Wednesday 28 August 2013

Thailand Dreaming: Long-distance Bus Ride

Thailand Dreaming: Long-distance Bus Ride: There are choices to be made when taking a long-distance bus in Thailand. The regular buses stop wherever someone wishes to get on or off, ...

Long-distance Bus Ride

There are choices to be made when taking a long-distance bus in Thailand. The regular buses stop wherever someone wishes to get on or off, make a halt at every official bus terminal along the route; a time consuming journey cheaper than you, the foreigner, could imagine. My journey would take me from Chiang Mai to Bangkok’s Southern Bus Terminal. There I would switch to the frequently running A/C shuttle bus to my final destination on the beach, the small town of Hua Hin; a further 235 km and 3 hours away in a southwestern direction.
The local temperature in Chiang Mai at 8:30pm was still an enjoyable 33C. I was looking forward to a relaxing bus journey. I had a good choice of bus companies to select from. All would take me to Bangkok. I chose my bus company with care. The ticket price I paid for the 9 hour bus journey wouldn’t buy a decent breakfast in Europe. My VIP bus had 32 seats; 24 upstairs, 8 down with the luggage compartment and toilet. The seats allow reclining far back, good for sleeping. Head pillow and blanket are provided. Within minutes after departure the young and pretty bus stewardess delivers a snack box filled with a piece of cake, cookies, fruit juice and a small bottle of water. Halfway to Bangkok the bus will stop for an inclusive Thai food dinner break; the foreigners will get off for a toilet run and a smoke, the Thais to enjoy the free food.  Doesn’t the description make you want to ride a bus? Well, read on the pleasure is going to disappear.
An hour into the journey the interior bus lights go OUT. Total darkness. It is then that one realizes the air-conditioning, pleasant until now, is set to about 10C, just above freezing. A few tourists, dressed in shorts and t-shirts, find the blanket not enough and start whining. Previous experience riding long-distance Thai buses had me prepared. I have on a T-shirt, a long sleeve shirt, a sweater, a jacket, a scarf around my neck, a baseball cap on my head; wear long pants, shoes and socks and drape the blanket around me. I am still not comfortable enough to rest peacefully; the air-conditioning draft irritates me as it drifts across my legs. The on-board Thais love the air-conditioning and sleep peacefully; the fist-time foreign bus riders freeze and complain.
Halfway to Bangkok, the bus stops for the dinner break. All the foreigners rush off the bus to soak up warmth up in the local night. When the bus finally reaches Bangkok and I wait for my bag to be handed down from the luggage rack I see many foreigners shivering as they depart.
Hopefully they will prepare for the next journey. 

Visiting Thailand

I've been travelling through Thailand for many years now and I've also made many recommendations to many of my friends as to different destinations that you can see for different reasons all depending on what are are looking to get out of your trip.
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Here is some information on the three places that I have just sent to my brother. For example what is your budget? What's the duration of your holiday to be? Do you like to move around a lot to take in as many places as you can or like to relax in one or two areas? Are you male/female and are you travelling alone, with a partner or a group of same sex or mixed sex group?

As for language I have found going to any country it's always good to try and know some of the language of that area even if not a great deal people usually appreciate that you are making an effort in trying to know the basic niceities. Other than that I was always able to get around with limited skills in the Thai language and I have visited some very off the beaten track places.

Hope it helps.

Krabi Beach (Ao Nang) is in southern Thailand and a beach area that is great for relaxing and seeing all the sites of the southern area. It has access to all of the sites that you can get to from Phuket that are good to see but without so many western tourists. Tours or easy places to get to from here James Bond Island (tour with Kayaking), Phi Phi Island (explore yourself or tour) and this is a great place for diving. There are some great cave type dives, a wreck dive as well as access to whale shark and manta ray areas. The beach is nice and there are plenty of places that you can jump on a scooter and escape to without it being heavily populated with farang.
Chiang Mai is one of the best places to see to get a feeling of the northern culture and there are some great places to see up there. Doi Suthep temple, dinners that have traditional dance shows called Khantoke dinner, Chiang Dao mountains, night and weekend markets with some of the best shopping in Thailand, the zoo and a number of other temples and things to see in the city. The Chiang Dao mountains have a number of different tours and places to see including one of the best places to go elephant riding, a cave complex that the Burmese used to hide in when invading Siam to attack Chiang Mai, the Longneck tribes as well as cool river runs and other things depending on the tours you wanted to do and you can do a day trip up to Chiang Rai where they have a white temple
Koh Chang is an island off to the south eastern border of Cambodia that is a great island escape. There are plenty of nice beaches to escape to and also an easy place to find a stretch of beach for yourself on the eastern side of the island. There are also plenty of areas for nice restaurants and party areas as well. Nice places for diving with a wreck dive and many other nice spots. There are also some nice walks in the island to waterfalls and things of that sort. Also from Koh Chang it is very easy to do a run up into Cambodia to see the Angkor Wat temple complex if you have time.

Monday 8 July 2013

'Hitler' Fried Chicken: KFC May Sue Restaurant In Thailand For Replacing Colonel Sanders With Adolf Hitler



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KFC may sue a fried chicken restaurant in Thailand called “Hitler.”
BANGKOK: -- Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) may sue a fried chicken restaurant in Thailand called “Hitler” for using a similar logo featuring an image of Adolf Hitler in place of the iconic Colonel Sanders.

"We find it extremely distasteful and are considering legal action since it is an infringement of our brand trademark and has nothing to do with us," a spokesperson for Yum!, KFC’s parent company, told the Huffington Post.

The “Hitler” restaurant, which opened in Bangkok last month, has a storefront logo very similar to KFC's but with an image of the anti-Semitic dictator responsible for the mass murder of 6 million Jews and millions of others in the Holocaust during World War II.

The fried chicken restaurant was originally publicized in May when British author Andrew Spooner tweeted a photo of its façade. “Very bizarre Hitler Fried Chicken shop in Thailand. I kid you not. Complete with pic of Hitler in bow tie,” he wrote on Twitter.

The restaurant sells fried chicken as well as chips, burgers and kebabs, according to the UK's Daily Mail. Bangkok resident Alan Robertson told the Mail: “The place opened last month and nobody quite knows what to make of it.