Bangkok

Bangkok was another weekend trip where we tried to experience as much as possible in a couple of days. There are certainly a lot of things to do in Thailand overall, but we only had time enough for Bangkok. Anyway, off to Bangkok we flew on a Friday night!

First meal at a "nice" place

Our accommodations were a pretty decent-sized suite, for 5 people, with 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and a living room with a kitchen. Pretty hooked up! It was on Sukhumvit Road - one that has many bars, massage parlors, eating establishments, and of course plenty of the little notorious ladies. Our first night out we had so me delicious Thai eats and wondered the streets, though we did eventually settle on a bar to soak in the somewhat grungy atmosphere.





Saturday we set out to see the Grand Palace. Getting a taxi that would take us there for a fair price was a bit of an ordeal (as we had been warned), but after a detour to an overpriced boating-excursion landing, we finally found an honest driver. He even told us that he'd lower the price if we agreed to stop for 5 minutes by his sponsoring tailor shop, not even buy anything. That's very common practice in Thailand and I'd say Indonesia. The taxi driver will take the tourist to the "sponsoring" shop, which will give the driver some gasoline coupons or a cut of whatever the customer buys in exchange. Most things at such shops are overpriced and of bad quality. Anyhow, we didn't buy anything, but finally got to the Grand Palace. As you can see, it was quite marvelous, and we spent the morning/early afternoon there.

Small snippet of the Palace

Palace

After this, we were to meet up with one of Katelyn's friends. It was hard to get in touch with him at first, and this led us to take an adventurous bus ride through the city, but in the end we met up back at Sukhumvit and went to a nice Japanese lunch. 

We then basically spent the late afternoon/early evening at the mall, looking at knockoff products, cheap electronics, and bootleg games/movies. We had some dinner there as well (I had some amazing Tom Yum Soup!). The plans for the night were finalized, and we headed back to the hotel before taking a taxi to the Khao San Road area. Party central for the tourists! haha! The guy who was playing covers of all sorts of songs in the first place we went to was quite impressive, but he ended way too early for our liking, so the night continued at "The Club". Very Eurodance!

Khao San Road by night

Sunday we had a pre-booked tour of some of the Temples - Wat Pho - temple of the reclining Buddha, was very cool. One of them also had all the Buddhas of the days of the week. Depending on what day you were born, you had different qualities. I was born on a Sunday apparently. Our tour guide told us qualities that now I cannot confirm on the internet, so I won't post up what it all means. Ya'll can look it up if it's interesting :)

Reclining Buddha 

After three or so hour tour of the temples, we decided to go to Chatuchak Market - a HUUUUUGE open air market with something like 8000 stalls. Lots of interesting things there and quite crowded. Supposedly they sell crazy animals there too, but we didn't get to see that.

We got some Thai massages and chilled out at a Starbucks (those are everywhere in Asia) before flying back to Singapore.

PS. Yes, I had street food, and yes, it made me sick (though not SOOO bad that I couldn't do anything). No bugs for me though, just "normal" (?) meat.

Delicious street food