Shit optimistic Khao San Road salesmen expect tourists to say

The Philippines' non-generous 21-day visa and the impending austerity festival of Passover taking Jackie out of action meant I was back to living the bachelor lifestyle for a couple of weeks and trying desperately to find something new to keep me occupied in this well-travelled part of the planet. As ever, that meant a flight connection in Bangkok with a few days of regeneration and hibernation in its irritatingly convenient tourist district.

Bangkok's Khao San Road area deserves all the criticism it gets, but I have to admit it's a bloody convenient place to spend a night or two before booking a bus to anywhere the hell else in Thailand. Walking around these packed streets and getting hassled by suit salesman and taxi drivers every five seconds is surprisingly non-stressful though, and my theory is that it's so annoying, it stretches annoyance beyond its elastic limit until it snaps and becomes funny instead.

Here are the scenarios I imagine these overly optimistic salesmen are imagining in their heads when they make their cold sales pitches to clearly uninterested passersby.

Bye bye baby

I'm back in Bangkok for a bit, before taking another flight at the end of the week. For all its faults, Bangkok is a much better place to kill a few days than Kuala Lumpur, where I would have been otherwise, and this at least gave me the chance to tie up a loose thread from my last visit here in November, when the morbidly fascinating Siriraj Medical Museum was closed following the flooding. It was worth the wait.

Bangkok is many things to many people - for some it's a sex tourism paradise or a convenient place to get a realistic-looking driver's licence without having to go through the tedious process of learning how not to run people over. In my case, it largely serves as a Deep Space Nine-style spaceport connecting my trips around various parts of Asia - a Bangkok Nor, if you will. If you're such an irredeemable nerd that you understand the reference.

This city isn't so renowned for the quality of its museums, but what they may lack in educational value and dinosaur skeletons they make up for with a commendably non-squeamish approach to death and deformity. Readers of a sensitive disposition and pregnant women (or anyone who doesn't really like seeing dead babies) might not want to read more. Seriously, this could be a bit upsetting.

Crime and gunishment

Dave curbs his enthusiasm at meeting Uncle Tow

When I was a kid, I loved dungeons, haunted houses and the Chamber of Horrors section of wax museums (I still know the sequence of torture instruments at the Brading Wax Museum on the Isle of Wight like the back of my severed hand). I'm happy to report that I've never grown out of this.

It's no so much morbid curiosity or a disturbing gore obsession as the amusement of someone putting hard work and care into creating dummies and dioramas to really scare the shit out of children - especially when they contain more gore than is strictly necessary (Haw Par Villa in Singapore is the best example I've found in the world, so far).

I've been trying to find 'unusual' attractions in Bangkok on my most recent visit, so I was delighted to find out that there are a few museums devoted to death and suffering in various forms. Excellent! I was going to categorise these next few blog posts as The Dark Side of Bangkok, but then I remembered there are much darker things around here than that, which I have no interest in seeing. No matter how often tuk tuk drivers make the sales pitch.

They love performing for your amusement

I was planning on visiting the Tiger Temple today, but as I already spend half my life on buses (18-hour trip to Krabi tomorrow - at least the scenery's nice), the six-hour round trip to Kanchanaburi wasn't an appealing prospect (especially when you add a couple more hours for Bangkok traffic).

Luckily, there are other places nearby where you can see distressed animals being mistreated and made to perform for the entertainment of braying crowds, like Samphran Elephant Ground and Zoo.

If you look at their little faces, it's almost as if they understand.

Don't have a Khaosan, man

Ay caramba!

What's that, Dave? A twenty-years-out-of-date Bart Simpson reference is the best pun you could come up with? And one you've basically used before? EAT MY SHORTS!

I didn't get the appeal of Khaosan Road when I first visited, it just seemed to be like any other trendy tourist street selling knock-off goods, pointless tat and sexy massages. But when you look a little closer, it can be pretty hilarious.

Oliver's Bangkok Diary (by Dave)

Disclaimer: The attitudes ascribed to characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to what Oliver actually thought is marginal at best

I met Oliver in Bangkok this week (honestly: above photo hasn't been doctored). This was a coincidence, because I thought he was in a different hemisphere. We were even staying in the same dorm, almost as if this was somehow planned.

A childish day out again again

Things have been a bit busy and stressful since I left paradise behind and got back to Bangkok, but I left my earthly troubles behind on a trip to Dream World.

I am definitely not too old to be here.

A childish day out again

I'm 25 years old and I love zoos, alright? There's nothing strange or creepy about a single, childless man enjoying hanging around zoos by himself. Besides, whoever heard of a paedophile visiting Thailand anyway?... Okay, bad example.

As well as laughing at chimps, cringing at performing seals and picking out species for my inevitable turtle farm, going to the zoo in a country not renowned for its fair treatment of animals after visiting prim and proper Taipei Zoo in December made for some interesting comparisons.

Bangkok's zookeepers also don't seem to care which species they bundle together in the same habitat, as if they're planning some violent sitcom or grisly reality show and just thinking of the ratings.

A great British day out

Michael Legge saying funny things with his mouth

After spending 10 weeks in relatively tourism-unsullied Taiwan, Bangkok's reliance on the industry is all the more obvious - even if I don't have the benefit of having seen this cultural deterioration over time, like some of the more experienced travellers I've met.

In fact, even with the heat, the language barrier and the terrifying prostitutes of Thailand's capital, it's now possible to forget you're in a foreign country altogether - as I discovered today when I accidentally had a great British day out in Bangkok.

There's a Rattanakosin, what am I gonna do?

Bangkok is a sprawling, bustling metropolis... probably. Fortunately, I've managed to avoid getting stressed out and even more confused than the heat is achieving already by limiting my horizons to Rattanakosin Island (รัตนโกสินทร์), where all the old, interesting stuff is.

Come on then, I haven't got all day.

First impressions of Thailand

Unusually for my overwritten blogs, there's no throughline, contrived argument or pseudo-philosophising here - I just thought I'd get some of my first impressions of Thailand down so I can laugh at my ignorance further down the line, when I'm having a great time jumping off cliffs into clear water or whatever people do here.

And also because I'm too hot to think.