The True View Journals

Well f*ck me if I wasn’t expecting The Chatuchak Weekend Market to be an insight into why organizations like P.E.T.A exist in the world today. I had never read much about the market just that it was one of the biggest and best in all of Asia for picking up all kinds of trinkets…little did I know it is basically one big animal market…like the evil puppy farms of Longford except with all sorts of rare and endangered species such as baby crocs, parrots etc… It’s about a month since I was there and it’s still hard not to feel for what those animals must be going through every weekend since.

You could see the desperation of this parrot as it constantly tried to break from its shackles…

Taking photos of most of the animals was not allowed; some people didn’t mind and even posed – the cage below housing a vast array of dogs…

I didn’t capture most of the worst scenes, especially the large number of older animals on sale…not just pups and kittens. Also seeing some of the pups, gleefully unaware of their surroundings just trying to be pups would be a strain on the harshest person…

We eventually managed to find some trinkets and the usual food stalls that we were expecting to come across…

Even after the endless maze of helplessly over cramped animals I had witnessed I was still shocked when I stumbled across a large gathering of people, huddled around and whopping like US soldiers after a successful incursion….

The object of this overwhelming glee? Two cocks fighting….Illegal in most countries and here in the middle of the day, in the middle of a crowded market…two cocks fighting for the amusement and “sport” of others. It was hard to see the sport in it…now I’m not one usually bothered by such things but the sheer enjoyment of some of the spectators was amazing.

Also, after getting some photos it was hard to see where they got this enjoyment…the actual “fight” itself consisted of two birds plucking feathers from each other…albeit a bit more frantic than that but visually there was nothing to be got by the sight. As a spectator “sport” and form of gambling – tossing a coin would be better served…still this is part of the culture no matter how hard it is to see the point in it and its still widespread in Ireland along with dog fighting…(now that’s a sport – a joke…my subscription to P.E.T.A weekly is in the post)

I stopped taking pictures after this one, after the small dog was perched up almost posing for a photo I asked permission from the “owner” and before I knew it she had him up by the neck trying to get him to pose. I had my photo and asked her to let him in peace…this was definitely no car boot sale in Knocktopher….

It seems a bit surreal looking back on it now as everything has returned to “normal” since we got to Australia…As crazy as something’s are in Thailand, its still not hard to be in love with the place…I don’t think I’ll bother with the Chatuchak the next time we are in Bangkok (unless I fancy a new pet) – for now that seems like a life time away, my only concerns now – attending a wedding on Sunday, sorting a job, enjoying Christmas and new years – all from the comfort of our new apartment in Perth. Oh how life has returned to the normal daily struggle

If we thought getting back to Bangkok felt strange, getting back to The Royal Princess in Lan Luang was even stranger. We had come a sort of Karmic full circle, back to where it all began, only this time everything was viewed through completely different eyes. Our last time here everything seemed so cheap – relatively…now everything seemed unbelievably expensive – relatively…see on our first time here we compared the price of everything here to everything at home…everything seems cheap…on this occasion we compared the price of everything to the price of everything everywhere else throughout Thailand and man was this place a rip off…Still though, it is a nice place but this time round it seems just like another hotel and could be in any country in the world…

the food is mediocre at best and the money required for each dish here would feed a person for at least a day anywhere else in thailand…The beer here is double the price of anywhere else and the service is simply to be expected everywhere in Thailand for whatever the price…So what happened? Nothing has changed in this place, its identical to when we last stayed but on that occasion all we could compare it to was service and style of the other hotels we had been in over the years…now we could compare it on a level with what Thailand has to offer and now it feels distinctly western in comparison…

For our last few days in Thailand we wanted to get in a bit of shopping possibly in MBK or Siam, hit Wat Po and Wat Arun, visit the weekend Market, possibly check out the Pingpong escapades of Patpong, get a suit for work in Oz and then hit the river for Lay Krathong festival. At this stage, it’s Friday, we leave Bangkok for Sydney on Sunday and all I have organized is a suit. At least I got that much done…(its not the hardest thing to do in Bangkok), we had planned on doing the Temples today but a few hours in MBK yesterday had us both to the point of near Hallucination so today turned into a chill out day…I get to type this up and Carina gets to hit the pool…(forgive any changes in tense or person over any entries in this blog…its hard to remember if I started off with I, Me, We, Did, Will, Got, Get or whatever so I take full license to change whenever)…A fair trade off

