at the tower, the tallest in Thailand and 47th tallest in the world, I just took a break to admire the sheer height of the building.
At 84 floors high, the first significant stop was floor 77 which was the lobby with an array of shops and quirky things to take pictures with like a tuk tuk, hot air balloon and a garden. The views from here were already simply stunning, spanning for miles in all directions. It was then up to floor 84 for me which was accessed by staircase from floor 83. After walking through a black room with the star wars theme, I emerged on this revolving sky deck which circled round the cyclindrical structure at the top. You don't really realise just how many skyscrapers Bangkok has until you see it from the top. I couldn't work out whether the misty stuff over the city was just mist, or pollution?
I then went back down to floor 83 where I redeemed my free drink voucher and sat on the balcony with a beer admiring the city. It was then time to go down to make the second snake show. On the way down I saw an amazing buffet on floor 81 with every food you can imagine, but it was very expensive.
Again passing the protest on the way back to the snake farm, which this time involved security searches, I arrived just in time for the snake handling show. It all started with the handlers almost teasing all these different cobras, before things like pythons and vipers came out. The worst one was the rat snake which was very jumpy and nearly jumped out the handlers hands into the crowd at one point! It even bit him! At the end they brought out this big Burmese python which we were all allowed to hold. I was expecting it to be all slimy but it was actually just solid muscle.
After another quick dash on the metro, which I still can't believe was only tunneled 9 years ago, I had about 2 hours to kill before meeting my new group. I just relaxed in my room for this time, expecting to gain a room mate but I didn't!
By 6 we had a group meeting to introduce ourselves to the tour now entitled "South Thailand Soujourn" and gained some Canadians, Austrians, Australians and English to our already diverse group. We then all headed for Khao San Road where I ate a rice meal with chips. We then went to a few bars and met with the people we had just lost from the previous group. By now it was just people from the first week, and a few drinks later we ended up in a club and that's about all you need to know.
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