brutal bangkok

Alright, so let me update you on our "wonderful" experience getting from phuket to Bangkok. We arrived to the airport with plenty of time to spare, the van that our travel agent arranged for us on phi phi was fantastic (air conditioning, leather reclining seats and just the 2 of us on board). We got to the airport, checked our bags and had some subway while we waited for our plane to board. we were supposed to board the plane at 2:00, however, 2:00 came around and no one was boarding...we checked out the boarding info in the terminal and it now said we needed to go to a different gate to board- so we rushed to the other boarding gate only to find mass chaos, hundreds of people all confused all packed together trying to figure out where their flights were boarding- it was an absolute gong show- we stood in the crowd of people for about 40 minutes and then we heard an announcement saying our gate had been changed again- therefore we were herded like a bunch of cattle to another gate to wait another hour to board our plane. with all this time we are spending in airports im starting to feel like Tom Hanks in the movie "the terminal". Thankfully, we finally boarded our plane and eventually landed in Bangkok (however, we were now 2.5 hours behind schedule). Our bag was of course the last one to come off the luggage terminal and then we walked to find a metered taxi.
There is a convenient little stand outside of the airport offering metered taxis (we couldnt believe it!! finally a metered taxi we thought!). we could see rows upon rows of little green and pink toyota metered taxis. We gave our hotel information to the woman at the stand and she flagged down a driver to come get us. As he started escorting us towards the sea of taxis I noticed one of the taxis in the flock was not quite up to par with the rest of them. I thought to myself, there is no way out of all these taxis we will be in the one that looks like it was just towed here from the salvage yard. However, sure enough he opened the trunk of this red 1970s toyota camry  and asked us to get in. So we settled into this beater of a taxi and went to reach for the seatbelts as we could remember clearly what driving in bangkok is like- however, to our surprise, this sweet ride did not have seatbelts (i guess Tin Lizzy was too old to have seatbelts). I looked at candice and smiled and she honestly said to me in all seriousness, and i quote: " we should get this guys card, so he can pick us up again and bring us back to the airport"! hahah, i couldnt believe my ears, i looked at her with a face of absolute shock and said "are you kidding me?".  the ride was going pretty smoothly considering the vehicle we were in when all of a sudden we got to the second toll booth.  Suddenly the radio cut out as well as the rest of the electrical in the vehicle, the driver muttered something in thai as he tried to fix the problem. within a few seconds, the engine also cut out- so here we were stalled on the bangkok highway rolling towards the toll gate.  The taxi of course came to a hault and the driver asked me to get out and push us through the toll booth. haha, so i jumped out of the cab (with my flip flops on) and started pushing the cab towards the toll booth (laughing the entire time). I got us through the toll booth and continued pushing us towards the side of the highway where they have mechanics stationed to help out (i guess this happens quite often). The mechanics were very nice and were laughing with us and kept saying "good luck"- i guess they could tell this taxi wasnt a very good one. haha. Finally, they seemed to fix the problem and we were on our way again, we made it about 5 mnutes when all of a sudden the engine died again. So once again I was out in the middle of the highway in rush hour pushing this piece of crap to the side of the road. A traffic police officer was near by and he started to help the cab driver- he radiod for a police truck to come help out. They then proceeded to engage in the thai method of towing a vehicle....this consists of hooking a rope up to the bumpers of each vehicle and and pulling the broken down vehicle the way you would pull a toboggan through the snow. As you can imagine this isnt the safest method of towing and it felt as if our bumper was going to be ripped off the vehicle.  The police towed us for a little ways and then gave up and a tow truck came- the tow truck used the same method of towing (a rope) and eventually towed us to an auto yard of some kind. the cab driver then flagged down another cab for us to take us the rest of the way- we sat in standstill traffic for about 30 minutes before finally getting to our hotel. Our first ride in a metered taxi was AWESOME (heavy sarcasm). when we got to the hotel i said to candice- "i bet they are sold out" and sure enough they were, unless we wanted to stay in a more expensive room. By this time it was 8:00 at night and we didnt want to sit in traffic for hours looking for somewhere else to stay so we bit the bullet for one night and forked out the dough. The room is gorgeous and the bed was super comfortable and after pushing cabs on the interstate all day it definitely felt good to have a nice place to sleep. It is now saturday and we are going to spend the entire day shopping and bartering....wish us luck!

we are ready to come back home to Canada!