I think we will need to leave the Temples to when we get back to Bangkok, there are plenty of things that we want to see but now we are just getting ourselves together for moving onto Australia and we don’t have time to try fit in all the touristy adventures that we would like to. Tomorrow we plan to hit the Weekend Market…If I get some photos at that I will add them…After that, tomorrow is Lay Krathong…the river festival where floral candles are floated on the river to literally float away bad luck and feelings.

So that’s about it for Thailand, 2 of the best months of my life…A time I will never forget, people Ill never forget – I still have plenty to say about the country of sleeping dogs, of noisy tuk tuks, of great dinners and cheap beers, of great sunshine and terrible rain but all that can wait for another day…I’m off to enjoy my last day and a half in Thailand…

The general consensus is that Krabi is a place to do for maybe a night or two at most. On the day we left for the 1.00pm Ferry to Krabi we found out about 11am that there would be no boat that day so instead we had to head further to Ao Nang and get a taxi down to Krabi. The boat ride allowed us reflect on our time in Lanta and look forward to getting back to Bangkok for some shopping before leaving Thailand…

The trip to Ao Nang turned out to be far more enjoyable than a direct trip to Krabi as we got to pass the very scenic Railay on the way which is a rock climber’s paradise…

The only way to disembark for Railay was by long boat as there are no roads into the place itself

Luckily when we landed in Ao Nang we managed to get a free ride into Krabi itself

On our first night in Krabi we got re-acquainted with the once ubiquitous rain that we thought we had left in Phangan. It didn’t last all night though and we got to head out and sample one of the Bazaars…and this night Market was pretty impressive…from sweets, to meats, to candies, to donuts, to cooked bugs and maggots to things on sticks…this place had it all, bright colours, great smells and a Thai concert going on in the background

We stopped off in the Irish Bar O’Malley’s on the way back to the hotel…little did we know we would be paying 5 odd euro for a can of guinness…to put that in context, in our time in Thailand we have had full meals + beers for less than that…bloody Irish…

The most expensive can of Guiness ever?

Once back at the hotel we decided to have a beer before turning in for the night…how strange that turned out to be. The hotel we were in seemed to be a sort of business hotel. On the largish stage in the bar was around 30+ young Thai women, all equipped with short skirts, high boots and turning in a semi choreographed way (the kind of semi choreographed way cattle move through a cattle mart) to the music of the DJ while each one took turns with the microphone doing a sort of karaoke…at this stage we were just confused…was it Karaoke? Was it some sort of act? We couldn’t really understand it…it was the sort of girls in school uniforms that the Japanese business men seem to be obsessed with but where did the taking turns in Karaoke fit into it? Just when I was going to try sneaking a photo they all started coming off the stage and only a few remained…was this the next round? What the fuck was going on? With the photo missed we got back to our drinks but then it was obvious enough when the girls who came from the stage all quickly got associated with any free men or groups of men in the bar…this is Thailand after all…I guess you could tell who the most successful business men where by the number of girls grouped around them. At this stage though there were still one or two reluctantly singing on stage…when a song finished, no applause, not even an acknowledgement…I’m still not sure where the bad karaoke fitted into this whole scene…there seemed to be some sort of method to the madness but I suppose it’s more subtle than just putting numbers on the girls and getting them to turn around on stage in front of drooling older Thai and International business men. After all this was Krabi and not Patpong or Pattaya…

Our plans for the next day were pretty much ruined by the non stop rain…so we did a small bit of shopping and packed our things ready for the flight to Bangkok. We managed to check out the other night market (during the day) and it was selling all manner of fruits and veg

We set off the next day, off to to Krabi airport which is nice and small…sort of like Cork airport…its new and getting through security checks and checking in is a breeze. If only all airports were like this. It didnt take long before we finally got back to the city they call Bangkok.