Well here I am again! Today I decided to go to a coffee
shop at Zhongshan park, where I can enjoy the nice day out (although it's cold)
together with a good coffee... Because yes, that does not happen often!
Especially the part where I get a good cup of coffee. Waking up with a cup of
Nescafe everyday is not the best, to say it somehow. And I know, you are all probably
thinking how easy it must be for me to go to the supermarket and buy a good
coffee machine. Yes and no, it is indeed easy to find some, but it is one of
those things that you keep on postponing because every time you see a nice one
it is soooo expensive... And Nescafe isn't cheap either, it costs like 10€ for
a mid size pot, but come on, who can live without coffee? Me definitely not!
And I guess after 2.5 years (Vienna, Suzhou and Shanghai) I've got used to
instant coffee. Though I tell you, first thing I do when I settle down
somewhere is to get the best coffee machine and spend a day getting high on
good coffee!
But that's not the thing I wanted to talk about today.
Indeed, today I wanted to give you an insight on my good life (yes, I have to
admit it, I find some time to enjoy life in between the long hard working journeys...
surprised?). And I thought... What is better than the 2 weeks I spent in
Thailand just one month ago?? In October, when everybody is back to work,
weather is getting bad, post holidays bad mood and so on, I was there, in
paradise, with a great friend, laying on an incredible beach, with the sun shining,
a beer on one hand, good music in the background and...the 150cc bike waiting
on the parking lot! Not bad, right?
But let's start from the beginning, because we were that
close to not having these holidays at all! So how come I had 2 weeks off in
October? Easy (and not nice): because I hadn't had summer holidays! In fact,
since Xmas 2012 I had just had 5 days off in June. So I took the chance that
the first week of October is the National week in China (and so everybody here
gets a whole week off) and added 5 more days of annual leave and, together with
Divan, decided to take the trip we had been so long talking about (one and a
half year, indeed).
We left on a Saturday, left home nearly 4 hours before
the flight departed (it takes 1 hour to get to Pudong aiport) as we were going
to take the bus, which takes a bit longer, and didn't want to take any risk. So
we took a taxi to the bus station and, as soon as we got in, you could see in
the taxi driver's face that he had won the lottery. Why? So we told him we
wanted to go to the bus station, and he was "But guys, you are going to
the airport right? I can take you there..." and told us a price, cheaper
than the usual rate. We told him, kidding, that it was way too much... So the bargaining
began and if you have experienced it, you know once you start you cannot stop.
So finally we agreed on a price (seemed cheap but then we realized we were
paying 15€ more than if we had taken the bus: TAXI DRIVER 1 - DIVAN&POL 0)
and he took as there. So we get to the airport and guess what? Our flight was
not on the screen! We first thought it had been cancelled, or the date was not
correct... until we asked at the information desk and they soooo nicely told us
that... WE WERE AT THE WRONG AIRPORT! As clever as we are, we did not even
check which airport (Shanghai has 2, one on each side of the city) we were
flying from... So our flight was departing in less than 3 hours and we were stuck
at the airport in the other side of the city, f**k! We rushed to the taxi stop,
had to patiently (I would have killed all the people waiting in front of me)
wait for 15 minutes, and then got into a cab, whom we told to drive as fast as
he could to the other airport. And hell yes, he did! I lost the count of how
many times we were that close to crash. But you want to know the funniest part?
At a point the taxi driver asked us where we came from, and when I told him
Barcelona, he started talking in Spanish with me! It turned out that he'd been
living in Spain for several years and had recently come back to Shanghai
because of the crisis. We had a nice and long talk while driving like he had an
F1! We finally made it just on time to the airport, and there our journey
began... THAILAND, FINALLY!! Some of our partners in crime were missing but we
were going to make something unforgettable out of those next 12 days...
After stopping over in Macao (note: I want to visit it someday
soon) we finally arrived to Bangkok and took a taxi to the hotel. On the way he
played the music we wanted and as loud as possible, politely invited us to candies
(which we thanked him for, but did not try) and finally got us to the hotel
(the next days we found out he had charged us more than twice the usual rate
from the airport: TAXI DRIVER 2 - DIVAN&POL 0... at this point is when we realized
we were really on holidays!). That night we just walked around trying to find a
nice bar but ended up buying some drinks at the 7/11 and watching the
"Miss World" contest at the hotel TV room, with an old western
shemale and a guy who was trying to hit on her...
