Khao San Road

I find myself back in Thailand’s Capital and this time round is a very different experience to the last, back then the infamous Khao San Road was dead and we had to wade through some of it's neighbouring steets, but now Khao San is bustling with people, venturing through the main street is an assault on every sense, the smell of exotic deep-fried street foods, sick, rubbish and booze. The bright neon sign of the coronal in white grins at you from one end of the street, on the the famous golden arches, trademark of the western world entices drunken revelers in. UV lights hang above t-shirts stools all the way down. Beats blast from bars and clubs up the street clashing together in the center. The swarms of westerns make up the rest of the sounds the occasional Thai asking if you want to see a ping-pong show or a tailored suit made, ladyboys grabbing your arms as you pass through. Most of the few days staying in Khao San Road were blurry and come back to me in random segments. It was fun here but the few days were enough. What I failed to appreciate last time I walked Khao San’s streets is just how complex its network of almost hidden and intertwining backstreets are, there are clubs here like a tardis, seemingly tiny from their street façade but once through the doors they open up into a impossibly cavernous club, (complete with a man who puts a hot towel over your back and neck every time you stand over the urinal). During the days I went on search for a replacement camera, (mine had succumb to salt water poisoning in Cambodia). I found my replacement in MBK, a huge shopping mall that you could get lost in for days. It sells everything in both counterfeits and genuine so you have to be careful.

On the rest of our daytime downtime we revisited the once flooded streets we couldn’t pass through just a couple of months ago, we tuk tuk’d to Tiger Temple, a Buddhist run home for orphaned tigers, (that is how they advertise it, there are claims the larger tigers are drugged..) the first thing you see when walking through the wooded park is the deer, cows and buffalo wondering freely along the paths, the first I saw of a tiger was a big pair of eyes peering through a gap in a wall, transfixed not on me but on a deer to my side, The tiger was stood on its hind legs her front paws digging into the side of the open air amphitheater, she remained there for a while, staring but then seemed to decided it wasn’t worth the effort, slipping down from the wall onto all four paws and slinked away. Looking down into the amphitheater there were younger tigers splashing round in the water jumping and swiping at rattling sticks and playfighting with each other. While a fat monk held a young and particularly playful tiger on a leash I took him for a bath, he tried to naw on a stick I held out and purred and rumbled. The canyon is where the bigger ones could be found; I had to hold the hand of a tiny Thai lady who safely navigated me through the tiger pit. You really get an idea of just how big these big cats are until you’re up close comparing hand for paw size.