Arrival in Thailand-3/15/09

In Thailand I had an organized trip which was to Phuket and Bangkok.  This trip was identical to the Semester at Sea trip but was over $400 cheaper.  We arrived in the port at Laem Chanbang which is 70 km South of Bangkok.  They told us the reason for us docking there was that our ship was "too big" to go up the river to Bangkok, but rumor has it that it was a lot cheaper to dock there.  Anyways, we were scheduled to get off at 10 am but as usual that didn't happen and by the time the ship was cleared and everyone was off it was about noon.  Our 2 tour buses were waiting for us as there was about 90 us of going on this independent trip.  Our bus looked like it was often used as a party bus, with really tacky decorations and colors.  We then headed on our way to Bangkok for lunch which was around 1.5 hours away.  We passed more 7-11's then I think there are in all of the U.S. and pictures of the King everywhere.  Also an interesting note is that it is illegal to own/sell the Disney movie "The King and I" there because the King did not like what the movie represented.  When we got to downtown Bangkok we then got on a boat that took us to our lunch since the traffic was really bad and we could avoid most of it using the boats to go around it.  Lunch was buffet style and was pretty good, we all finished up pretty quickly and then headed off to the airport.  We had an early evening flight and everyone was really anxious to land and get checked in so we could go out that night.  After what seemed like forever to check into the hotel, we finally headed out on the town to explore Phuket.  At the first bar we went to  with Shera and this other girl (I forget her name) there was this really interesting bar game that they played which consisted of a hammer and nails.  Each person had a nail they were trying to hammer into a log and the object was to try and nail their nail into the log as quickly as possible but while rotating turns.  The catch is that the hammer is really slender tipped so it is pretty difficult to make contact with the nail, in addition to it being a drinking game.  We then headed to Bangla Road which makes Amsterdam's Red Light District look PG-13.  Every Thai women there was "working."  After a few more hours out we headed back to the hotel.