Next morning we woke up and just walked around Bangkok. I
must say that there is not much to see, or at least that I'd recommend. It is a
concrete jungle, not clean, with no parks, etc. In the afternoon we took a boat
through the river to see a really famous temple and the Emperor's city
(although we could not go in as we were wearing shorts), and then walked around
what I guess was the backpackers district, pretty interesting and with a great
atmosphere.
But the best was yet to come (or at least the most different
stuff)... That night we went to Soya Cowboy, or something like that: in few
words, the street where you can find all the famous stripclubs in Bangkok! By
the way, we took a "Tuc Tuc" or whatever it is called to get there, a
lot of fun and ripped off again (TAXI 3 - DIVAN&POL 0).
What an interesting
night! When we got in the first stripclub, that was a strange view: all these
naked girls, dancing, some really hot, most of them not... So we got a beer and
stared at the show for a while. We saw such crazy things, from girls getting
needles or pingpong balls out of their ******* to bodypainting dances and other
stuff I cannot explain in case there are kids reading that (If you want to find
out, go to Thailand ;)). After a while it got boring though (and it is shocking
to see the attitude of most of the western people, like they were the kings of
the world, their money could buy anything, those girls were just objects...
pretty repulsive...) and we decided to try a shemale bar... Not the cleverest
of the choices, on our way in we got surrounded by these hot "girls",
each and all of them taller than us, saying with their deep tone "I like
you, come in with me". There are things and things (you know what I
mean?), so we did what our manhood was telling us... ran away! After that we
went home as next morning we had to wake up at 7 (I forgot to mention we had
arranged a day trip with a really nice old man we met at the hotel).
So there you have us next morning, at 7am with the
i-am-dying-face, on our way to the floating market. It is that market on the
channels, where they sell old kind of fruits (and souvenirs, beer, etc), that
appeared in one James Bond movie, and it was pretty cool! Besides our boat
rider liked to go fast so we had some good times in there.
Oh yeah, and we had
a 7 meters snake put over our shoulders! Pretty funny actually, everybody in
the market started taking pics of us.
After that we went for an elephant ride
and, finally, to a tiger zoo... I know it is really unfair for the tigers to
grow up in such environment but, being selfish, holding that 4 months tiger on
my arms while feeding it was... beyond words! I still get chicken skin when I
think of it... We also saw some sheep (not Merino sheep, unfortunately I got no
family in Thailand) and crazy jumping monkeys without tale. After that we had
to head back to Bangkok as at 7pm our bus to Koh Samui was departing. Yes, an
overnight bus, 14 hours ride... I don't know what we thought at that point,
guess we wanted to have a real backpacker experience and saw a 14 hours party
bus. And when we saw the bus, hell yeah, looked like our dream was about to
become true: nice and comfortable new bus, full of young people, hot girls...
But our dream just lasted for 5 minutes, the time it took the driver to tell us
that we had to wait as this was not our bus... And did we get? An old, crowded,
boring bus, where nobody said a word (do not even mention party) but instead,
watched movies all night long. However, after a 14 hours odyssey (and deciding
we did not need to feel like backpackers ever again) we got to the south of
Thailand, were a ferry was waiting to take us to the islands/paradise...
But that's another story which I'll explain some other
day. China's time zone is a bit awkward, it's not even 5PM and it's starting to
get dark... And I have to start heading home, got a dinner with David and his
friends in two and a half hours at "Malabar", a great tapas place in
Shanghai, far above average (and yes, even compared to the places in
Barcelona). Hope you all are having a great weekend and see some of you in
exactly a month!! I'm landing in Barcelona the 17th of Dec so get ready!
Cheers!
El xino
PS: alright, I’ve you’ve made it till the end, which I
guess it’s not easy as it’s a pretty long post today, I’d steal a couple more
minutes of your time. Go to http://nuevacara.menshealth.es/listado-participantes/pol-merino-abello/
and vote for me! Besides, if you have facebook or twitter, share it! Thanks!!!
PPS: by the way, the old man who was our driver through
Bangkok got so sentimental when he said goodbye, it looked like he was going to
cry when hugging us! And obviously, then he asked for a tip…
