Sacrificing lie ins
It was New Year’s Eve in Bangkok. I could tell it was going to be a crazy ordeal. We woke up at around 9am, so that we were in time for the free breakfast. It was nothing special, pretty much just toast and crackers…nothing to shake a stick at! However, free breakfast is free, so it’s worth sacrificing a lie in for. When we were ready to rock ‘n’ roll, we grabbed a taxi to the main bus station. The reason being that we needed to book a bus down to Koh Tao, which is our next destination.
It was fairly simple to book the bus, although the woman did have a problem with understanding our pronunciation of Koh Tao. However, Koh Tao is an island, so a bus would only take us so far. Instead, we needed a ferry, and it didn’t seem like there were any options. Perhaps you’re thinking it’s obvious because it’s a bus station, why would they sell ferry tickets? Well, most stations in Asia I’ve found include all forms of transport, sometimes packaged as a deal. You never know! We took another taxi to a very popular backpacker strip, packed with bars, restaurants, and hostels. You could definitely tell it was New Year’s Eve in Bangkok by the way they had prepared.
Good old reliable food
Despite the vast variety of restaurants and food stalls, we ended up in McDonalds…don’t ask me why. I know we should be out there trying new stuff, but when good old reliable McDonalds is in our faces, we can’t resist. It’s safe to say we enjoyed our lunch! After this, we headed further down the street and was able to find a place to book a ferry. We’d looked on 12Go Asia (online transport company), but we felt safer going to a shop/the online availability was no good. We are scheduled to do our Advanced Open Water scuba diving course in Koh Tao but as the ferry leaves at 7am, we wouldn’t be there in time to make it. Due to this, we had to push the scuba diving back one day.
After looking around, and baking in the heat, we craved dessert. We went to one restaurant, but they had no ice cream! We left and, yeah you probably guessed it, went to McDonalds. We had these huuuuge McFlurrys, apparently to share between a small family…I laugh in the face of sharing guidance. After we were done digesting, we headed back to our hostel to chill out from the heat and exhaustion.
The plaza
Once it was dark out, we decided to make our move. We thought, as it was New Year’s Eve in Bangkok, we may as well do something wacky. Where better than to visit Nana Plaza which brands itself ‘The World’s Largest Adult Playground’. I hope my Mum doesn’t think less of me when she reads of my Bangkok antics. When we entered, we were in the middle of what looked like a shopping centre, with 2 upper tiers, except the ‘shops’ contained less clothes than you’d expect of a regular shop. We were meeting Jack here, a lad from the Chiang Mai bus. Mat and I had a stroll around the place, peaking into the different bars which we behind curtains. I think there’s something for everyone here.
Whilst we waited for Jack, we were approached by a pretty quirky South African chap called Wayne. He was around 40 I’d say, but was definitely the ‘soul of the party’ kind of guy. Wayne was pretty nuts, but fun at the same time. When Jack arrived, Wayne took the reins and took us to the first bar…I could tell this night would be interesting.
I’m not going to go into too much details into what exactly was in each establishment, but it definitely catered for the testosterone fuelled gender. As I didn’t drink, I stuck to my bottle of water as well as apple juice and other soft drinks. We also met an American dude in one of the bars, and I think he had come here for one thing. Late during the night, I saw that one thing, and I wish I could forget it…safe to say I didn’t shake his hand goodbye when we left.
The celebration failure
As it was getting closer to midnight, we decided to get moving towards Central World. It was quite an intense and rushed fiasco to be honest. I thought it’d be easy to get a taxi towards Central World, but I was quite wrong. After several taxi no-shows, Wayne said we could take the train/tram to get there. Luckily, he’d done this before and, by some miracle, we were able to catch the tram with some good time until the countdown. Once we arrived at the station nearest to Central World, we had to begin our swim through the ocean of onlookers.
It was hot, stifling, and sweat-inducing New Year’s Eve in Bangkok, and that was before we were climbing to the ‘front’, wherever the front actually was. Wayne got his small camera out for blogging on his YouTube channel, I thought it was pretty nifty to be honest. Slowly but surely, we were passively aggressively making our way to the front of the queue. Eventually, we realised it was a dead end and that there were barriers to stop us going forward. This would have been fine if it weren’t for the fact we couldn’t actually see anything. We stood around glancing at our watches, waiting for the clock to hit 12am, 1st January 2020…
